What Does Psalm 58:6 Mean?
O God, break their teeth in their mouth; shatter the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.
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
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.THE KEY
The verse locates a predator’s force in its bite and asks for that force to be dismantled at the teeth.
THE MEANING
The prayer names the danger without disguise: the threatening mouths have teeth, and those teeth can wound. It asks God to break them inside the mouth and tear down the young lions’ fangs; the requested answer is violent and specific.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a threatening mouth is untouchable because it has teeth is undone here: the verse imagines the teeth themselves being broken.
THE ROOT
הָרְס
hāres
GROWS FROM
הרס
Tear down, demolish.
The KJV repeats “break,” while the Hebrew first uses הָרְס (hāres, tear down). The teeth themselves become the object of demolition: the image asks for the mouth’s means of harm to be torn down.
ALSO GROWS
hāras: To tear down or demolish.
הָרַס
The verse’s first command uses this root to turn the teeth into something that can be dismantled.
heres: Ruin or destruction.
הֶרֶס
This related form carries the image from breaking an object to bringing down what makes it dangerous.
נְתֹץ
netots
GROWS FROM
נתץ
Pull down, tear apart, demolish.
“shatter” in this verse is netots. The second command changes roots, though the KJV again says “break.” נְתֹץ (netots) adds the force of pulling something down, making the line a doubled request to dismantle the young lions’ fangs.
ALSO GROWS
nathats: To pull down or demolish.
נָתַץ
The same verb is used for pulling down structures; here the target is the fangs that make the lion’s bite dangerous.
nittats: Be pulled down or dismantled.
נִתַּץ
This form shows the other side of the root: what is built or armed can also be taken apart.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures predatory force through the biting mouth and makes its teeth vulnerable to being broken.
Rise, O LORD; bring me out, O my God, for you strike all my enemies upon the cheekbone; you break the teeth of the restless ones.The roar of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions are pulled out.There is a generation whose teeth are swords, and whose jaw teeth are knives, to eat up the bowed down from the earth, and the needy from among humankind.THE THREAD
Rise, O LORD; bring me out, O my God, for you strike all my enemies upon the cheekbone; you break the teeth of the restless ones.Both verses make the teeth of hostile power the target of breaking. Psalm 58 sharpens the picture with the young lion’s fangs and two distinct demolishing verbs; Psalm 3 names the teeth of the ungodly.
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