en_tn/psa/140/001.md

# General Information:

Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/writing-poetry]] and [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-parallelism]])

# For the chief musician

This is for the director of music to use in worship."

# A psalm of David

Possible meanings are 1) David wrote the psalm or 2) the psalm is about David or 3) the psalm is in the style of David's psalms.

# they cause battles

Here "battles" probably refers to conflict of any kind, including quarrels.

# Their tongues wound like serpents

People who cause conflict by what they say are spoken of as if they had tongues of serpents. Of course, snakes do not do damage with their tongues, but with their bites and especially with poison. Neither can a person make his tongue sharp. Instead, here the idea of a sharp tongue stands for speaking in a way to cause trouble. And the idea the snakes have sharp tongues stands for the fact that many of them have poison. (See: [[rc://en/ta/man/translate/figs-metaphor]])