Everyone has their favorite Psalm. There are so many that are filled with joyous themes of God’s glory in nature (19), the exuberant praise His people offer in worship (100), His kindness and love for us (23), His watchfulness over us (121), and His readiness to forgive our sin (51). They deserve a regular place in our worship, both in corporate gatherings in church and in the privacy of our devotional life at home. It is common to find that a church either includes a Psalm to be read responsively in the order of worship, or uses several verses at the beginning of the hour as a call to worship. And in contemporary worship, the musical compositions are frequently based on words of praise from a Psalm.
That may well be a commendable feature that is true of your church. But if this describes what you are familiar with from the Psalms, have you recognized that in virtually every instance, the Psalm texts that are chosen are only from the joyous words of praise from “the happy Psalms?” But that only accounts for about half of the 150 Psalms. What about the others? There are psalms of lament, psalms of penitence, psalms of thanksgiving, and psalms of God’s enthronement over the universe. And most surprisingly (to most people) there are the imprecatory psalms, which account for 10% of the Psalter. These are psalms which express outrage at the wickedness of the evil, and call on God to reach out His hand to judge His enemies and to deliver His people.
Many Christians are embarrassed to find imprecatory Psalms as part of God’s inspired Word. Few preachers will dare to preach from one of these as a sermon text. And you will look high and low to find a church that would include these as a hymn or even as a responsive reading in the service. Is this one of those instances in which we regard the God of the New Testament (Jesus) to be a softer, kinder, more gentle and more attractive version of the God of the Old Testament (Yahweh)? After all, didn’t Jesus tell us to love our enemies? How can we then reconcile having Psalms that call on God to destroy them? Are these two irreconcilable attitudes that either point to a Bible with contradictory messages, or that we must accept one and reject the other? And if either of those are our only option, what does that do to our confidence in the inerrancy and God-breathed authority of the Bible as God’s Word?
No, if we find it hard to accept these imprecatory Psalms as divinely inspired, then we need to re-examine our theology, and particularly our doctrine of God and of sin and of judgment. Especially with the memory of Hitler’s extermination ovens, and in the face of the wickedness of ISIS warriors beheading Christians in the Middle East, and in the midst of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, our hearts cry out for justice against those who commit such atrocities and genocidal terroristic acts. We dare not turn the imprecatory psalms into “hit lists” against those we consider to be our personal enemies out of individual spite. And when legitimate divine judgment comes, we dare not respond in triumphalistic gloating over the fate of the wicked. No, we ought to be working and praying now for their conversion, lest they suffer such a terrible eternal fate. But there are instances in which those perpetrating evil should rightly be described as God’s enemies. When they have deliberately and unjustly attacked people made in God’s image, they have declared war on God Himself. And these are the cases for which the imprecatory psalms were inspired.
And yes, it’s a matter of our longing for justice. Justice will be meted out when Christ returns, and these psalms are a preview of that day of eschatological punishment when the wicked will cry out for the mountains to fall on them to protect them from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:16). Not just the wrath of God in some general way, but specifically the wrath of the Lamb! As one has written, the only thing worse than God’s judgment falling on evil, is for evil to go unpunished. And so, even in corporate worship (as Robert Godfrey has written), “I think it is not illegitimate to use the imprecations of the psalter to pray for judgment on God’s enemies. Every time we pray, ‘Come quickly Lord Jesus,’ we’re praying an imprecation on God’s enemies. When Jesus comes again, there will be judgment for God’s enemies.” And so we pray that wicked dictators and ruthless criminals might be converted; but if not, that God would “wipe them out” (Psalm 94:23). In 1857, Julius Reubke wrote a massive organ sonata based on phrases from Psalm 94.
Perhaps one of the strongest of the imprecatory psalms is number 109. Unless we have God’s perspective in mind, the words seem too harsh to read, especially in public worship. But we must remember that God Himself has spoken these words, and commended them to us for our praying and singing. Not only that, in His incarnation, Jesus Himself sang all 150 Psalms, including imprecations in texts like this. His prayer will be answered on that day of final judgment. In that psalm, we take on our lips such verses as these.
5 So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.
6 Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7 When he is tried, let him come forth guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin!
8 May his days be few;
may another take his office!
9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
10 May his children wander about and beg,
seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!
11 May the creditor seize all that he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!
12 Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!
13 May his posterity be cut off;
may his name be blotted out in the second generation!
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord,
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!
15 Let them be before the Lord continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!
16 For he did not remember to show kindness,
but pursued the poor and needy
and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.
