Psalms 64:7–10

Psalms 64:7 — "But God will shoot at them." The abrupt reversal signaled by "but" (Hebrew wəyōrem Elōhîm) is theologically decisive. Throughout the first six verses of the psalm, the psalmist has catalogued the weapons of the wicked: sharpened tongues like swords, bitter words like arrows shot in secret (vv. 3–4). Now, in stunning poetic justice, God takes up the very weapon the wicked wielded. The verb yōrem ("will shoot") mirrors the imagery of vv. 3–4, where enemies "aimed their arrows" at the blameless. God does not introduce a foreign punishment — He returns the enemy's own arsenal. This is not petty retaliation but the logic of divine justice as the Hebrew prophets understood it: iniquity carries within itself the seed of its own destruction (cf. Proverbs 26:27). The divine archer motif also appears in Deuteronomy 32:23 and Lamentations 3:12, where God's arrows represent both judgment and the withdrawal of protection from the obstinate.

Psalms 64:8 — "Their own tongues shall ruin them." Here the mechanism of reversal is made explicit and precise. It is not an external weapon but the tongue itself — the very organ with which they conspired, slandered, and shot their bitter words — that becomes their instrument of ruin. The Hebrew yakšîlûm ("shall cause them to stumble" or "ruin them") has the sense of tripping over one's own feet. Patristic commentators, particularly St. Augustine in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, delighted in this verse as a demonstration of the self-defeating nature of malice: the liar is eventually caught in his own lie, the slanderer exposed by his own words. In narrative terms, this is the principle that Haman is hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai (Esther 7:10), or that Daniel's accusers are cast into the den they prepared for him (Daniel 6:24). The tongue as an instrument of destruction is a major biblical theme (cf. James 3:6), but here it uniquely becomes the instrument of the speaker's own downfall — not merely because speech has consequences, but because God actively superintends this reversal.

Psalms 64:9 — "All mankind shall be afraid." The scope suddenly expands from the fate of individual conspirators to the response of all humanity. The Hebrew wayyîr'û kol-'ādām — "and all humankind feared" — describes a universal awe that is more than fright. This is the Old Testament yir'at Adonai, the "fear of the Lord," awakened by the sight of divine justice in action. The fall of the wicked becomes a theophany of sorts: God's character is revealed in how He defends the innocent. This verse anticipates the missionary and eschatological dimensions of judgment: the nations look upon God's acts and are drawn into recognition of His sovereignty. It prefigures the New Testament insistence that divine judgment serves a revelatory purpose — "so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Philippians 2:10). The "fear" here is not paralyzing terror but the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10), a recalibration of the soul toward the real order of things.

Psalms 64:10 — "The righteous shall be glad in Yahweh." The psalm closes not with the destruction of the wicked but with the rejoicing of the righteous — and crucially, their gladness is in Yahweh, not in the enemy's defeat per se. The Hebrew yismah ("shall rejoice") and the prepositional phrase baYHWH orient the emotion properly: the righteous do not gloat over fallen enemies but exult in the God who has vindicated truth and innocence. This distinction is spiritually critical and is developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the Psalms: the joy of the just over divine judgment is ultimately joy at the triumph of goodness, not satisfaction at another's pain. The "upright in heart" who "take refuge in him" in the psalm's final clause form an inclusio with the opening cry for protection (v. 1), bringing the whole movement of the psalm — from persecution, to lament, to trust, to vindication — to its peaceful resolution in God.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage in several distinctive ways. First, the Church reads Psalm 64 Christologically. St. Augustine and St. Hilary of Poitiers both identify the "arrows" of verse 7 typologically with the Word of God piercing the conscience of sinners — and, more profoundly, with the piercing of Christ on the Cross, where the malice of those who conspired against the innocent Lamb was itself the occasion of the world's redemption. The wicked "shot" at Christ with accusations, false testimony, and the nails of crucifixion; God turned even this into salvation, the ultimate reversal of verse 7–8. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the "supreme reverse" of sin: "God permits evil in order to draw a greater good from it" (CCC §312).

Second, Catholic moral theology draws on verse 8 for its teaching on the gravity of sins of the tongue — calumny, detraction, and perjury. The Catechism (CCC §2477–2479) identifies these as sins against justice and truth that inevitably damage the sinner as much as the victim, because they disorder the person's relationship to reality and to God. The tongue that sins against truth becomes the tongue that confounds itself.

Third, the "fear of all mankind" in verse 9 resonates with the Catholic understanding of judgment as ordered toward conversion and universal recognition of God's lordship (CCC §§1038–1041). The Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes (§10) echoes this when it notes that the human conscience instinctively recognizes the moral order inscribed in creation — a recognition that divine acts of justice awaken.

Finally, verse 10's joy "in the Lord" reflects the Thomistic and Augustinian principle that all authentic human happiness is participatory: it is joy in God, not merely joy from God. Augustine's Confessions famously culminates in this insight: "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee."

Contemporary Catholics live in a media environment saturated with the very sins of the tongue this psalm addresses — online slander, coordinated campaigns of reputational destruction, and the weaponization of language against innocent persons. Psalm 64:7–10 offers neither passive resignation nor a license for anger, but a theologically grounded confidence: the structures of malice are inherently unstable, and God is not indifferent. Practically, this passage invites Catholics who have been targets of calumny, unjust accusations, or workplace or ecclesial backstabbing to resist two temptations: the despair that says "injustice always wins," and the vindictiveness that takes personal satisfaction in an enemy's downfall. The proper response modeled in verse 10 is to "be glad in the Lord" — to bring the wound to prayer and to let God be the judge. This is not passivity; it may coexist with legitimate legal or fraternal correction. But the emotional and spiritual center of gravity remains in God, not in the outcome. Regular praying of Psalm 64 as an act of surrender — placing grievances consciously before God — is a concrete ascetical practice that this passage recommends.