John Calvin Commentary Psalms 55:9

"Destroy, O Lord, [and] divide their tongue; For I have seen violence and strife in the city." — Psalms 55:9 (ASV)

Destroy, O Lord; and divide their tongue. Having now composed his mind, as it were, he resumes the exercise of prayer. Had he indulged longer in this strain of complaint, he might have sanctioned the folly of those who do themselves more harm than good by the excessive use of this barren kind of comfort.

Some complaining exclamations, which cannot be altogether justified, will occasionally escape from the lips of a saint when he prays, but he soon recalls himself to the exercise of believing supplication. In the expression, divide their tongue, there seems to be an allusion to the judgment that fell upon the builders of Babel (Genesis 31:7). He generally means to pray that God would break their criminal confederacies and disrupt their impious counsels, but evidently with an indirect reference to that memorable proof God gave of his power to thwart the designs of the wicked by confounding their communication.

In this way, even to this day, he weakens the enemies of the Church and splits them into factions through the force of mutual animosities, rivalries, and disagreements in opinion. For his own encouragement in prayer, the Psalmist proceeds to insist upon the wickedness and malignity of his adversaries. This is a truth never to be forgotten: that just as men grow rampant in sin, it may be anticipated that divine judgments are about to descend upon them.

From the unbridled license prevailing among them, he comforts himself with the reflection that God's deliverance cannot be far away; for he visits the proud, but gives more grace to the humble. Before proceeding to pray for divine judgments against them, he wished to indicate that he had full knowledge of their evil and injurious character.

Interpreters have expended unnecessary effort in determining whether the city mentioned here was Jerusalem or Keilah, for David, by this term, seems merely to denote the open and public prevalence of crime in the country. The city stands in contrast to more hidden and obscure places, and he insinuates that strife was practiced with shameless publicity.

Even if the city meant was the capital of the kingdom, this is no reason not to suppose that the Psalmist had in view the general state of the country; but the term is, in my opinion, evidently used in an indefinite sense, to indicate that such wickedness as is generally committed in secret was at that time openly and publicly perpetrated.

It is with the same aim of highlighting the aggravated character of the wickedness then reigning in the nation that he describes their crimes as going about the walls, keeping guard or watch, so to speak, upon them. Walls are supposed to protect a city from plunder and invasion, but he complains that this order of things was inverted — that the city, instead of being surrounded by fortifications, was beset with strife and oppression, or that these evils had possession of the walls and went about them.

I have already commented elsewhere on the words און, aven, and עמל, amal. In announcing that wickedness was in the midst of the city and deceit and guile in her streets, he points to the true source of the prevailing crimes; just as it was to be expected that those who were inwardly corrupt and given to such mischievous devices would indulge in violence and in persecuting the poor and defenseless.

In general, he is to be understood in this passage as alluding to the deplorable confusion that marked Saul's government, when justice and order were, in a way, banished from the realm. And whether his description was intended to apply to one city or to many, matters had surely reached an ominous crisis in a nation professing the true religion when any of its cities had thus become a den of robbers. It may also be observed that David, in denouncing a curse upon cities of this kind (as he does in the psalm before us), was obviously supported by what must have been the judgment of the Holy Spirit against them.