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52. Psalm 52

¹ Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero?
   Why do you boast all day long,
   you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?
² You who practice deceit,
   your tongue plots destruction;
   it is like a sharpened razor.
³ You love evil rather than good,
   falsehood rather than speaking the truth. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and at the end of verse 5.
⁴ You love every harmful word,
   you deceitful tongue!

    ⁵ Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin:
   He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent;
   he will uproot you from the land of the living.
⁶ The righteous will see and fear;
   they will laugh at you, saying,
⁷ “Here now is the man
   who did not make God his stronghold
but trusted in his great wealth
   and grew strong by destroying others!”

    ⁸ But I am like an olive tree
   flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
   for ever and ever.
⁹ For what you have done I will always praise you
   in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
   for your name is good.

The term בלע, balang, in verse fourth, which has been translated destruction, I prefer understanding in the sense of hiding or concealment. He seems to allude to the drawing back of the tongue when we swallow; and under this figure, to describe the deceitfulness of Doeg’s words, by which he devoured the unsuspecting and the innocent. ²⁷⁷²⁷⁷ “בלע, balang, is to swallow, to devour, with the idea of eagerness, greediness.” — Gesenius The great design of David, as I have already remarked in the preceding verses, is to encourage himself in the hope of deliverance by dwelling upon the extreme character of that wickedness which his enemy had displayed.