Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 64:7-8

"But God will shoot at them; With an arrow suddenly shall they be wounded. So they shall be made to stumble, their own tongue being against them: All that see them shall wag the head." — Psalms 64:7-8 (ASV)

The meaning of these verses is clear. In the moment of their imagined success, their deeply-laid schemes just on the point of ripening, a sudden Divine retribution overtakes the wicked, and all their slanders, invented with such cunning, fall back on their own heads.

But the construction is most perplexing. The text presents a tangled maze of abrupt clauses, which, arranged according to the accents, run: And God shoots an arrow, sudden are their wounds, and they make it (or him) fall on themselves their tongue. The last clause seems to pronounce the law which applies in Divine judgment. While God orders the retribution, it is still the recoil of their own evil on the guilty. In these cases,

“We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor; this evenhanded justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.”

SHAKSPEARE: Macbeth.

Flee away. —The verb (nâdad) properly means to flutter the wings like a bird (Isaiah 10:14).