Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 58:9

"Before your pots can feel the thorns, He will take them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike." — Psalms 58:9 (ASV)

Before.—The imagery in this difficult verse is generally understandable, although the text as it currently stands resists all attempts at translation. As with the preceding images, it must convey the idea of failed effort and sudden ruin.

It is generally understood that some experience of eastern travel undoubtedly supplied the imagery, which an accident or a copyist’s error has made so obscure. The Hebrew literally reads: Before (shall) understand your pots a bramble as (or so) living as (or so) heat sweeps them off.

The ancient versions mostly translate it as thorns instead of pots, and interpret the simile as referring to the destruction of the bush before it grows to maturity. The English versions have undoubtedly captured the imagery more accurately.

However, it is doubtful whether the Hebrew word translated as feel could be used for inanimate objects. Even if a kettle might be said to feel the fire, we would hardly speak of it feeling the fuel. Some change in the text must be made.

A very slight change in one letter gives excellent meaning to the first clause: Before thorns (taking the word âtad, which in Judges 9:14-15 is translated bramble collectively) make your pots ready. However, the second clause remains very difficult. Even if (with Grätz) we read charôl (Job 30:7; Proverbs 24:31, “nettles”) for charôn, and translate it as thorny bush, the words as living still offer a puzzle.

And even if, following the Prayer Book, we might translate raw instead of living, yet burning heat could not represent cooked meat. Apparently, the poet intends to compare the sudden overthrow of the wicked, before their schemes could succeed, to the disappearance of the fuel before it had time to heat the cooking pot.

It is quite possible that the poet compressed all this into a condensed expression, which we must expand as follows: “As, before the brambles make the pots ready, they are consumed, so He will whirl them (that is, the wicked) away alive, as the fierce heat consumes the thorns.” Hebrew poetry is always more effective with metaphor than with simile, and here, as often, it seems to waver between the two, thereby becoming obscure.