2/28/24

In all of our Bible readings, I try to include the Book of Psalms, because the psalms give voice to whatever we’re feeling. Just about every emotion we feel as humans can be found there, from the highest praise (“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!” 150:6) to absolute despair (“O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?” 88:14). 

And, tucked away among the psalms of thanksgiving, psalms of confession, and psalms of trust, are psalms calling for God to, as Calvin says, “incinerate” people who have done us dirty, calling down revenge on our enemies (the fancy term is imprecatory, meaning “to call down a curse on someone”). 

Why? Because it’s what we do! It’s our natural human response to injury. We want to strike back. And the psalms don’t shy away from some of the most outrageous calls for vengeance.

For example, in Psalm 55, the psalmist writes, “It is not enemies who taunt me—I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—I could hide from them. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng.” The psalmist has been betrayed by people he thought were his closest friends, and now he’s so outraged he calls on God to “Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.”

I started to respond with pious outrage to those verses, but then I realized I’ve probably felt like that before. As horrible as “O that you would kill the wicked, O God” (139:19) might sound, it’s still in the Bible! So, what can we learn from verses like these?

For one thing, we learn God wants us to be honest with him. He’s a Big God and he’s been around a very long time and has seen and heard it all. Nothing you are feeling or nothing you have to say is going to take God by surprise in the least. God’s never going to say, “O, that’s a new one.” 

Second, if you don’t get those feelings out somehow, they might stay bottled up inside for now, but they’re going to bust out somehow. You might lash out in anger (and not necessarily at the person who wronged you), or you might experience some emotional damage or even physical illness –I’ve known several folks who have become ill because of anger issues they’ve never dealt with. And don’t misunderstand me–I’m not a trained psychologist. I just know people. It’ll come out somehow.

Honesty with ourselves is always the first step toward dealing with any issue.

But, most importantly, while the psalmist is being honest about his anger, nowhere is he taking up the sword.  These psalms call on God to take swift action on enemies, even to the point of their destruction. For example in Psalm 38, the psalmist doesn’t personally retaliate against those who harm him. He calls on God to vindicate him, but he does it in the context of confession: “I am sorry for my sin” (38:18). He prays that God will be the source of redemption–in fact, personal violence is rejected because the expectation of deliverance from persecution is found only in waiting on the Lord (“O Lord, all my longing is known to you” 38:9).   

Life is not a bed of roses and people who are suffering need an outlet to express their true, inner outrage to God, and there are psalms that help us do that. Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham wrote, “A diet of upbeat songs and positive testimonies does not meet the needs of those suffering disappointment, ill health, or persecution.”

The words of the old hymn are true: “Oh what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” Everything. Everything includes our outrage at the behavior of some folks.  

So, yes. Be honest about your feelings. Find one of the “Revenge” psalms (there are plenty to choose from: 5, 10, 17, 35, 58, 59, 69, 70, 79, 83, 109, 129, 137, 140) and pray through it to express your pain to God. But remember, those who wrote the psalms understood that it is the Lord who brings about judgment, and it’s not for us to take matters into our own hands. 

These psalms are not just blood-thirsty cries masquerading as prayer. They rise from the  conviction that God cares about the injustice suffered by the poor and downtrodden. The psalmists call on God to treat the wrongdoers as the wrongdoers have treated others. Even when it seems that God’s justice is slack or God’s goodness seems to have failed, the psalmists–even in their darkest hours–hold onto God’s steadfast love and trust God to vindicate them rather than take revenge themselves.

Remember that in Psalm 38 the psalmist calls for vengeance in the context of confession. One of the benefits of praying these “Revenge” psalms is that they make us look deeper into our own hearts. I quoted earlier from one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 139, which is not a “Revenge” psalm, but it does say, “O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me;” however, it then closes with these words: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

A good prayer for Lent and a good prayer to start on the road toward healing. More next week.