Your tongue devises evil; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.
Read Chapter 52
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
4. "In iniquity the whole day upon injustice hath thy tongue thought" (ver. 2): that is, in the whole of time, without weariness, without intermission, without cessation. And when thou doest not, thou thinkest; so that when anything of evil is away from thy hands, from thy heart it is not away; either thou doest an evil thing, or while thou canst not do, thou sayest an evil thing, that is, thou evil-speakest: or when not even this thou canst do, thou wiliest and thinkest an evil thing. "The whole day," then, that is, without intermission. We expect punishment to this man. Is he to himself a small punishment? Thou threatenest him: thou, when thou threatenest him, wilt send him whither? Unto evil? Send him away unto himself. In order that thou mayest vent much rage, thou art going to give him into the power of beasts: unto himself he is worse than beasts. For a beast can mangle his body: of himself he cannot leave his heart whole. Within, against himself he doth rage of himself, and dost...
The material we have before us was spoken much earlier in time than the history pertaining to the 50th Psalm. For [the history of Doeg] took place, and [the words] were spoken, while Saul was still alive, and before David's kingship. Many long years later, after the death of Saul, and at the end of his own kingship, David made the confession contained in the 50th Psalm, which he placed before [the 51st] because of its connection to the 49th Psalm, as I have already shown. Those Psalms, 20 in number, from 51 to 70, with epigraphs "of David," took their subject-matter from a different point of origin: indeed, they appear to have been spoken while Saul was still alive, before David reigned. For the one before us now was spoken while Saul was still alive, "when Doeg the Idumaean came and reported to Saul…'David came to the house of Abimelech.'" But the 53rd Psalm too was spoken "when the Ziphites came and told Saul, 'Look--is not David hidden with us?'" Also, the 55th Psalm has thi...
