Greatest Hits of the OT: Imprecatory Psalm 59

Snippet of Sermon by Mr Chan Yew Meng
We are held accountable always in this life. Our world is filled with people who play the blame game. Our culture prizes success and control, and we try so very hard to deny – the darkness, self-deception, and overall disorientation that characterises much of life. We are not immune from holding grudges, experiencing anger, depression when persecuted by our enemies.

The superscription in this Psalm informs us that the historical event behind this Psalm is probably the one recorded in 1 Sam 19. After David defeated the Philistines, Saul sent men to keep watch over David's house in order to have him killed. The Psalmist's claim of innocence is found in v 4. Saul had a grudge against David for out-shining him in the last battle with the Philistines. This envy led him to be oppressed by the evil spirit. However, Psalm 59 is about David not Saul. The Psalmist's requests are listed down from v5-13. They are frightful requests, requesting intervention in very drastic measures. He prays for vindictive judgment to fall on enemies. Besides Ps 59, there are many other Psalms e.g. Ps 7, 35 and 137. Some of the ideas we come across in the Psalms are: God will rain fire and brimstone upon the wicked (Psalm 11: 6); if you forget God he will tear you in pieces (Psalm 50: 22 ); if you trust in riches instead of God, he will kill you, and while you're dying the righteous will laugh at you (Psalm 52: 5-6); the righteous will rejoice when they see the wicked being dismembered by God and they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked (Psalm 58: 10); God will fill the nations with corpses (Psalm 110:6); God is praised for slaughtering little children in Egypt (Psalm 135: 8; 136:10); and God is asked to burn people to death (Psalm 140: 10). All these are very disturbing to the sensitive conscience. How can we utter such curses? How can Christians utter such petitions in the spirit of vengeance? How can we reconcile these prayers with Jesus’ command to love our enemies in Matt 5:43-44? Some Christians try to explain away these disturbing verses saying that the psalmist wrote before Christ and therefore belong to pre-Christian ethics so we can ignore them. But this creates problem for us. Which parts of Psalm can we then deem as being included as scripture? Such verses are also quoted in the New Testament e.g. Rom 11:9-10.

While these psalms are not positive and pious, like all laments they are honest expressions of pain in the face of grief and endings. We should not attempt to "Christianize" these psalms by pretending they are something they are not. Yet neither can we exclude them as "sub-Christian."  Rather, we need to take them seriously as a valid biblical response to God in prayer from the depths of our humanity. Since we accept these psalms as Scripture for the church, we need to allow them to inform our theology rather than using our theology to change the psalms.

In these Psalms, we are confronted with the realities of life where believers use honest-to-God language with perfect freedom, without disguise. They confront us with true nature of world in which we live.  We discover how the Psalmist deals with fears, hurt, anger and desire to take revenge. The Bible does not pretend that everything recorded in it is holy anger and we cannot use them to justify our anger. What we have here are real responses to evil. It is good then to approach these psalms in faith, recognizing that the language regarding the enemies is directed to God. It is the Psalmist asking God to activate that which will let them reap what they sow. It does not ask God for the ability to retaliate, rather it asks for divine action: “rouse yourself, come to my help and see”. God is urged to become involved and take action regarding their pleas. What we have in this Psalm is a very desperate Psalmist.

V5 incorporates the curses on the community level: Punishment for all the nations, the non-Israelite people. The force of v 5 & v6 is the same as that in v7 & v8. In these places, the Psalmist implores God to holding them in derision, to show no mercy to enemies. No matter how drastic things are, the Psalmist continues to make bold statements of confidence in v 9-10. While these declarations at the crises make them look foolish, the Psalmist believes that he is not alone. He can do something. The Psalmist decides to wait for the divine response and trusts in the saving power of God.  He will laugh and overpower them. In order to appreciate these psalms it is essential to consider how to present the concept of justice.

The Mosaic Law forbids private vengeance. In Deut 32:35 “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”  The Psalmist’s petition to “break their arm” is to be understood as a champion making a righteousness request to God. He expects God to act on his behalf, to function within the divine parameters of the OT law. Yet there is a certain risk involved in reading these Psalms as they are likely to convict us of our own guilt. We are often God’s enemies and our own enemies. Uttering these words, we will come to realize our own violent nature. Most people will not subject themselves to the Messianic promise, the gospel because they want to pick the good bits and ignore the bad bits.

