Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The evil speech is one with the bitter speech in Psa 64:4, the arrow which they are anxious to let fly. This evil speech, here agreement or convention, they make firm to themselves (sibi), by securing, in every possible way, its effective execution. ספּר (frequently used of the cutting language of the ungodly, Psa 59:13; Psa 69:27; cf. Talmudic ספּר לשׁון שׁלישׁי, to speak as with three tongues, i.e., slanderously) is here construed with ל of that at which their haughty and insolent utterances aim. In connection therewith they take no heed of God, the all-seeing One: they say (ask), quis conspiciat ipsis. There is no need to take למו as being for לו (Hitzig); nor is it the dative of the object instead of the accusative, but it is an ethical dative: who will see or look to them, i.e., exerting any sort of influence upon them? The form of the question is not the direct (Psa 59:8), but the indirect, in which מי, seq. fut., is used in a simply future (Jer 44:28) or potential sense (Job 22:17; Kg1 1:20). Concerning עולת, vid., Psa 58:3. It is doubtful whether תּמּנוּ (Note: תּמּנוּ in Baer's Psalterium is an error that has been carried over from Heidenheim's.) is the first person (= תּמּונוּ) as in Num 17:13, Jer 44:18, or the third person as in Lam 3:22 (= תּמּוּ, which first of all resolved is תּנמוּ, and then transposed תּמּנוּ, like מעזניה = מענזיה = מעזּיה, Isa 23:11). The reading טמנוּ, from which Rashi proceeds, and which Luther follows in his translation, is opposed by the lxx and Targum; it does not suit the governing subject, and is nothing but an involuntary lightening of the difficulty. If we take into consideration, that תּמם signifies not to make ready, but to be ready, and that consequently חפשׂ מחפּשׂ is to be taken by itself, then it must be rendered either: they excogitate knavish tricks or villainies, "we are ready, a clever stroke is concocted, and the inward part of man and the heart is deep!" or, which we prefer, since there is nothing to indicate the introduction of any soliloquy: they excogitate knavish tricks, they are ready - a delicately devised, clever stroke (nominative of the result), and (as the poet ironically adds) the inward part of man and the heart is (verily) deep. There is nothing very surprising in the form תּמּנוּ for תּמּוּ, since the Psalms, whenever they depict the sinful designs and doings of the ungodly, delight in singularities of language. On ולב (not ולב) = (אישׁ) ולב = ולבּו, cf. Psa 118:14.