3 They have sharpened their tongue like a serpent; Adders' poison is under their lips. Selah
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: `They are' like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear,
My soul is among lions; I lie among them that are set on fire, Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, And their tongue a sharp sword.
Thy tongue deviseth very wickedness, Like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good, And lying rather than to speak righteousness. Selah
Behold, they belch out with their mouth; Swords are in their lips: For who, `say they', doth hear?
There is that speaketh rashly like the piercings of a sword; But the tongue of the wise is health.
At the last it biteth like a serpent, And stingeth like an adder.
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue muttereth wickedness. None sueth in righteousness, and none pleadeth in truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch adders' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth; and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
transgressing and denying Jehovah, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
And they bend their tongue, `as it were' their bow, for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith Jehovah.
Ye offspring of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
Their throat is an open sepulchre; With their tongues they have used deceit: The poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
And the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind. But the tongue can no man tame; `it is' a restless evil, `it is' full of deadly poison.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 140
Commentary on Psalms 140 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 140
This and the four following psalms are much of a piece, and the scope of them the same with many that we met with in the beginning and middle of the book of Psalms, though with but few of late. They were penned by David (as it should seem) when he was persecuted by Saul; one of them is said to be his "prayer when he was in the cave,' and it is probable that all the rest were penned about the same time. In this psalm,
To the chief musician. A psalm of David.
Psa 140:1-7
In this, as in other things, David was a type of Christ, that he suffered before he reigned, was humbled before he was exalted, and that as there were many who loved and valued him, and sought to do him honour, so there were many who hated and envied him, and sought to do him mischief, as appears by these verses, where,
Psa 140:8-13
Here is the believing foresight David had,