Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Yea, in heart ye work wickedness - Whatever might be the outward appearances, whatever pretences they might make to just judgment, yet in fact their hearts were set on wickedness, and they were conscious of doing wrong.
Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth - It is difficult to attach any meaning to this language; the translators evidently felt that they could not express the meaning of the original; and they, therefore, gave what seems to be a literal translation of the Hebrew. The Septuagint renders it, "In heart you work iniquity in the land; your hands weave together iniquity." The Latin Vulgate: "In heart you work iniquity; in the land your hands prepare injustice." Luther: "Yea, willingly do you work iniquity in the land, and go straight through to work evil with your hands." Professor Alexander: "In the land, the violence of your hands ye weigh." Perhaps the true translation of the whole verse would be, "Yea, in heart ye work iniquity in the land; ye weigh (weigh out) the violence of your hands;" that is, the deeds of violence or wickedness which your hands commit. The idea of "weighing" them, or "weighing them out," is derived from the administration of justice. In all lands people are accustomed to speak of "weighing out" justice; to symbolize its administration by scales and balances; and to express the doing of it as holding an even balance. Compare Job 31:6, note; Daniel 5:27, note; Revelation 6:5, note. Thus interpreted, this verse refers, as Psalms 58:1, to the act of pronouncing judgment; and the idea is that instead of pronouncing a just judgment - of holding an equal balance - they determined in favor of violence - of acts of oppression and wrong to be committed by their own hands. That which they weighed out, or dispensed, was not a just sentence, but violence, wrong, injustice, crime.
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