What do we do with the parts of the Bible that make us uncomfortable? In this reflection on Psalm 109, we look at one of the imprecatory Psalms—an intense prayer in which David cries out to God for justice against his enemies. These words can be difficult to reconcile with Jesus’ command to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us, but perhaps that’s exactly why we need to wrestle with them. The Psalms give us permission to be honest with God about our anger, hurt, injustice, and desire for things to be made right. That doesn’t mean every feeling is a feeling we should hold onto forever, but it does mean we don’t have to hide our deepest emotions from God. Sometimes we have to name our pain before we can let it go, trusting that ultimate justice and vengeance belong to God.
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Good morning! Hope you’re having a good Thursday today. I hope you’ve had a good week.
We’ve had a great week here at First UMC. We’ve had a lot of ways to serve our college kids—Wesley kickoff, Shades of Starkville yesterday. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of kids and got to sweat a lot on the campus of Mississippi State.
That’s always fun when you’ve sweated as much as I’ve sweated this week.
So I’m enjoying the air conditioning.
Air conditioning is awesome.
I’m thankful for it.
It has been a hot but good week.
I mentioned next week we’ll start talking about Daniel, but what we’re going to do the next two days this week is look at some Psalms.
And if you’ve been part of my reflections for any length of time, you know I love the Psalms. I’m always returning to the Psalms, particularly sometimes as a break between two sections.
What I find myself doing a lot of the time when I go to the Psalms is reading the ones I like.
And there are a lot of them that I like.
Psalm 1.
Psalm 20.
Psalm 23.
Psalm 39.
Psalm 51.
Psalm 119.
I’ve got a lot of Psalms I like.
But the next two days, I’m going to do something different.
I want to talk about a couple of Psalms that I don’t really talk about a lot.
I’m talking about something called the imprecatory Psalms.
The imprecatory Psalms are Psalms of anger and vengeance. They’re Psalms where the psalmist, usually David, is praying against his enemies.
And there’s some harsh language here.
There’s some difficult language here.
So I thought it would be interesting for us to look at these Psalms.
There are probably five to ten Psalms that are generally considered imprecatory Psalms, and there are a lot of other Psalms that have some of this language in them.
Psalm 109 is one of them.
Psalm 140 is another one.
So today we’re going to look at Psalm 109, and tomorrow we’ll look at Psalm 140.
And these are Psalms that I don’t know that I’ve ever preached on. I don’t talk about them a lot.
And you’re going to see why when we read it.
Psalm 109 begins:
“Do not be silent, O God of my praise, for wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They beset me with words of hate, and attack me without cause.”
And then David really gets going.
He says that they have repaid his love with evil and his good with hatred.
And then he starts asking God to do some things to these people.
“Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand at his right hand.”
“Let him be found guilty.”
“May his days be few.”
“May another seize his position.”
“May his children be orphans and his wife a widow.”
“May his children wander about and beg.”
“May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.”
And he keeps going.
He talks about their descendants being cut off.
He talks about their name being blotted out.
He says that they did not remember to show kindness but pursued the poor and needy.
And then he says:
“He loved to curse; let curses come upon him.”
And then, eventually, David turns back to God and says:
“But you, O Lord my God, act on my behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me.”
And then he ends by saying:
“With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord; I will praise him in the midst of the throng.”
So we see here David listing a whole lot of things that he wants the Lord to do to these people.
And we don’t really know what to do with these Psalms.
I mean, particularly when we put them alongside Jesus, who says, “Bless those who curse you and pray for your enemies.”
Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies.
And here David is saying, “May his wife be a widow. May his children be cut off. May his name be blotted out.”
These are hard things.
They’re really hard things.
I read some commentaries trying to get a feel for this, and there are a couple of things that helped me understand these passages.
The first is that this is an expression of anger.
Not every prayer in the Psalms is necessarily a prayer that we’re supposed to pray.
And not every example we see in Scripture is an example we’re supposed to follow.
