1 Are your minds set upon righteousness, O ye congregation: and do ye judge the thing that is right, O ye sons of men?
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 How, then, did Christ say, "All things that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you," except in this way, that what he was certainly going to accomplish through the Holy Spirit, he spoke to us as if he had already accomplished it? Therefore, whenever we hear that one who believes in Christ will not be judged, we are to understand that he will not be condemned.
2 Yea, ye imagine mischief in your heart upon the earth: and your hands deal with wickedness.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 But now ye do what? Why these things to you do I speak? "Because in heart iniquities ye work on earth" [Psalm 58:2]. Iniquities perchance in heart alone?
3 The ungodly are froward, even from their mother's womb: as soon as they are born, they go astray, and speak lies.
Ambrose of Milan · AD 397 Though it appears that the serpent's nature is being delineated in the foregoing, rather, every vessel of evil is being delineated, and every serpent of depravity who casts himself down on the belly and hides his poison inside himself and ponders it inwardly in his breast.
Jerome · AD 420 Atticus: I grant you that they are just men, but I cannot agree with you at all that they are without sin. For I say that humanity can be without fault, which in Greek is called kakia ["wickedness"], but I deny that it is anamartētos ["faultless"], that is to say sine peccato ["without sin"].
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "Alienated are sinners from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken false things" [Psalm 58:3]. And when iniquity they speak, false things they speak; because deceitful is iniquity: and when justice they speak, false things they speak; because one thing with mouth they profess, another thing in heart they conceal.
4 They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent: even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears;
Gregory of Nazianzus · AD 390 We hide away our sin, cloaking it over in the depth of our soul, like some festering and malignant disease, as if by escaping human notice we could escape the mighty eye of God and justice. Or else we make excuses for our sins by devising pleas in defense of our falls or by tightly closing our ears.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "Indignation to them after the similitude of a serpent" [Psalm 58:4]. A great thing you are to hear. "Indignation to them after the similitude of a serpent." As if we had said, What is that which you have said? There follows, "As if of a deaf asp." Whence deaf? "And closing its ears." Therefore deaf, because it closes its ears.
5 Which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer: charm he never so wisely.
6 Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord: let them fall away like water that runneth apace; and when they shoot their arrows let them be rooted out.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "God hath broken utterly the teeth of them in their own mouth" [Psalm 58:6]. Of whom? Of them to whom indignation is as the similitude of a serpent, and of an asp closing up its ears, so that it heareth not the voice of men charming, and of medicine medicated by the wise man. The Lord hath done to them what?
7 Let them consume away like a snail, and be like the untimely fruit of a woman: and let them not see the sun.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "They shall be despised like water running down" [Psalm 58:7]. Be not terrified, brethren, by certain streams, which are called torrents: with winter waters they are filled up; do not fear: after a little it passeth by, that water runneth down; for a time it roareth, soon it will subside: they cannot hold long.
8 Or ever your pots be made hot with thorns: so let indignation vex him, even as a thing that is raw.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "Like wax melted they shall be taken away" [Psalm 58:8]. For thou wast about to say, all men are not so made weak, like myself, in order that they may believe: many men do persevere in their evil, and in their malice.
9 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the ungodly.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "Before that the bramble brings forth your thorns: as though living, as though in anger, it shall drink them up" [Psalm 58:9]. What is the bramble? Of prickly plants it is a kind, upon which there are said to be certain of the closest thorns. At first it is a herb; and while it is a herb, soft and fair it is: but thereon there are nevertheless thorns to come forth.
10 So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth.
John Chrysostom · AD 407 And do you wish that I should speak of another instance of God's goodness? It is not only this, but that He does not suffer the good to become bad. For if they were destined to meet with the same things, they would all be bad. But now this also does not a little console the good.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 There is no advantage for vessels fitted for destruction that God patiently endures them, to destroy them in due order and to use them as a means of salvation for those on whom he has mercy. But there is advantage for those for whose salvation God uses this means.