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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 64:5 - 64:5
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The evil speech is one with the bitter speech in Psa 64:4, the arrow which they are anxious to let fly. This evil speech, here agreement or convention, they make firm to themselves (sibi), by securing, in every possible way, its effective execution. סִפֵּר (frequently used of the cutting language of the ungodly, Psa 59:13; Psa 69:27; cf. Talmudic סִפֵּר לָשֹׁון שְׁלִישִׁי, to speak as with three tongues, i.e., slanderously) is here construed with לְ of that at which their haughty and insolent utterances aim. In connection therewith they take no heed of God, the all-seeing One: they say (ask), quis conspiciat ipsis. There is no need to take לָמֹו as being for לֹו (Hitzig); nor is it the dative of the object instead of the accusative, but it is an ethical dative: who will see or look to them, i.e., exerting any sort of influence upon them? The form of the question is not the direct (Psa 59:8), but the indirect, in which מִי, seq. fut., is used in a simply future (Jer 44:28) or potential sense (Job 22:17; 1Ki 1:20). Concerning עֹולֹת, vid., Psa 58:3. It is doubtful whether תַּמְּנוּ
(Note: תַּמְּנוּ in Baer's Psalterium is an error that has been carried over from Heidenheim's.)
is the first person (= תַּמֹּונוּ) as in Num 17:13, Jer 44:18, or the third person as in Lam 3:22 (= תַּמּוּ, which first of all resolved is תַּנְמוּ, and then transposed תַּמְּנוּ, like מָעֻזְנֶיהָ = מָעֻנְזֶיהָ = מָעֻזִּיהָ, Isa 23:11). The reading טָֽמְנוּ, from which Rashi proceeds, and which Luther follows in his translation, is opposed by the lxx and Targum; it does not suit the governing subject, and is nothing but an involuntary lightening of the difficulty. If we take into consideration, that תָּמַם signifies not to make ready, but to be ready, and that consequently חֵפֶשׂ מְחֻפָּשׂ is to be taken by itself, then it must be rendered either: they excogitate knavish tricks or villainies, “we are ready, a clever stroke is concocted, and the inward part of man and the heart is deep!” or, which we prefer, since there is nothing to indicate the introduction of any soliloquy: they excogitate knavish tricks, they are ready - a delicately devised, clever stroke (nominative of the result), and (as the poet ironically adds) the inward part of man and the heart is (verily) deep. There is nothing very surprising in the form תַּמְּנוּ for תַּמּוּ, since the Psalms, whenever they depict the sinful designs and doings of the ungodly, delight in singularities of language. On וְלֵב (not וָלֵב) = (אִישׁ) וְלֵב = וְלִבֹּו, cf. Psa 118:14.