The 150 psalms in the book of Psalms express a myriad of emotions, from desperation, doubt and despair, through ecstasy, praise and confidence. We enjoy the psalmists' honest prayers and often use them as models of our own prayer and worship. But certain passages and emotions give readers pause.
In Psalm 3: 7 David writes "Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked." David wants significant violence against his enemies!
In Psalm 7: 14-16 is this passage:
Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment.
Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit they have made.
The trouble they cause recoils on them; their violence comes down on their own heads.
Here David wants his enemies to receive the violence that they have planned; he wants evil to boomerang back on his enemies and destroy them. There are other similar passages, in Psalms 35, 52, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, and 140, for example.
In Psalm 55: 15 David wants his enemies dead and pulled alive into Sheol:
Let death take my enemies by surprise;
let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
for evil finds lodging among them.
In a number of these passages, David clearly wants God to kill his enemies. Worse yet is the cry of the psalmist exiled to Babylon: Psalm 137: 8-9:
"Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
Here the enemies are not only to be killed but their smallest children brutally murdered! Are these good models for our prayers?
The imprecatory psalms
In a variety of places, the psalmists curse their enemies, begging God to destroy them. These psalms are often called "imprecatory psalms"; some psalms, although not devoted to these attacks, have "imprecatory passages." ("Imprecatory" is a fancy word for "cursing.")
Given the perspective of the New Testament, should Christians pray these imprecatory passages?
There have been a number of theological approaches to these passage. Some argue that, No, one should not pray these imprecatory passages. One should not ask God to curse their enemies. C. S. Lewis, in Reflections on the Psalms, argues that with the viewpoint of Jesus and the New Testament, we should rise above these passages and not ask God to destroy our enemies. Lewis mentions Psalm 109; we note especially Psalm 109: 6-15, where David seeks this for his enemy:
May his days be few; ... May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow....
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes....
May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation....
May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.
The passage is worth reading in its entirety.
Lewis also mentions Psalm 137 and Psalm 143. Psalm 139, a psalm Jan and I once memorized, has this passage: Psalm 139: 19-22.
If only you, God, would slay the wicked! ... Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
How does a Christian respond if he/she believes that all Scripture is inspired by God? An online paper on imprecatory psalms, An Overview of the Study of Imprecatory Psalms, by Daniel Simango; P. Paul Krüger. quotes one view:
"[Peter] Craigie views imprecations as "not the oracles of God" but as "Israel's response to God's revelation" in the context of suffering, pain, and suffering. Therefore he sees the imprecatory psalms as "expressions of vindictiveness" and he does not regard them as "holy." Clive Staple Lewis, in a similar vein, writes that the language of imprecatory psalms breathes of "refined malice" and borders on being "devilish." William Holladay echoes the same point when he argues that the imprecations display "a very different spirit" to the teaching of the New Testament. The New Testament exhorts believers to love their enemies, but the psalmists hate their enemies and their sin instead of distinguishing the sinner from sin."
However, others disagree. Some identify the imprecatory passages with God's covenants with Abraham and with Moses, placing them within the Old Testament blessings and curses (see Deuteronomy 28.) In Old Testament times, unlike New Testament times, God's plan revolved around a single nation, a single people. The success of the nation of Isreal was associated with His success and it was natural to equate military victory (always violent!) with God's plan. Here, again, is Simango:
Laney argues that the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen 12:1-3) promised blessing on those who blessed Abraham's posterity, and cursing on those who would curse." Since the psalmist was Abraham's posterity he had the right to pray curses on Israel's enemies. Therefore, the imprecations in the psalms are "appeals for Yahweh" to judge those who curse his people. Judgment comes on Israel's enemies "in accordance with the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant."
Others see the imprecatory psalms as part of the prophetic messaging of the Psalter. Consider Psalm 109: 16-20 which begins
For he never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted. He loved to pronounce a curse— may it come back on him....
Is this prophetic, predictive of a future judgement? So argued St. Augustine, among others. In Romans 11: 9-11, Paul quotes Psalm 69: 22-23. For some, these passages suggest that one purpose of the imprecatory passages is to be prophetic passages for the Messiah.
Rhys Laferty, the author of this blog post Why Lewis And Keller Are Wrong About The Imprecatory Psalms, disagrees with Lewis, worried that his approach dismisses some important scripture and falls upon a slippery slope. And, as others point out, some of these imprecatory passages as quoted in the New Testament! In Acts 1: 20, the disciple Peter quotes from imprecatory passages Psalm 69: 25 and Psalm 109: 8. This should give pause to a Christian who seeks to dismiss the imprecatory passages!
My opinion
I don't think I've ever been bothered by the imprecatory passages.
The rebound of evil back onto the evildoer is a common theme. In Psalm 109, mentioned above, David points out all the things his opponent has done and asks, in Psalm 109: 17:
He loved to pronounce a curse— may it come back on him.
If one reads the Psalms after reading 1 & 2 Samuel, after seeing the bloodiness of David's campaigns, I completely sympathize with David. Saul threw spears at David and did everything he could to kill him. Saul sent men to camp outside his house and ambush David. In a series of battles in the hills of Judea, surely Saul killed some of David's men, relatives and friends. Why not plead to God to kill these men of Saul? David merely asks that the evil planned for him rebound on his enemies!
I have prayed this. I have, in the past, been betrayed. To undercut me and destroy my career, someone told lies about me. I prayed that they receive the same treatment -- that they experience the effect of a lying campaign. I did not want them dead -- definitely not! -- but I wanted their arrogant confidence, confidence in their campaign of lies, to be shattered.
In our modern times, we rarely deal with the bloodshed of David's day. But if I were a Ukrainian soldier in the trenches of eastern Ukraine, aware of the horrible brutality of the Russian missile campaigns against my family, I would be comfortable asking God to kill my enemies. (After all, why else would I be holding a rifle?) Amongst the recent attacks against Israeli kibbutzes, I understand the angry prayers of parents gathering bodies of their children, massacred by Hamas.
The transparency of the psalms is encouraging to me.
In the second song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32: 35-43, YHWH claims that vengeance is His, not ours:
"It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
The Lord will vindicate his people...
If vengeance belongs to God, it is surely better to ask God to enact vengeance, instead of seeking vengeance ourselves! By asking God to make one's enemies to experience their own evil, we release that responsibility to God.
Other Resources
Some of my investigation into imprecatory psalms includes:
- The Gospel Coalition has this online article, What C. S. Lewis Got Wrong About the Cursing Psalms, which is closer to my approach to the Psalms.
- This article at gotquestions.org argues that the imprecatory passages come out of a call for God to enact justice.
- Shepherds Theological Seminary has this article on imprecatory psalms. It argues that the passages rise out of the Old Testament covenant for Israel and provide instruction for us. We can pray for our enemies to be punished but leave that to God. (Obviously this is a good article since it seems to agree with me! 😁)
- Wikipedia has a short article on this topic.
As we work through the Psalter, I will point out the variations on these "imprecations" as they occur.
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