Psalm 12:3-4 |
3. Let Jehovah cut off all flattering tips, and the tongue that speaketh great [or proud] things:4. Those who have said we will be strengthened by our tongues; our lips are in our own power:who is lord over us ? |
To his complaint in the preceding verse he now subjoins an imprecation, that God would cut off deceitful tongues. It is uncertain whether he wishes that deceitful men may be utterly destroyed, or only that the means of doing mischief may be taken from them; but the scope of the passage leads us rather to adopt the first sense, and to view David as desiring that God, by some means or other, would remove that plague out of the way. As he makes no mention of malice, while he inveighs so vehemently against their envenomed tongues, we hence conclude, that he had suffered much more injury from the latter than from the former; and certainly falsehood and calumnies are more deadly than swords and all other kind of weapons. From the second clause of the third verse it appears more clearly what kind of flatterers they were of whom mention was made in the preceding verse:
This the Psalmist confirms more fully in the following verse:
1 "Il ne parle donc pas d'un tas de faquins du commun peuple, qui sont estat de flatter pour avoir la lippee franche." -- Fr.
2 "The occasion on which this psalm was composed is not expressed, but it is a sad complaint of the corrupt manners of that age, (especially of the court of Saul, 5:3,) in which it was hard to find an honest plain dealing man, in whom one might confide. Some think it aims partly at Doeg, and such like courtiers; partly at the Ziphires, and such perfidious people in the country, who, promising him their friendship, (as Theodoret understands it,) would have most basely betrayed him unto Saul, his declared enemy." -- Bishop Patrick's Paraphrase on the Book of Psalms.
3 "Mais qui mentent plaisir en se vantans et tenans propos braves et hautains, desquels ils accablent les poures et simples." -- Fr.