17 He loved to curse; let curses comeupon him!
He did not delight in blessing; may it be farfrom him!
(Psalm 109:5-17 ESV)
A shorter psalm, more conducive to the format of our series of hymn studies, is number 83. The 1912 United Presbyterian Psalter set it in three stanzas, omitting a few of the verses from the Hebrew text, but capturing the essence and spirit of the original.
In stanza 1, we cry out to God in the midst of the evil around us, at a time when He seems to have been silent. These are some of the most difficult moments in our lives, when we desperately need Him, and for reasons that He has not revealed, He seems to be deaf to our cries. In the Psalm text, we remind Him of the wicked actions and intent of His enemies (not just ours!), as they have turned their hatred against the Church, seeking to cut His people off. The fact that God has given us words like these to pray in these circumstances should encourage us. He knows what is happening, having given us thousands of years ago the very words He wants is to pray, and to sing.
O God, no longer hold Thy peace, No longer silent be;
Thine enemies lift up their head To fight Thy saints and Thee.
Against Thine own, whom Thou dost love, Their craft Thy foes employ;
They think to cut Thy people off, Thy Church they would destroy.
In stanza 2, we continue to declare that it is against Him, not just us, that these enemies have arisen. And we add to it the reminder that this is nothing new. These are His “ancient foes” who are continuing in their attack on His kingdom and His kingship. But in these verses, we add to our case the fact that as they have once again joined forces against Him, He has in the past smitten them. We think of God’s response in Pharaoh’s defeat at the Red Sea, to His blessing David in the confrontation with Goliath, to His powerful answer to Elijah’s prayer on Mt. Carmel, and to His protection and deliverance of Daniel from the lion’s den along with His rescue of Daniel’s three friends from the fiery furnace. Best of all, we recall His deliverance of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus, from death. And so we cry, “Lord, do it again!”
Thy ancient foes, conspiring still, With one consent agree,
And they who with Thy people strive Make war, O God, with Thee.
O God, Who in our fathers’ time Didst smite our foes and Thine,
So smite Thine enemies today Who in their pride combine.
In stanza 3, we ask very specifically that God would execute harsh judgment, using the imagery of “dust and stubble” being blown away during a fierce storm (is the whirlwind a tornado?), and also the imagery of people racing for their lives to escape the fast approach of a roaring forest fire. In addition to that, there is the request that He would frustrate their plans to carry out evil. But notice how the gospel is present even the midst of these imprecations. We should always pray “against” these enemies to the effect that they would turn from their wicked ways and “to Thee for pardon fly.” Here is the language of Isaiah 55, of seeking the Lord while He may be found. The best way to love our enemies is to pray that they would be brought to repentance, and transformed from God’s sworn enemies to His adopted children.
Make them like dust and stubble blown Before the whirlwind dire,
In terror driv’n before the storm Of Thy consuming fire.
Confound them in their sin till they To Thee for pardon fly,
Till in dismay they trembling, own That Thou art God Most High.
We should also see the gospel here in the realization that, if it were not for the sovereign grace of God that reached out to claim us as His own, we would be those people about whom these imprecatory psalms were written, the people upon whose head such curses should be applied!
In that 1912 Psalter (and others more recent), the tune ST MATTHEW is provided as the music with which we sing Psalm 83. It was written by William Croft (1678-1727). He was born in the Manor House in Warwickshire and received his musical education in the Chapel Royal under the tutelage of John Blow. In 1707, upon the death of Jeremiah Clarke, he was appointed joint organist with his mentor, Dr. Blow. Two years later he was elected organist of Westminster Abbey. He composed works for the funeral of Queen Anne in 1714 and for the coronation of King George I in 1715. In 1724, he published “Musica Sacra,” the first collection of church music to be printed in the form of a score. His health deteriorated and he died after twenty years at Westminster Abbey, at the age of fifty.
One of his most enduring pieces is the hymn tune ST ANNE, sung with the text “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” written in 1779 by Isaac Watts as his setting of Psalm 90. Other composers incorporated the tune in their own works, including George Frideric Handel’s anthem “O Praise the Lord” and Hubert Parry’s 1911 “Coronation Te Deum.” Bach’s triple Fugue in E-flat Major from his “Clavier Übung III” (BWV 552) is often called the “St. Anne” fugue due to the (coincidental) similarity of its subject to the hymn melody’s first phase. Croft also wrote various violin sonatas.
Here is a rendition using the ST MATTHEW tune.