Psalms 58:9 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Feel the thorns, i.e. the heat of the fire kindled by the thorns put under them for that purpose; before your pots can be thoroughly heated. Take them away, to wit, mine enemies; whose sudden destruction he describes under this similitude. As with a whirlwind, i.e. violently and irresistibly. Both living, and in his wrath, Heb. as living (i.e. alive, as he did Korah, Num 16, the particle as being here not a note of similitude, but of truth or asseveration as it is 1 Thessalonians 1:14, and oft elsewhere, as hath been noted) as in (which preposition is frequently understood) wrath, i.e. as a man moved with great wrath destroys his enemy without mercy, and is ready to devour him alive, if it were possible; or, both that which is raw, (as the Hebrew word chai signifies, Leviticus 13:16 1 Samuel 2:15, to wit, the raw flesh, which is supposed to be put into the pot that it may be boiled,) and the burning fire. There is indeed great variety of construction and interpretation of these Hebrew words, which is not strange, especially considering the conciseness of the Hebrew language, and that this is a proverbial speech; nor is it of any great importance, because it is not in any great point of faith, and because the sense of it is agreed, the only difference being about the manner and ground of the phrase. The learned reader may see more upon this place in my Latin Synopsis.