Bible Strands
Psalms 58:6
O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O LORD, tear out the fangs of the lions.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God directly, placing this plea between a description of the wicked ignoring moral warning and a curse for their swift disappearance. The speaker frames the divine as the one who will physically dismantle the instruments of oppression.
The words — The text employs הֲרָס (ha.ros), meaning to break or shatter, and נְתֹץ (ne.Totz), meaning to tear off or break off. These verbs act on שִׁנַּיִם (teeth) and כְּפִירִים (young lions) to describe the violent neutralization of the enemy's strength.
The thread — This imagery of broken teeth and disabled lions recurs in Psalms 3:7, Job 4:10, and Hosea 5:14, where divine judgment is depicted through the same animal metaphors. The pattern consistently links God’s intervention with the sudden incapacitation of violent foes.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that oppressive power is not absolute and that God actively dismantles the instruments of violence. It asks the reader to trust in divine justice that neutralizes threat rather than human retaliation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord.
Cross-references
- Psalms 3:7 Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.
- Hosea 5:14 For I am like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them to pieces and then go away. I will carry them off where no one can rescue them.
- Job 4:10 The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken.
- Job 29:17 I shattered the fangs of the unjust and snatched the prey from his teeth.
- Psalms 10:15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call him to account for his wickedness until none is left to be found.
- Psalms 17:12 like a lion greedy for prey, like a young lion lurking in ambush.
- Micah 5:8 Then the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which tramples and tears as it passes through, with no one to rescue them.
- Numbers 23:24 Behold, the people rise like a lioness; they rouse themselves like a lion, not resting until they devour their prey and drink the blood of the slain.”
- Psalms 91:13 You will tread on the lion and cobra; you will trample the young lion and serpent.
- Isaiah 31:4 For this is what the LORD has said to me: “Like a lion roaring or a young lion over its prey—and though a band of shepherds is called out against it, it is not terrified by their shouting or subdued by their clamor—so the LORD of Hosts will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and its heights.