Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The announcement of the divine retribution begins with גּם as in Isa 66:4; Eze 16:43; Mal 2:9. The אהל is not, as one might suppose, the holy tent or tabernacle, that he has desecrated by making it the lurking-place of the betrayer (Sa1 21:7), which would have been expressed by מאהלו, but his own dwelling. God will pull him, the lofty and imperious one, down (נתץ, like a tower perhaps, Jdg 8:9; Eze 26:9) from his position of honour and his prosperity, and drag him forth out of his habitation, much as one rakes a coal from the hearth (חתה Biblical and Talmudic in this sense), and tear him out of this his home (נסח, cf. נתק, Job 18:14) and remove him far away (Deu 28:63), because he has betrayed the homeless fugitive; and will root him out of the land of the living, because he has destroyed the priests of God (Sa1 22:18). It then proceeds in Psa 52:8 very much like Psa 40:4, Psa 40:5, just as the figure of the razor also coincides with Psalms belonging to exactly the same period (Psa 51:8; Psa 57:5, cf. לטשׁ, Psa 7:13). The excitement and indignant anger against one's foes which expresses itself in the rhythm and the choice of words, has been already recognised by us since Ps 7 as a characteristic of these Psalms. The hope which David, in Psa 52:8, attaches to God's judicial interposition is the same as e.g., in Psa 64:10. The righteous will be strengthened in the fear of God (for the play of sounds cf. Psa 40:4) and laugh at him whom God has overthrown, saying: Behold there the man, etc. According to Psa 58:11, the laughing is joy at the ultimate breaking through of justice long hidden and not discerned; for even the moral teaching of the Old Testament (Pro 24:17) reprobates the low malignant joy that glories at the overthrow of one's enemy. By ויּבטח the former trust in mammon on the part of the man who is overtaken by punishment is set forth as a consequence of his refusal to put trust in God, in Him who is the true מעוז = Arab. m‛âḏ, hiding-place or place of protection (vid., on 31;3, Psa 37:39, cf. Psa 17:7; 22:33). הוּה is here the passion for earthly things which rushes at and falls upon them (animo fertur).