Hey what do you guys think of the imprecatory psalms? We're going to be discussing them soon in our small group. I'm thinking particularly of like Psalms 69. Any thoughts?

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Ben
Heartland Community Church (PCA)
Wichita, Kansas
www.monergism.com
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -Adolf Hitler

We Sing Them....

One of my favorites is Psalm 137...

Pick up the Book by Jay Adams "War Psalms of the Prince of Peace". Excellent work on the topic...

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Michael Daniels
Reformed, RPCNA
Denton, Maryland

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Ben,

Imprecatory Psalms have presented difficulty to me for years. Is it right to pray for God to smite my enemies? Should we not pray for their salvation? Does there appear to be inconsistency with God in these areas? A few thoughts...

In the Psalm you referenced (Psalm 69), David was asking God to judge those who acted against His anointed. In the now God's anointed was David. Prophetically it was Messiah. David understood the holiness of God's anointed:

Paul often had to defend his apostleship from those who worked against him:

At their core imprecatory Psalms are not about the wrong done to the author but about the injustice done to God. They are about God's holiness. Consider this imprecatory passage in Galatians:

Paul was consumed with the purity of the gospel, which is the word of God. By extension the gospel message is representative of Christ. Therefore, it is a matter of God's holiness and those that trample underfoot God's holiness or distort his word are subject to eternal anathema.

I believe your study of the imprecatory Psalms will be worthwhile if you focus on God's holiness and that the call for God's judgment is because his holiness is disrespected by the ungodly.

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Bill Brown
Elder
Grace Baptist Church
Anne Arundel County, Maryland

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Some of the imprecatory Psalms were against the *King* and those fellow Israelties who hunted David down. Not all were against your *enemy,* some where against your *neighbor.* A fellow covenant member.

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Regards,

J.J.
PCA
Suffix

Imprecatory Psalms are imprecations against God's enemies.

God is glorified in restraining, conquering and judging his enemies. Thus, to sing the imprecatory Psalms is glorifying to God. It also glorifies God when we remember that we are numbered among the most worthy objects of the imprecations, and that is only by God's grace and mercy that he has dealt so mercifully with us in making us his friends.

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~Jay~
Husband of ENS, father of J II. | Indian Trail, NC
Teacher Aide, Union County Public Schools, NC
Communicant Member, Precentor | Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte, NC | Presbyterian Reformed Church

Can you elaborate on that a little more? Which psalms in particular are you speaking of?

P.S. Thanks for all the great input guys, keep it coming!

Psalm 55, for example:

verses 12-15

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R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

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Westminster Bookstore - Reformed Books - Low Prices - $5 Shipping - War Psalms of the Prince of Peace: Lessons from the Imprecatory Psalms

This book would be a benefit to eveyone here.

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R. Martin Snyder (Moderator)

1689er
Harmony Baptist Church (Member)
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"Our object should not be to have scripture on our side but to be on the side of scripture; and however dear any sentiment may have become by being long entertained, so soon as it is seen to be contrary to the Bible, we must be prepared to abandon it without hesitation."
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This may sound weird but this Psalm was a great comfort to me when I was going thru my divorce.

Randy, amen. Not weird at all. Not every Psalm is imprecatory.

Psalm 137

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Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church

Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

A psalm I often sing at home.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

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In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

AS I mentioned on the other recent thread, or am I having deja vu all over again as yogi said, there is no nt example of praying for immediate temperal destruction on enemies. It has moved from David's thought to an eschalogical focus as revealed in revelation. It is an eschatological prayer, no different in its words from "your kingdom come". It can never be prayed as personal vengeance. Even David appealed to God alone to vindicate. Luke 18:7, which states, " "And will not God bring about justice [ "retribution"] for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?" The balance is hard and I would gather almost impossible by human standards. “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, 18 lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.”

This is the command :

19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave itto the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20 To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head."

As I also pointed out before when the disciples asked Christ about raining down fire from heaven, He rebuked them Ye know not of what spirit ye are, for the Son of Man came not to destroy the souls of men, but to save (Luke 9:51-56).

God alone is the King and Sovereign. The martyrs cry out:"and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?"

They receive their answer :BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS BOND-SERVANTS ON HER.

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N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

I completely disagree with the way this is being formulated as an objection to the imprecatory Psalms. This assumes almost a dispensational grid to the Scriptures. When Christ was asked what the greatest Commandments were by a scribe He responded that it was love of God and love of neighbor. The scribe agreed. There is a dispensational notion (and in some cases repeated by people who haven't read the Sermon on the Mount properly) that Christ somehow changes the nature of the Law from one of vengeance upon those "outside the Camp" to one of love. Not so.

Christ repeatedly corrects a mis-apprehension of the OT by Rabinnical schools. "You have heard it said, but I say to you...." He never says: "It is written, but I say to you...." Never.

Even in the Law itself is a command to be kind to the stranger in your midst as a reminder that the people were once strangers in a foreign land. Love is the summation of the Law itself. I completely reject any notion that the reason that the OT had imprecatory Psalms is because that "dispensation" was some sort of "eschatological intrusion" when the Law itself repudiates the hatred of our neighbors even if they are our enemies.

I think people need to look "behind" the Psalms a bit more. Randy is absolutely correct about the comfort that the imprecatory Psalms offer. If you ever find yourself in a period of intense spiritual onslaught then singing those Psalms is tremendously comforting. I'm not directing my imprecations at individuals but that which afflicts me or the the Church. Ultimately, I believe these Psalms are given that we might cry out against the forces of the enemy that assault God's people. To relegate these Psalms to a "bygone dispensation" robs the Church of a tremendous comfort.

My child's favorite Psalm to sing is Psalm 3 because one of the verses talks about going to sleep and he wants to sing to God asking Him to protect him while he's sleeping.

I agree that they can be abused and people who get their Kingdoms gooned up can mis-use them but the complete abandonment of them is reprehensible in my view.

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan

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(2Ti 4:14) Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works: Athorized Version