Sometimes what we see in Scripture is the humanness of individuals.
And if we’re going to be honest, we’ve all had terrible things done to us.
We’ve had terrible things done to our families.
We’ve had terrible things done to people we love.
And sometimes, if we’re really honest, we feel a little bit like David here.
“Lord, get them.”
“Lord, look what they’ve done.”
“Look what they’ve done to my children.”
“Look what they’ve done to the people I love.”
“Get them, Lord.”
“Get them.”
We’ve all felt this way at some point.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the voice is a good voice.
It doesn’t mean that we should stay there.
It doesn’t mean that we should live our lives in that place.
But I think most of us have felt this way at some point.
And so, in some ways, this Psalm gives voice to something that is a reality of human life.
That’s one thing.
And then I read another perspective that I thought was helpful.
There is real wickedness in the world.
There is evil in the world.
And justice must be done.
There are people who have experienced unimaginable evil who could pray a Psalm like this and pray it authentically because of what they had suffered.
You think about Holocaust survivors.
You think about people who have experienced tremendous violence or injustice.
There is such evil in the world at times that this language makes sense.
Now, it’s probably not appropriate because somebody cut you off in traffic.
That’s probably not the appropriate response.
But I could understand someone who has experienced unimaginable evil praying this Psalm and meaning it.
Because sometimes there is so much pain that if we can’t name it, we can’t let go of it.
And I think that’s part of what these Psalms are doing.
They’re wrestling with the reality of evil in the world.
There is evil in the world.
And there are times when we want that evil to be judged.
We want justice.
We want vengeance.
We want things to be made right.
And ultimately, Scripture tells us that vengeance belongs to God.
Paul says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Ultimately, judgment is in God’s hands.
And I think that’s an important part of what this Psalm reminds us.
There are real times when evil must be named.
There are real times when evil must be dealt with.
There are real times when justice must be done.
But ultimately, that’s God’s work.
And then there was one other thing that Dr. Nick—and others—talked about in seminary that helped me make sense of these Psalms.
One way of understanding these cries for vengeance is to understand the one being cursed as ultimately representing evil itself—the devil.
In other words, we can understand these cries for justice as cries against the powers of evil.
And we should hope that evil is ultimately destroyed.
We should hope that evil is completely defeated.
We should hope that everything that is opposed to God is ultimately undone.
And according to Scripture, that’s exactly where the story ends.
God wins.
Evil does not win.
Death does not win.
Sin does not win.
God wins.
So these are Psalms that I don’t think have an easy answer.
I really don’t.
I don’t think they have an easy answer.
And I think that’s okay.
Not every passage of Scripture has to have an easy answer for us.
Sometimes Scripture gives us something we have to wrestle with.
And ultimately, for me, that’s where I’ll land on these Psalms—and we’ll read Psalm 140 tomorrow, which is a similar Psalm.
These Psalms give voice to our anger.
There are times when we feel like the psalmist here.
There are times when we’re angry.
There are times when we’re hurt.
There are times when we want justice.
And I think we need to be able to name it.
We need to be honest about it.
We need to be honest with God about it.
But here’s the important part:
We can’t stay there.
We can’t stay in the anger forever.
We can’t allow the hurt to become our identity.
We can’t allow vengeance to consume us.
But we can bring it to God.
We can say, “God, this is where I am.”
“This is what I’m feeling.”
“This is what happened.”
“This is how angry I am.”
And we can trust God enough to tell the truth.
As the great theologian Michael Stipe once said, “Everybody hurts.”
And I think there’s something true about that.
Everybody hurts.
So it’s okay to be honest with God in the midst of whatever anger or hurt we’ve faced.
Bring it to God.
Name it.
Wrestle with it.
And then, eventually, let God do with it what only God can do.
So we’ll continue tomorrow looking at another one of these Psalms.
We’ll look at Psalm 140 tomorrow.
Thanks for being with us.
Be honest with God.
We’ll see you tomorrow.
Thanks.