Psalms 109

Psalms 109:1

Psalm 109: The Fate of God’s EnemiesOf all the Psalms of imprecation, this one is unrivaled for first place. No other calls down the judgment of God with such distilled vitriol or with such comprehensive detail. The reader cannot fail to be intrigued and fascinated by the sheer ingenuity of the psalmist in the variety of punishments he invokes on his foes! 109:1-3 The Psalm opens with disarming mildness. David pleads for help from the God of his praise, that is, the God whom he praises. His enemies have been conducting a vicious verbal assault on him, hurling all manner of lying charges against him. Words of hatred come zeroing in at him from every direction. What makes it especially hard to take is that the attacks are wholly unjustified. 109:4, 5 David has shown love and kindness to his assailants, and what does he receive in return? A barrage of false accusations. And all the while he is praying for them. For every kindness, they repay him with insult, and for love, they reward him with hatred. 109:6, 7 It is at this point that he seems to dip his pen in acid. From now on the imprecations, hot and lethal, shoot out from his wounded soul. From the many foes of verses 1-5, he now turns to concentrate on one in particular. Eventually this man will be caught and brought to trial. When that happens, let the Lord arrange the circumstances so that a wicked man will be his accuser, a satanic man his plaintiff. At the conclusion of the trial let the verdict be “Guilty!” And if he appeals the sentence, let his request be counted as contempt of court and the penalty increased. 109:8-10 As for his life, may it be a short one and may someone else take his office. This particular imprecation is quoted of Judas and of his office as treasurer of the band of disciples in Act_1:20 : For it is written in the book of Psalms, “Let his dwelling place be desolate, and let no one live in it”; and, “Let another take his office.” It will help us to understand the severity of this Psalm if we remember that it refers not only to David and his foe, but also to Messiah and His betrayer, and also perhaps to Israel and the Anti-Christ in a day still future. As for the foe’s family, let his children become fatherless and his wife be widowed. Let his children continually be vagabonds and beggars, evicted from the ruins that used to be their home. 109:11-13 As for his estate, let the creditor step in and seize all that he has, and let all that he has earned be shared by strangers. Since he showed no mercy, let no mercy be shown to him, no pity to his fatherless children. Let the family name go into oblivion before a generation passes. (In eastern reckoning, this is one of the most shameful punishments that could be inflicted.) 109:14, 15 Even his predecessors are not blameless. Let the LORD remember the iniquity of his fathers . . . and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. The exact nature of their crimes is not given, but their guilt must have been aggravated since the psalmist goes on to ask that their sins might never be forgotten by the Lord and that the memory of them be cut off . . . from the earth. 109:16-20 In verse 16 we read the stinging indictment of the wicked man. It was his lifestyle to refrain from showing kindness. Instead he actively and aggressively hunted down the poor and needy, and drove the brokenhearted to their death. It is not hard to find Judas in this verse, maliciously hounding the sinless Savior to the cross. But there is an inexorable law of retribution in the moral realm. Whatever a man sows, that is what he reaps. The harvest is inescapable. There is no getting away with sin. Here the psalmist asks that the law of cause and effect take its full course. This man loved to curse others; now may his curses boomerang on himself. He never wanted others to enjoy blessings; now let blessings stay far away from him. He swaggered about with cursing as his coat; now let those curses penetrate his life like water penetrates a sponge; let them soak into every part of his being, even into the marrow of his bones. May cursing cover him like the clothes that he wears, “cling to him like a girdle he can never take off” (Knox). This then is David’s desire for his accusers and his calumniators. He has scarcely overlooked one detail in the catalog of judgment. As someone has said, “All is in fact invoked on the wicked that any man could ever desire to see inflicted on an enemy.” 109:21-25 The psalmist closes with two prayers and a burst of praise. First, he prays for deliverance from his troubles. He wants the Lord to take his part for His name’s sake, that is, in order to glorify Himself as the God of power and justice. In dealing on David’s behalf, the Lord will demonstrate once more that His mercy is good. The psalmist’s plight is grave. Not only is he poor and needy, his heart is wounded within him. His life is ebbing out like a lengthening shadow. He is being shaken off from life as easily as a man shakes a locust off his hand. Through prolonged fasting, his knees are buckling and his body is reduced to skin and bones. His enemies laugh at him in his pitiable state; they tauntingly shake their heads at him. 109:26-29 In his second prayer, he asks the Lord to vindicate him before the foes. When Jehovah comes to his help and rescues him, then the assailants will know that it was an act of divine interventionthe hand of the Lord. What difference will it make if they curse, as long as the Lord blesses. The enemies will be ashamed, but the psalmist will rejoice at that time. May they be clothed with shame and confusion, yes, wrapped in disgrace as with a full-cut mantle. 