John Calvin 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 your pots can feel the fire of your thorns. Some obscurity is associated with this verse, arising partly from its complex construction and partly from the words being capable of a double meaning.

Thus, the Hebrew word סירות, siroth, means either a pot or a thorn. If we adopt the first meaning, we must read, before your pots feel the fire which has been kindled by thorns. If we adopt the second, it means before your thorns grow to a bush, that is, reach their full height and thickness.

Following the first sense, what we have translated as flesh yet raw must be understood, if we adopt the other sense, as tender, or not yet grown.

However, the Psalmist’s aim in the passage is quite clear. He refers to the swiftness of the judgment that God would execute on His enemies and prays that God would carry them away as by a whirlwind—either before they reached the full growth of their strength, like a thorn that has grown into a vigorous plant, or before they reached maturity and readiness, like flesh that has been boiled in the pot.

The latter meaning—that God, in the whirlwind of His anger, would carry away the wicked like flesh not yet boiled, which can be said to have scarcely felt the heat of the fire—seems to be the interpretation the passage most easily supports.