John Calvin Commentary Psalms 10:8

"He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages; In the secret places doth he murder the innocent; His eyes are privily set against the helpless." — Psalms 10:8 (ASV)

He will sit in the ensnaring places of the villages. I have purposely avoided changing the verbs of the future tense into another tense, because they imply a continued act, and also because this Hebrew idiom has extended even to other languages. David, therefore, describes what ungodly men are accustomed to do.

And, in the first place, he compares them to highwaymen, who lie in wait at the narrow parts of roads, and choose for themselves hiding-places from which they may fall upon travelers when off their guard. He says also, that their eyes are bent or leering, by a similitude borrowed from the practice of dart-shooters, who take their aim with leering, or half-shut eyes, in order to hit the mark more surely.

Nor does he here speak of the common sort of highwaymen who are in the woods; but he directs his language against those great robbers who hide their wickedness under titles of honor, and pomp, and splendor. The word חצרים, chatserim, therefore, which we have rendered villages, is by some translated palaces; as if David had said, they have converted their royal mansions into places of robbery, where they may cut the throats of their unhappy victims.

But granting the word to have this allusion, I consider that it refers principally to the practice of robbers, to which there is a reference in the whole verse, and I explain it thus: Just as robbers lie in wait at the exits of villages, so these persons lay their snares wherever they are.

In the next verse, he sets forth their cruelty in a still more aggravated light, by another comparison, saying that they thirst for their prey like lions in their dens. Now, it is a step higher in wickedness to equal wild beasts in cruelty than to make havoc after the manner of robbers.

It is worthy of remark that he always joins deceits and snares with violence, in order to better show how miserable the children of God would be, unless they were helped from heaven.

Another similitude is also added, which expresses more clearly how craft in catching victims is mingled with cruelty. They catch them, he says, but it is by drawing them into their net. By these words he means that they not only rush upon them with open force and violence, but that, at the same time, they also spread their nets in order to deceive.

He again repeats all this in the tenth verse, giving a beautiful and graphic description of the very demeanor or gesture of such wicked men, just as if he set a picture of them before our eyes. They crouch low, he says, and cast themselves down, so that they may not, by their cruelty, frighten away their victims to a distance; for they would gladly catch in their entanglements those whom they cannot hurt without coming close to them.

We see how he joins these two things together: first, snares or traps, and then sudden violence, as soon as the prey has fallen into their hands. For, by the second clause, he means that whenever they see the simple to be fully in their power, they rush upon them by surprise with savage violence, just as if a lion should furiously rise from its couch to tear its prey to pieces.

The obvious meaning of the Psalmist is that the ungodly are to be dreaded on all sides, because they dissemble their cruelty until they find those caught in their snares whom they wish to devour.

There is some obscurity in the words, which we will briefly address. In the clause which we have rendered an army of the afflicted, the Hebrew word חלכאים, chelcaim, an army, in the opinion of some, is a word of four letters.

Those, however, think more accurately who hold it to be compound, and equivalent to two words. Although, therefore, the verb נפל, naphal, is in the singular number, the prophet, doubtless, uses חל כאים, chel caim, collectively, to denote a great company of people who are afflicted by every one of these lions.

I have rendered עצומימ, atsumim, his strengths, as if it were a substantive; because the prophet, doubtless, by this term, intends the talons and teeth of the lion, in which the strength of that beast chiefly consists. As, however, the word is properly an adjective in the plural number, signifying strong, without having any substantive with which it agrees, we may reasonably suppose that, by the talons and teeth of the lion, he means to express metaphorically a powerful body of soldiers.

In short, the meaning is this: These wicked men hide their strength by feigned humility and crafty, courteous demeanor, and yet they will always have in readiness an armed band of henchmen, or claws and teeth, as soon as an opportunity of doing mischief is presented to them.