Commentary - Psalm 58:10-11

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 58 is one of the rawest of the imprecatory psalms, a prayer for God to bring spectacular judgment upon corrupt and wicked rulers. These final two verses form the triumphant conclusion, describing the results of God's righteous intervention. The central theme is the public vindication of God and His people. When God finally acts, His justice will be so undeniable and so thorough that two things will happen. First, the righteous, who have long suffered under oppression, will rejoice. This joy is not sadistic glee, but a profound gladness that righteousness has prevailed and God's name has been honored. The shocking imagery of washing one's feet in the blood of the wicked is a metaphor for total victory and the cleansing of the land from the pollution of sin. Second, the world at large will be forced to draw the correct theological conclusion: there is a moral order to the universe, faithfulness is rewarded, and God is actively judging in the affairs of men, right here on earth.

This passage confronts our modern, sentimental sensibilities head-on. It refuses to allow for a vision of a God who is merely nice. The God of the Bible is good, but His goodness includes a fierce and holy opposition to evil. The gladness of the saints and the confession of the world are the direct result of this holy terror. When justice is done, the world is set right, and everyone can see that serving God is the only sane course of action.

Outline

Context In Psalm

Psalm 58 begins by confronting corrupt human judges, called "gods" in verse 1, who dispense injustice and violence. The psalmist details their inherent corruption, describing them as estranged from the womb, speaking lies, and deaf to any appeal, like a cobra that will not hear the charmer. Having established the depth of their depravity, the psalmist then calls upon God in verses 6-9 to act decisively. He prays for God to break their teeth, to make them vanish like water, to be like a snail that melts away. This is a cry for a complete and total obliteration of their wicked power structure. Our passage, verses 10-11, is the direct result of this answered prayer. It is the "therefore," the glorious aftermath of God arising to judge. The entire psalm moves from a world disordered by wickedness to a world reordered by divine judgment, a reordering that is visible to all.

Key Issues

The Sanity of Judgment

We live in an age that has lost its nerve. We want a God who is all affirmation and no negation, all mercy and no wrath. We have tried to domesticate the Lion of Judah and turn Him into a housecat. But the result of banishing the doctrine of God's righteous judgment is not a more compassionate world, but a world that has gone insane. When there is no ultimate Judge, there is no ultimate justice. When there is no fear of God, every man does what is right in his own eyes, and the powerful are free to devour the weak. The imprecatory psalms, and this passage in particular, are a potent cure for this modern malady. They remind us that the world only makes sense when we acknowledge that there is a God who judges, not just in some far-off heaven, but on earth. The joy of the righteous here is not bloodlust; it is the deep, soul-settling relief that comes from seeing sanity restored to a world gone mad. It is the joy of knowing that our faith is not in vain, and that the moral structure of the universe is intact because God is on His throne.

Verse by Verse Commentary

10 The righteous will be glad when he beholds the vengeance; He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

This verse is designed to shock us out of our lethargy. The first clause is a direct affront to the idea that a good person should never take pleasure in the downfall of another. But this is not the downfall of a mere personal enemy. This is the beholding of God's vengeance, which is another word for His perfect justice. The righteous are glad because God's character has been vindicated. They have been praying, "How long, O Lord?" and now they have their answer. Justice has been done. The oppressor is removed. The name of God is honored. This is the same gladness that the saints in heaven express at the fall of Babylon: "Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has pronounced judgment for you against her" (Rev. 18:20). To be glad at the triumph of justice is not sinful; it is righteous. The second clause is a brutal, poetic metaphor for overwhelming victory. In ancient warfare, the battlefield after a rout would be soaked with the blood of the defeated army. To "wash his feet" in that blood means to walk unhindered and victorious across the field of battle. The enemy is so utterly defeated that you can tread where they have fallen. It signifies the complete and total subjugation of evil. The land, which was polluted by the wickedness of these unjust rulers, is now cleansed by the execution of God's just decree.

11 And men will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous; Surely there is a God who judges on earth!”

The effect of God's judgment is not private; it is a public spectacle that forces a confession from the lips of "men," meaning people in general, the watching world. The events are so clear, so obviously a divine intervention, that the general populace is compelled to draw two correct conclusions. First, they see that there is a reward for the righteous. The word can also mean "fruit." They see that a life of faith and obedience, which previously looked like foolishness and weakness, actually bears fruit. The wicked seemed to have all the rewards, but in the end, their way led to destruction. God's public judgment demonstrates that He keeps His covenant promises, and that righteousness is, in the final analysis, the winning side. The second conclusion is the foundation of the first. The reason righteousness is rewarded is that there is a God who judges on earth. God is not distant. He is not uninvolved. He is not a deist's God who wound up the clock and walked away. He is the sovereign King who intervenes in history to cast down the proud and lift up the humble. This judgment on earth is a preview and a promise of the final judgment. It is a signpost for all humanity that Yahweh is the true God, and He must be reckoned with, not just in the sweet by and by, but in the here and now.

Application

The modern Western church is largely embarrassed by psalms like this. We are tempted to skip over them, to spiritualize them into meaninglessness, or to relegate them to a "less enlightened" Old Testament dispensation. But this is a grave error. These psalms were given to the church for a reason. They teach us how to hate what God hates. They teach us to long for justice, not just in heaven, but on earth. They are a divine corrective to a flabby, sentimental faith that cannot stand in the face of real evil.

We must learn to pray these prayers again. Not with personal, vindictive malice, but with a holy zeal for the glory of God's name and the good of our neighbor. When we see injustice, corruption, and blasphemy running rampant in our culture, we should not just sigh and retreat. We should cry out to God, as the psalmist did, to break the teeth of the wicked. We should pray for their power structures to be dismantled. We can pray this with a clean conscience, because we know that the ultimate triumph of God's justice was secured at the cross, where Christ absorbed the full measure of God's wrath against our sin. Because He washed us in His own blood, we can now long for the day when all His enemies are made His footstool. Our prayer for judgment is ultimately a prayer for the consummation of Christ's kingdom, where righteousness will finally and forever prevail.