As a snail [which] melteth, let [everyone of them] pass away,.... As a snail when it comes out of its shell liquefies, drops its moisture, and with it makes a "path", from whence it has its namelwlbv, in the Hebrew language; and so the Targum here,"as the snail moistens its way;''which moistness it gradually exhausts, and melts away, and dies: so the psalmist prays that everyone of his enemies might die in like manner.
Some think reference is had to the snail's putting out its horns to no purpose when in danger, and apply it to the vain threatenings of the wicked; a strange difference this, between a roaring young lion, Ps 58:6, and a melting snail.