Psalm 10:7

Psalm 10:7, in plain English

The psalmist zooms in on how this person actually operates: their words are weapons. Everything that comes out of their mouth is designed to curse, deceive, or hurt people.

Why it's here

In the ancient world (and still today), words carry real power. A false accusation could ruin someone. A curse was believed to have weight. The psalmist is describing someone whose speech is weaponized—they've turned language into a tool for damage, and they hide malice beneath a smooth tongue.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, now describing the external behavior that flows from the internal corruption

Where it sits in the story

Jesus taught that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The wicked person's words reveal what's really going on inside. But this also means that if someone's heart changes, their words change too. That's where repentance leads.

The scholarly reading

The wicked man's speech—his mouth—becomes the instrument through which his depravity flows: curses, deception, and violence are his native tongue.

Language and setting

The parallelism בְּקִלְלַת־וּמִרְמָה וְעוֹלָל (beqillatut-umirmah ve-ʿolal) structures moral decline linguistically. The Hebrew קִלְלָה (qillah, 'curse') is not mere profanity but speech that invokes harm; מִרְמָה (mirmah, 'deceit') involves calculated deception; עוֹלָל (ʿolal, 'violence') is aggressive harm. Notably, the verse progresses from linguistic corruption to its practical consequences. The statement that trouble and malice rest 'under his tongue' (תַּחַת־לְשׁוֹנוֹ, tachat-lesono) employs a spatial metaphor: his words conceal malicious intent. Medieval Jewish commentators like Ibn Ezra recognized this as psychological profiling—the mouth reveals the heart's condition.

Voice

The righteous observer, detailing the wicked man's characteristic speech patterns and their origin in depravity.

Significance

This joins a biblical concern with how speech reveals and perpetuates spiritual condition—from the Proverbs' extensive treatment of the tongue to Jesus's teaching that 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.'

5He is secure in his ways at all times; Your lofty judgments are far from him; he sneers at all his foes.

6He says to himself, “I will not be moved; from age to age I am free of distress.”

7His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and violence; trouble and malice are under his tongue.

8He lies in wait near the villages; in ambush he slays the innocent; his eyes watch in stealth for the helpless.

9He lies in wait like a lion in a thicket; he lurks to seize the oppressed; he catches the lowly in his net.

Read all of Psalm 10 — The wicked prosper and the helpless are crushed. Why do You stand far off, Lord? A cry that the oppressed have prayed in every century.