God will not turn away from terror of evil humanity. He is a Comforter of those who mourn. The raw speech of rage can be submitted to the Lord. In order that YHWH will take seriously the issue raised by the victim, he needs to surrender to God and trust in the Lord who will avenge him. He is not to take revenge by himself. Human evil and how God will help his people. Are we confident to pray that prayer?

Believers in the 21st century are faced with a similar fate. What do we wish to say regarding these human evil that surround us? How do we apply the truth about evil in our lives? These Psalms can impact in us at 2 levels. Illustration: There was Bishop who was orphaned as a young child. Both parents were murdered and the murderer was never found. He became an orphan. Once he was called to the death bed of a man. Without emotion, he performed the last rites for the man and assured him that His sin has been forgiven.  In his confession, the dying man had confessed to being the man who had murdered his parents. After absolving him of sin, the bishop walked to the corner, took a gun and shot the dying man in his face. For us forgiveness of our enemies is not easy to achieve. Our anger and hurt makes this even harder. Yet the admonishment in the Bible says in Psalm 37:8 “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.”  

Anger is when it possesses a man leading him to inflict pain recklessly. Provoked to works and actions, the angry person will regret them when things are over... the hostile atmosphere spreads doom. But when we are able to bring our anger under control, it can enable a person to fulfil the demanding tasks. It is important to recognize that we have a spiritual task at hand to transcend ordinary enemies. We cannot depend on human strength alone to confront evil, the demonic... the poor, just and sick. If we are not victims, these psalms challenge us to identify with oppressed and suffering, acknowledge wickedness in the world. Could we pray for people trampled down by powers beyond their control like the way Jesus prayed for the enemies?

Entire community can benefit from vast riches of the Psalter when it is used. The great German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer prays the Psalter daily in his cell in the Nazi Prison of Tegel. Throughout his life, he not only read the Psalms, but was spiritually formed by them as he became one of the greatest prophets and martyrs of the modern Church. His simple yet rigorous discipline of reading the Psalms daily was instrumental in his spiritual formation and the development of his courageous spirit.

The incarnate son of God that hears the hurts of all human beings before God and prays for us has known torment, death and enemies deeper than any of us. He knows us better for he himself was a true man for our sake, can become our prayer because it was also his prayer. Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together: “A psalm that we cannot utter as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint to us that here Someone else is praying, not we; that the One who is here protesting his innocence, who is invoking God’s judgment, who has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. He it is who is praying here, and not only here but in the whole Psalter … He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time? … Jesus Christ prays the Psalter through his congregation …

Now that Christ is with the Father, the new humanity of Christ, the Body of Christ on earth, continues to pray his prayer to the end of time. This prayer belongs, not to the individual member, but to the whole Body of Christ. Only in the whole Christ does the whole Psalter become a reality, a whole which the individual can never fully comprehend and call his own. That is why the prayer of the psalms belongs in the peculiar way to the fellowship. Even if a verse or a psalm is not one’s own prayer, it is nevertheless the prayer of another member of the fellowship; so it is quite certainly the prayer of the true Man Jesus Christ and his Body on earth.”

Walter Brueggemann, who is one of the most prolific writers in the area of Hebrew Scriptures, has produced two interesting books in this area: Spirituality of the Psalms (2001), which runs to 76 pages, and his longer The Message of the Psalms (1984), which runs to 205 pages. Walter Brueggemann points us to a two-fold movement of faith in these imprecatory pslams. First, we move from a settled orientation to a season of disorientation. Then, we move on to a new orientation that comes to us as a surprise gift of God’s grace. Of course, this cycle continues and repeats itself throughout life. The “stunning fact” for Brueggemann “is that Israel does not purge this unrestrained speech but regards it as genuinely faithful communication” with God. That is no less true today than it was 3,000 years ago when the Psalms were first written.

Reflections:

1.      Bring your bitterness to the presence of God and allow the light of Christ to bring relief so that you can pray, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."

2.      What are some of our pains that we need to entrust into God’s  gracious hand.