These Psalms take us to a place we don’t want to go. They force us to confront evil head on.

It can be strange to see these phrases intermingled with words of praise to God, but they are an integral part of the Bible. We can’t ignore them and simply write them off as ancient words for ancient times. All Scripture ultimately points to Christ and the imprecatory Psalms are no different. 

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Many modern day Christians don’t spend a significant amount of their devotional time in the Old Testament. Let’s face it: there are a lot of difficult texts that deal with some pretty heavy material. If Christians do frequent the Old Testament, it’s typically for the Psalms, but those aren’t safe either when it comes to the imprecatory prayers. 

The Old Testament paints a hard line on sin, “If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him” (Leviticus 24:19-20). The penalties are incredibly severe. But what happens when the offended party is God? Stoning someone to death who worked on the Sabbath seems a bit harsh. The punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. This inflexible standard demonstrates that God’s position on holiness is much higher than we can comprehend. What may not offend us, vehemently offends Him.

The point of the Law is that we all fall short. It makes us uncomfortable because it shows us that the standard for righteousness is higher than we would expect. If we think that God is being too harsh, it is because we don’t understand the magnitude of His holiness. 

As New Testament believers, we are able to see God through the lens of the incarnate Christ with His mercy and grace on full display. But the fact that Jesus died for our sins in the Gospel accounts does not diminish His hatred towards sin. If anything, it amplifies it. God despises sin so much that He punished His own Son, the only sacrifice truly worthy to satisfy the wrath of God. The curses encapsulated in the imprecatory Psalms were ultimately poured out on Christ on the cross. 

These Psalms take us to a place we don’t want to go. They force us to confront evil head on. We have to learn to hate sin as God hates sin. We have to see it for what it really is. Diminishing the severity of sin sullies the work of Christ on the cross, as if God was overreacting to our problem. No. Jesus died for our sins precisely because our sins were a disgrace to God. 

THE BEAM IN OUR EYE

Jesus picks up the law of reciprocity in the Sermon on the Mount. First, He takes the letter of the Law and goes even deeper. Anyone who hates his brother has already committed murder in his heart. This leaves us all guilty and warranting capital punishment. Then, Jesus points out that the same measure we use to judge others will be used to judge us as well. Whoever is without sin can go ahead and cast the first stone. 

We need to be careful to make sure that the imprecatory Psalms don’t feed our delusion of thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. We need to remain humble and realize that we have offended God more than anyone else has offended us. It would be great if we could be angry and not sin, but much of our own desire for justice is selfishly motivated. 

King David wrote his great confession in Psalm 51, “Against you, you only, have I sinned.” He was also the primary author of the imprecatory Psalms. It seems a bit hypocritical at first. How could the guy who committed murder and adultery cry out to God to punish his enemies? Where is the justice in that? David understood the weight of his offense and applied the same standard equally toward himself and others. His prayer is more concerned with God’s reputation than his own. 

The beam in our own eye is the fact that we were once enemies with God. We have to see these imprecatory Psalms as pointing at us first and foremost. We are sinners who have been saved by grace. Once we deal with that beam in our own eye we can begin to see clearly how to help out our neighbors with the speck in their eye. Unless we are willing to pray these prayers inwardly toward ourselves first, we cannot pray them outwardly toward our enemies. 

TURNING A BLIND EYE

The prophet Jonah serves as the perfect example for us in this scenario. He was commissioned by God to call down judgment on Nineveh, a people he hated. Instead of obeying God, Jonah tried to run away. It was only after God disciplined him that he reluctantly followed God’s command. He preached God’s message of judgment, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4)! There wasn’t much gospel in His sermon but it certainly took a high view of God’s holiness. The people of Nineveh responded to the message with repentance, but Jonah missed it. He was so wrapped up in his own hate and his desire to see his enemies destroyed that he failed to recognize his own need for grace. 

Sin is deceptive. We are always more comfortable with our own sins than with the sins of others. It’s easy to cast judgment from our high horses, looking down our noses. What is it that bothers us most about our enemies? What sins are we willing to overlook among ourselves? We need to be careful that our own standard for righteousness does not usurp the standard of God’s holiness. We are not the measuring rod for perfection. There is only one person who fits that criteria and God sacrificed Him on our behalf. 

We cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices in our world. The imprecatory Psalms force us to look it dead in the eye. The evil in the world should bother us, even sicken us. It should fuel our prayers for God’s Kingdom to come on earth, even as it is in heaven. We ought to fight with conviction for what is right, but it starts on our knees as we wrestle with our own sin. We shouldn’t be like Jonah but we should certainly preach like him: declaring the righteous judgment of God. 

The imprecatory Psalms are a war cry. Make no bones about it: we are at war and the battle lines are drawn based on allegiance to Christ. When we are praying for the destruction of our enemies, we are calling God to do what He said He would do in the Book of Revelation. On the day of Judgment, we will be joining with the angelic choir singing God’s praises as He pours out His wrath on mankind. Ultimately, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Come Lord Jesus, come!

 

Adam Miller is the president and host of Songtime Ministries and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church. 

You can hear his teaching on our daily broadcast on the radio or online, watch his preaching live on Facebook, and read his articles on our website.