Psalms 58:3
as soon as they are born. All people are born totally depraved. Without being made new creatures in Christ by God's power, they are prevented by their wicked nature from pleasing God (cf.
Psa_51:5;
Rom_3:9-18;
2Co_5:17).
The wicked are estranged from the womb - “This,” says Dr. Kennicott, “and the next two verses, I take to be the answer of Jehovah to the question in the two first verses, as the Psa_58:6, Psa_58:7, and Psa_58:8, are the answer of the psalmist, and the remainder contains the decree of Jehovah.” He calls these wicked men, men who had been always wicked, originally and naturally bad, and brought up in falsehood, flattery, and lying. The part they acted now was quite in character.
3–5 The character of the wicked. Deviancy (
astray …
wayward) and falsehood (
lies) are their birth-inheritance (
cf. 51:5); they carry a poison within, and are incorrigible: (lit.) ‘like a deaf cobra that stops its ears’, both unable and unwilling to hear any call to be different (4;
cf. Rom. 1:28–32; Tit. 3:3).
lit. literally J. A. Motyer,
“The Psalms,” in
New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 522.
58:3–5 The wicked are characterized by deceit. The psalmist shows the extent of their wickedness by describing them as evil from birth. He describes their wickedness as poison (Ps 140:3; see note on Job 20:16): They are as dangerous as snakes that ignore their charmers (Jer 8:17).John D. Barry et al.,
Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ps 58:3–5.
Ver. 3.
The wicked are estranged from the womb, &c.] Which original corruption of nature accounts for all the wickedness done by men: they are conceived in sin, shapen in iniquity, and are transgressors from the womb; they are alienated from God, and from that godly life which is agreeable to him, and he requires; and from the knowledge and fear of him, and love to him; and they desire not the knowledge of him nor his ways; they are far from his law, and averse to it; and still more so to the Gospel of Christ; the doctrines of which, as well as the great things written in the law, are strange things to them; and they are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, estranged from the people of God, know nothing of them, neither of their joys, nor of their sorrows.
They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies; they are wicked from their infancy, from their youth upward; and sin, which is meant by
going astray, as soon as they are capable of it, and which is very early. Sin soon appears in the temper and actions of men; they go out of God’s way, and turn every one to their own way, and walk in the broad road which leads to destruction: and particularly they are very early guilty of lying; as soon as they can speak, and before they can speak plain, they lisp out lies, which they learn from their father the devil, who is the father of lies; and so they continue all their days strangers to divine things, going astray from God, the God of truth, continually doing abominations and speaking lies; which continuance in these things makes the difference between reprobate men and God’s elect; for though the latter are the same by nature as the former, yet their natures are restrained, before conversion, from going into all the sins they are inclined to; and if not, yet at conversion a stop is put to their progress in iniquity.<sup>[1]</sup>
<sup>[1]</sup> John Gill,
An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 3, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 763.