109:30, 31 Finally, we hear David planning the praise he will offer to the LORD when his prayers are answered. It will not be ordinary praise but great thanks. It will not be private but in the midst of the multitude. And the theme will be that Jehovah stands at the right hand of the poor, delivering him from those who have marked him for execution. It gives great confidence to have the Lord as one’s defender. As F. B. Meyer says: How brave is the accused if he enters court leaning on the arm of the noblest in the land. How futile is it to condemn when the Judge of all stands beside to justify? IMPRECATORY PSALMSSo much for what Psalms 109 actually says. But it would not be intellectually honest to pass on without facing up to the problem that is implicit in the imprecatory Psalms. The problem, of course, is how to reconcile the vindictive, judgmental spirit of these Psalms with the spirit of forgiveness and love that is elsewhere enjoined upon God’s people. Since the 109th is the king of the imprecatory Psalms, this seems to be the place to face the problem. First, I will list some of the explanations which have been put forward but which do not seem entirely convincing to me. Then I will give what I understand to be the true explanation, although it too is not without difficulties. It is pointed out that these imprecations are not so much invocations of vengeance or of punishment on the wicked as they are predictions of what will happen to God’s enemies. Thus Unger says: Curses delivered against individuals by holy men are not the expressions of revenge, passion, or impatience; they are predictions and therefore not such as God condemns. Many of these passages could just as correctly be translated in the future tense as in the imperative. A second explanation is that David was speaking as God’s anointed. Because of his position, he was God’s representative. Therefore, he was permitted to pronounce these severe judgments. (Here it should be noted, however, that not all the imprecatory Psalms were written by David.) Then again some view these passages as a historical record of how these men felt, without approving of their harshness. Concerning this view Barnes writes: These expressions are a mere record of what actually occurred in the mind of the psalmist, and are preserved to us as an illustration of human nature when partially sanctified. According to this view the Spirit of inspiration is no more responsible for these feelings on the part of the psalmist than He is for the acts of David, Abraham, Jacob or Peter. . . . The proper notion of inspiration does not require us to hold that the men who were inspired were absolutely sinless. . . . According to this view the expressions which are used in this record are not presented for our imitation. And there are other explanations. The imprecatory Psalms are defended by reminding us that because Israel was God’s chosen nation, therefore Israel’s enemies were God’s enemies. That there is something in each one of us which righteously approves of proper punishment for crimes. That the psalmists describe what sinners deserve and do not express any personal desire for revenge. As I said before, I do not find any of these explanations completely satisfying. The explanation that appeals to me most is that the imprecatory Psalms express a spirit that was proper for a Jew living under the law, but not proper for a Christian living under grace. The reason these Psalms seem harsh to us is because we are viewing them in the light of the New Testament revelation. David and the other psalmists did not have the New Testament. As Scroggie points out: . . . it will be well to recognize at once the fact that the previous dispensation was inferior to the present one, that while the Law is not contrary to the Gospel it is not equal to it, that while Christ came to fulfill the Law He came also to transcend it. We must be careful not to judge of expressions in the Psalter which savor of vindictiveness and vengeance by the standards of the Pauline Epistles. While the inclusion of a man’s family in his judgment seems rather extreme to us, it was justified to the psalmist by the fact that God had threatened to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation (Exo_20:5; Exo_34:7; Num_14:18; Deu_5:9). Whether we like it or not, there are laws in the spiritual realm under which sins have a way of working themselves out in a man’s family. No man is an island; the consequences of his acts reach out to others as well as affecting himself. We live today in the acceptable year of the Lord. When this age passes and the day of vengeance of our God begins, language such as that of the imprecatory Psalms will once again be on the lips of God’s people. For instance, the Tribulation martyrs will say, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev_6:10). One final consideration! The severity of the imprecations in the Psalms prepare our hearts in a feeble way to appreciate the One who bore every curse in His body on the cross so that we might be eternally free from the curse and from cursing. Not all the punishments described in the Psalms put together give a feeble, faint reflection of the avalanche of judgment which He endured as our Substitute.