What Does Psalm 58:4 Mean?
Their burning is like the burning of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops up its ear.
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
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;THE KEY
The venom is not only in what they say: the image also shows an ear sealed against interruption.
THE MEANING
The verse exposes how harm travels now: venomous speech moves outward while the ear closes against what could restrain it. The adder’s deafness is pictured as an act of shutting its ear, so refusal to hear becomes part of the danger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that harm lives only in the words spoken: the verse pairs venom with an ear deliberately closed to what could interrupt it.
THE ROOT
יַאְטֵם
yaʾṭēm
GROWS FROM
אטם
To stop up, close, or seal so that something cannot pass through.
“stops up” in this verse is yaʾṭēm. The Hebrew pictures the adder closing its ear, rather than merely lacking the ability to hear. The verse places venomous speech beside a seal, so the danger includes the refusal through which the harm goes uninterrupted.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāṭûm: Sealed, shut, or stopped up.
אָטוּם
This is the closed state the verse’s verb describes: the ear has become impervious to a voice reaching it.
ʾăṭīmāh: Closure or sealing.
אֲטִימָה
The noun names the act of closing, making the adder’s deafness an image of a barrier being put in place.
THE PATTERN
Venomous speech carries harm outward, while a closed ear refuses the voice that could restrain it.
It does not hear and respond to the voice of the whisperers, the binders who bind with wisdom.They whet their tongues like a serpent, and the venom of adders is under their lips. Selah.But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.THE THREAD
They whet their tongues like a serpent, and the venom of adders is under their lips. Selah.The word for “poison” here, חֲמַת (ḥămat, venom), is the same Hebrew word used for the adder’s poison in Psalm 140:3. That shared word binds serpent imagery to harmful speech; Psalm 58 adds the sealed ear, joining the venomous mouth to a refusal to hear.
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