bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral) · preposition + adjective, masculine singular absolute
oppression
עֹ֑שֶׁק'O.shek
H6233
injury · noun, common masculine singular absolute
speak
יְדַבֵּֽרוּye.da.Be.ru
H1696
perhaps properly · verb, piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
loftily
מִמָּר֥וֹםmi.ma.Rom
H4791
altitude · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jude 1:16 These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admi…
Psalms 17:10 They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly.
Psalms 10:2 The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.
Psalms 10:10-11 He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones.
Psalms 12:4-5 Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?
Psalms 53:1-4 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.
Proverbs 30:13-14 There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up.
Jeremiah 7:9-11 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 73:1-14
This psalm begins somewhat abruptly: Yet God is good to Israel (so the margin reads it); he had been thinking of the prosperity of the wicked; while he was thus musing the fire burned, and at last he spoke by way of check to himself for what he had been thinking of. "However it be, yet God is good." Though wicked people receive many of the gifts of his providential bounty, yet we must own that he is, in a peculiar manner, good to Israel; they have favours from him which others have not.
The psalmist designs an account of a temptation he was strongly assaulted with - to envy the prosperity of the wicked, a common temptation, which has tried the graces of many of the saints. Now in this accoun…
They are corrupt,.... In themselves, in their principles, and in their practices, being shapen and conceived in sin, and born of the flesh; and are corrupters, or "corrupt" themselves, and their ways, and also others by their corrupt speech, evil communications, and bad examples: or "they consume away"; like smoke, or into it, as Psalm 37:20 or as wax melteth at the fire, Psalm 68:2, where the same word is used as here: or "they cause to consume away" (o); "they melt or dissolve others"; they consume them, and waste their estates by their oppression and violence; they make their hearts to melt with their threatening and terrifying words; or they make them dissolute in their lives by keeping…
Psalm 73:4-9
4. For there are no bands to their death, and their strength is vigorous. [158] 5. They are not in the trouble that is common to man; neither are they scourged [or stricken] with other men. 6. Therefore pride compasseth them as a chain; the raiment of violence hath covered them. 7. Their eye goeth out for fatness; they have passed beyond [or exceeded] the thoughts of their heart. 8. They become insolent, and wickedly talk of extortion: [159] they speak from on high. 9. They have set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. [160]
4 For there are no bands to their death. The Psalmist describes the comforts and advantages of the ungodly, which…
The Church Fathers
"They have thought and have spoken spitefulness" (ver. 8). But men do speak spitefulness even with fear: but these men how? "Iniquity on high they have spoken." Not only they have spoken iniquity; but even openly, in the hearing of all, proudly; "I will do it;" "I will show you;" "thou shalt know with whom thou hast to do;" "I will not let thee live." Thou mightest have but thought such things, not have given utterance to them! Within the chambers of thought at least the evil desire might have been confined, he might have at least restrained it within his thought. Why? Is he perchance lean? "There shall go forth as if out of fatness the iniquity of them." "Iniquity on high they have spoken."
Let us come, if you will, also to the circumcision of the lips. I think that he is "uncircumcised in lips" who has not yet ceased from foolish speech, from scurrility, who disparages good men, who accuses his neighbors, who instigates quarrels, who stirs up slanders, who sets brothers against one another by speaking falsehoods, who utters vain, foolish, worldly, unchaste, base, injurious, insolent, blasphemous things and the rest which are unworthy of a Christian. But if anyone restrains his mouth from all these, and "orders his words in judgment," represses verbosity, tempers his tongue, moderates his words, he is deservedly said to be circumcised in lips. But also "those who speak iniquity on high and stretch their tongue up to heaven," as the heretics do, are to be called uncircumcised and unclean in lips, whereas he is circumcised and clean who always speaks the word of God and sets forth sound doctrine fortified by the Evangelical and Apostolic rules. In this way, then, the circumcision of the lips too is given in the Church of God.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Psalms, Book Of — The present Hebrew name of the book is Tehill’im, “Praises;” but in the actual superscriptions of the psalms the word Tehillah is applied only to one, (Psalms 145:1) ... which is indeed emphatically…
Blindness · 21:14;22:13,14; — 21:14;22:13,14;
Integrity · 16:19,20; — 16:19,20;
Pride · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Punishment Of The Wicked, The · In this life by: Put in slippery places — In this life by: Put in slippery places
Rich, The · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Worldliness · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The reading עונמו, ἡ ἀδικία αὐτῶν (lxx (cf. in Zac 5:6 the עינם, which is rendered by the lxx in exactly the same way), in favour of which Hitzig, Bצttcher, and Olshausen decide, "their iniquity presses forth out of a fat heart, out of a fat inward part," is favoured by Psa 17:10, where חלב obtains just this signification by combination with סגר, which it would obtain here as being the place whence sin issues; cf. ἐξέρχεσθαι ἐκ τῆς καρδίας, Mat 15:18.; and the parallelism decides its superiority. Nevertheless the traditional reading also gives a suitable sense; not (since the fat tends to make the eyes appear to be deeper in) "their eyes come forward prae adipe," but, "they stare f…
The proud adorn themselves with pride and cruelty rather than wisdom (Prov 1:9).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 73:8
They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily.
They are corrupt. They rot above ground; their heart and life are depraved. And speak wickedly concerning oppression. The reek of the sepulchre rises through their mouths; the nature of the soul is revealed in the speech. They choose oppression as their subject, and they not only defend it, but advocate it, glory in it, and would fain make it the general rule among all nations. "Who are the poor? What are they made for? What, indeed, but to toil and slave that men of education and good family may enjoy themselves? Out on the knaves for prating about their rights! A set of wily demagogues are stirring them up, be…
