What Does Psalm 58:2 Mean?
Even in the heart you work crookedness; you level the violence of your hands in the earth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.THE KEY
The verse shows violence being weighed inside the heart before the hands distribute it across the land.
THE MEANING
Injustice takes shape within: the heart works crookedness, and the hands weigh violence out in the land. Harm is not only an impulse here; it is measured and carried into public life by an inward standard.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that injustice is only a sudden loss of control: violence can be considered and deliberately measured out.
THE ROOT
תְּפַלֵּסוּן
tephallesun
GROWS FROM
פלס
p-l-s
To weigh or make level; to set something on a scale or give it a measured course.
The hands do not merely commit violence; they weigh it out, giving it measure and place in the land. The same root can describe making a path level, so the image carries a sharp contrast: a measure meant to make things level is being used to distribute violence.
ALSO GROWS
peles: Balance or scales.
פֶּלֶס
In Proverbs 16:11, the balance belongs to the LORD; here, the hands themselves weigh violence, exposing the standard they enact.
pilles: Make level; consider or ponder.
פִּלֵּס
Proverbs 4:26 uses this form for making a path level, linking the weighing in this verse with the course a person sets by their choices.
THE PATTERN
A measure is never neutral: it reveals whose standard is at work and what that standard does to others.
A leveled balance and scales of judgment belong to the LORD, and all the stones of the pouch are his work.Shall I declare them clean with wicked scales, and with a bag of deceitful stones?Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and spilling over, they will give into your lap. For with the same measure you measure out, it will be measured back to you.THE THREAD
A leveled balance and scales of judgment belong to the LORD, and all the stones of the pouch are his work.The Hebrew root פלס appears in both verses: here as weighing violence, and there in פֶּלֶס (peles), “balance.” The shared root brings the image of the scale into focus: the hands weigh violence by a standard, while Proverbs names the LORD’s measure as just.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us