Psalms 58:7
Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.
The verse pictures the wicked melting away as waters which run continually onward until they are exhausted and spent. It pictures them also as arrows cut in pieces and broken when the bow is bent to shoot. It thus expresses the wish that the power and plans of the wicked should quickly come to nothing.
It is not a prayer driven by personal resentment, but prophetic words declaring the punishment that will come upon the wicked who have merited it. It portrays their fate as perishing miserably under judgment. That fate means utter destruction, disappearance, and removal rather than continued existence.
The wicked are likened to the most perishable and corruptible substances in nature, not to durable substances. Like melting wax, burning fat, vanishing smoke, chaff, tares, withered branches, flowing water that melts and runs away, and weapons cut into pieces, they lose form and substance and become as though they had not been. They therefore perish rather than remain alive forever in misery, having no eternity of existence and no eternal preservation in devouring fire. Their dreadful doom is part of the triumph of God's cause, which the righteous may rejoice to see.