Psalms 140:1-3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Deliver me from the evil man Either Saul, or Doeg, or some other malicious enemy, or rather enemies; the word man being taken collectively for men, as appears from the next verse. Continually, are they gathered, &c. To execute those bloody enterprises which they have devised. They have sharpened their tongues, &c. Their malicious hearts have excited their tongues to utter vile slanders against me, using words as sharp and piercing as the sting of a serpent. Adder's poison is under their lips There is so much malignity in all they say, that one would think there was nothing under their lips but adder's poison. “Slander and calumny,” says Dr. H., “must always precede and accompany persecution, because malice itself cannot excite people against a good man, as such; to do this, he must first be represented as a bad man. What can be said of those who are busied in this manner, but that they are a generation of vipers, the brood of the old serpent, that grand accuser and calumniator of the brethren, having under their tongues a bag of poison, conveying instant death to the reputation on which they fasten? Thus David was hunted as a rebel, Christ was crucified as a blasphemer, and the primitive Christians were tortured as guilty of incest and murder.”