He Describes The City From Which He Has Escaped As, For Him At Least, A Place Of Violence, Strife And Wickedness (Psalms 55:9-11).
He describes the city in which he has been dwelling as a place of continual threat and intrigue, and he calls on God to cause confusion among them and render them harmless.
‘Destroy, O Lord, divide their tongue,
For I have seen violence and strife in the city.
Day and night they go about it on its walls,
Iniquity also and mischief are in the midst of it.
Wickedness is in the midst of it,
Oppression and guile do not depart from its streets.'
Probably having in mind the situation in Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 where God stepped in and divided the language of the people so as to render them relatively harmless, he calls on his ‘Sovereign Lord' to do the same with his enemies in the city. ‘Divide their tongue' meant ‘cause confusion among them and render them harmless'. ‘Destroy' is literally ‘swallow them up'. He wants God to deal with his enemies in the city. This was probably the city in which Saul had his headquarters, although we are never given its name (1 Samuel 18-19). To David it was a very dangerous place to be, as he had already discovered. But being a barrack town, probably including foreign mercenaries, there would certainly be a lot of nasty goings on, with quarrels, drunkenness, partisanship, lost tempers and violence.
Thus he describes it as a place of violence and strife, of men wandering around on the watch for what trouble they could cause, a place of iniquity, wickedness and mischief. Saul's standing army were probably very rough types who knew how to ‘enjoy themselves' and gave short shrift to the weak. There were no police. Thus the streets were full of oppression and guile. Whilst there would be some discipline, at least while they were sober, it was not the safest of places to live. It may be that David was still stationed there, and having to watch his back all the time, (his life there was very precarious due to Saul's suspicions about him) whilst wishing he was elsewhere (Psalms 55:6-8), or it may be that he had just left it and was now a fugitive.