What Does Psalm 58:5 Mean?
It does not hear and respond to the voice of the whisperers, the binders who bind with wisdom.
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
Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.THE KEY
The charm can be carefully bound, and the serpent can still refuse the voice.
THE MEANING
The serpent image presents a limit you can recognize now: it does not respond to the whisperers’ voice, however skillfully the spell is bound. A speaker can shape a message, but cannot guarantee that the hearer responds.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough skill or eloquence can force a hearer to respond.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמַע
yishmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, attend, respond.
“does not hear and respond” in this verse is yishmaʿ. שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear and respond) holds hearing and response together. The serpent’s refusal is more than sound failing to reach it: the voice receives no answer.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear, listen, respond.
שְׁמַע
This familiar imperative carries the same root’s sense of hearing that answers.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report travels as something heard; the verse turns on whether the voice is received.
מְלַחֲשִׁים
melachashim
GROWS FROM
לחש
l-ḥ-sh
Whisper, hiss, or mutter an incantation.
“whisperers” in this verse is melachashim. The charmers’ voice is literally associated with whispering: the English “charm” conceals the hushed, hiss-like sound. נָחָשׁ (nāḥāsh, serpent) in the preceding verse echoes לַחַשׁ (laḥash, whisper) in its final ח־ש sounds; this is a sound echo, not a shared root.
ALSO GROWS
lāḥash: To whisper or hiss.
לָחַשׁ
This verb makes the charmers’ voice a hushed sound rather than merely persuasive speech.
laḥash: A whisper or incantation.
לַחַשׁ
The noun names the kind of murmured charm that the serpent does not heed.
חוֹבֵר חֲבָרִים
ḥover ḥavarim
GROWS FROM
חבר
ḥ-b-r
Join, bind, or associate.
“the binders who bind with wisdom” in this verse is ḥover ḥavarim. The phrase pictures someone binding spells together, skillfully joining their elements. That joined craft still cannot bind the serpent’s response.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaver: Companion, associate; one joined with another.
חָבֵר
The companion is joined to someone else, showing the root’s sense of connection.
ḥibber: Joined or connected.
חִבֵּר
This form makes visible the joining that the verse evokes in its image of bound spells.
THE PATTERN
A closed hearer cannot be made responsive by the skill of the speaker.
For look, I will send serpents and vipers among you, which no whisper can charm, and they will bite you, says the LORD.Hard-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always fall against the Set-Apart Breath, as your fathers did, so also you.THE THREAD
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.Both verses use שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear and respond): here the serpent does not answer the charmers, while Deuteronomy calls Israel into responsive hearing. The shared root makes the measure of hearing clear: not sound entering the ear, but a response.
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