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Psalm 55:11
Destructive forces are within her. Threats and lies don’t depart from her streets.
9Confuse them, Lord, and confound their language, for I have seen violence and strife in the city.
10Day and night they prowl around on its walls. Malice and abuse are also within her.
11Destructive forces are within her. Threats and lies don’t depart from her streets.
12For it was not an enemy who insulted me, then I could have endured it. Neither was it he who hated me who raised himself up against me, then I would have hidden myself from him.
13But it was you, a man like me, my companion, and my familiar friend.
Notice
The city’s streets offer no respite from threats and lies, a picture of public life worn down by harm that does not leave.
Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.
What changes in your reading when threats and lies are described as things that inhabit streets?
Write on thisWhat would you want to ask God for a place where threats and lies persist?
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Where else Scripture says this
11 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.
This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Isaiah 59:7Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths.Both passages describe destruction occupying human paths: Isaiah names bloodshed along their paths, while the psalm names threats in city streets.
Psalm 5:9For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their heart is destruction. Their throat is an open tomb. They flatter with their tongue.Destruction and false speech appear together in both passages, linking what people say with the harm around them.
Psalm 34:13Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking lies.The lies that persist in Psalm 55’s streets are the kind of speech Psalm 34 commands its hearer to refuse.
Jeremiah 5:26–27For wicked men are found among my people. They watch, as fowlers lie in wait. They set a trap. They catch men.Both passages locate danger within a community: destructive forces inhabit the city, and wicked men set traps among God’s people.
Acts 7:51–52“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.Both passages confront wrongdoing, though Acts names resistance to the Holy Spirit while the psalm names threats and lies.
Psalm 10:7His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression. Under his tongue is mischief and iniquity.Deceit accompanies oppression in Psalm 10, just as lies accompany threats and destructive forces in Psalm 55.
Psalm 109:2–3for they have opened the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit against me. They have spoken to me with a lying tongue.Both passages lament lying speech, with Psalm 109 describing lies directed against the speaker and Psalm 55 describing lies throughout the streets.
Jeremiah 9:3–5“They bend their tongue, as their bow, for falsehood. They have grown strong in the land, but not for truth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they don’t …Falsehood has a foothold in both settings: lies persist in the city’s streets, and speakers of falsehood grow strong in the land.
Matthew 26:4They took counsel together that they might take Jesus by deceit and kill him.Both texts connect deceit with destructive intent; Matthew identifies a specific plot to seize Jesus by deceit and kill him.
Ezekiel 22:1–12The supplied Ezekiel line introduces God’s speech; it gives no detail that connects with the psalm’s threats and lies.
Revelation 14:5In their mouth was found no lie, for they are blameless.Lying speech forms the contrast: lies never leave the psalm’s streets, while Revelation describes people in whose mouths no lie is found.
Where this verse fits
Injustice and anger. fear for the future.
One step
Something small to carry out of this verse
Encouragement
The harm described here has no quick resolution. Scripture makes room for a complaint to God about streets where threats and lies remain.
Now put it in your words.
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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).