3 They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent. Viper's poison is under their lips. Selah.
Their poison is like the poison of a snake; Like a deaf cobra that stops its ear,
My soul is among lions. I lie among those who are set on fire, Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, And their tongue a sharp sword.
Your tongue plots destruction, Like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, Lying rather than speaking the truth. Selah.
Behold, they spew with their mouth. Swords are in their lips, "For," they say, "who hears us?"
There is one who speaks rashly like the piercing of a sword, But the tongue of the wise heals.
In the end, it bites like a snake, And poisons like a viper.
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. None sues in righteousness, and none pleads 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 who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.
transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
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 don't know me, says Yahweh.
You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
"Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have used deceit." "The poison of vipers 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 defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire by Gehenna.{Gehenna is a name that describes a burning Hell with rotting bodies and unclean things in it} For every kind of animal, bird, creeping thing, and thing in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by mankind. But nobody can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, 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,