The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Imprecatory Psalms of David, those psalms in which he calls for curses and judgment on his enemies, make up a significant portion of the Psalter. Psalm 109 is the last and the strongest of those psalms. In fact, it's been said that in the awfulness of its curses, this psalm surpasses anything of its kind in the Old Testament.

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In the light of New Testament teaching, how are we to understand David's emotional prayers for revenge, and this, his last psalm of judgment in particular?

Let's join Dr. Boice as he studies Psalm 109 and lays out the reasons David's prayer for judgment on his enemies might not be as harsh as we first imagine and dispels the discrepancies between David's petitions and Jesus' mercy.

Dr. James Boice: Psalm 109 is the last of these imprecatory psalms, and I'm sure you have some idea what that word "imprecatory" or "imprecation" means. It has to do with calling down curses on one's enemies. That's something Christians are not supposed to do.

We're supposed to pray for our enemies and return blessings for curses. We studied Paul's explicit teaching about that when we were studying the latter chapters of the book of Romans. Because we're taught differently by the words of Christ, these imprecatory psalms have always been a great problem for Christians and for Christian sensibilities.

And then we have a special problem when we come to this one because Psalm 109 is not only the last of the imprecatory psalms, it's also the worst. I mean by that it's the strongest or the most intense. C.S. Lewis, in that wonderful little book, very stimulating, on the psalms, called *Reflections on the Psalms*, which many of you have probably read, has a section where he deals with curses in the psalms.

He says from time to time we come across psalms where the spirit of hatred strikes us in the face like the heat from a furnace mouth, and he calls Psalm 109 perhaps the worst example of it. I'm not sure it's a spirit of hatred there, but certainly it is strong language.

Lewis is not the only one to make that kind of judgment. Stewart Perowne is a good English commentator, generally very balanced in his judgments, but he says, "In the awfulness of its anathemas"—that's another word for its curses—"the psalm surpasses anything of the kind in the Old Testament."

Well, you find curses and judgments from time to time. You find them scattered throughout the psalms, but this psalm really excels the others. By my count, there are 24 of them in the second major section of the psalm, verses 6 through 20, a section which is bracketed by prayers for deliverance for the psalmist.

He starts off asking God to save him from the slander of his enemies, and you have this big, long major section that has to do with the curses, and finally at the end, he's back to praying again. Now, because we've been going through these psalms more or less in order from the beginning, and because this is the last of these psalms of imprecation, I've already made comments of a general nature about how they should be understood, to sort of set this particular category of psalms in its context.

I don't want to go into that in great detail again, but it's been some time since we have done that. So let me just review a few things that need to be borne in mind when we come to a psalm like this. First of all, all these psalms are by David, and in them, David is writing not chiefly as a private citizen or even as a private citizen at all, but as the king of Israel.

He's responsible for executing judgment in the land, and he has a great concern about injustice, and rightly so. It's a task of the king to administer justice, and so when he's dealing with the kind of evil that's represented by the people against whom these curses are pronounced, he's very concerned that judgment might be executed upon them.

Moreover, David is the Lord's anointed in a way that other rulers of other kingdoms are not. So there's a special and very real sense that words spoken against David are words spoken against God and the kingdom of God. You can't say that of other rulers, but you certainly can say that of David. So it gives it a different context than we would have if this were simply something said by another earthly ruler.

Secondly, although David speaks these words of judgment and cursing, he doesn't take the cursing into his own hands. He leaves it up to God. As a matter of fact, that's the whole purpose of it. It's interesting that we find words like this coming from David's mouth because David himself was known, he had a great reputation for being non-vindictive, long-suffering, and merciful.

We only have to think of the two great occasions when he had his enemy King Saul within his power. Saul was trying to kill him. David was fleeing from Saul, hiding in the wilderness, and there were two occasions—we read about it in 1 Samuel chapters 24 and 26—when God seemingly delivered Saul into David's power.

Once in the cave, nobody was around. David could easily have killed him if he had chosen to do so, but the thought wasn't even in David's heart. And what David said by contrast is this: he said, "No, I will not lift my hand against my master because he is the Lord's anointed."

Well, all the imprecatory psalms have that flavor. David was well aware, as we read elsewhere in the Bible, particularly now for us in the book of Romans, "I will avenge, it's mine to avenge," says the Lord. He knew he had to leave those things in God's hands.

Then thirdly, we have to remember that although we may not like this language, it is nevertheless right to desire that evil might be punished and that good might be rewarded. We wouldn't want it the other way around, would we? If there's somebody who's exercising a great deal of power for evil in the world, we wouldn't want to pray for God to bless them.

Now, it's true, as Christians, our first desire would be that they might repent of their sin and repudiate their evil pattern of conduct and believe on Jesus Christ and begin to walk in a Christian way. But if they don't do that, if they continue on unrepentant in their way of sin and evil, well, what we want is judgment, in order that the evil might be stopped and that those who were innocent might be delivered and that blessing might follow.

And then finally, we have to remember that although we do live in an age in which the wicked have opportunity to repent of their sin, and we certainly pray that they might do so, nevertheless, the curses that are found in these imprecatory psalms are judgments that will come to the wicked at the final day, and even worse.

And so, if we get nothing other than this from the imprecatory psalms, certainly we get a warning not to continue in our wicked way, but rather to turn from our sin and find salvation in Jesus Christ. There are portions of scripture, of course, that are comforting, filled with blessing, and speak of the love of God.

And we focus on those, we rejoice in them, we concentrate upon them, we spend a lot of time on passages like that. There are sections like this that we pass over rather quickly, but nevertheless, they're there in scripture. We're told in the Bible that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. And so even a psalm like this is profitable, and it's up to us to let it be so.

Now, we start in at the beginning and find that David begins mildly enough because what he begins by asking is that God might no longer be silent. What he means by that, of course, is not only that God might speak, but that he might act against David's foes.

We ask the question, why should God act? Well, we don't have to read very far to find out what the problem is. What David is complaining about is his enemies' words. They speak against him, he says, verses 2 and 3, with lying tongues and with words of hatred. It's by what they say that they repay evil for good and hatred for friendship, which is what you read in verse 5.

Now, those opening verses called Martin Luther, in his major study of this psalm, to speak of it as being directed almost entirely against those who disparage another person's reputation. We shouldn't be surprised at this theme if we've studied the psalms of David at all because, as I've pointed out on other occasions, there is hardly a psalm of David to be found in the entire Psalter that doesn't speak of his enemies in some way, sometimes very explicitly and intently.

And many of these psalms explain what David is worried about. When he talks about his enemies, it's not just that there are other kings out there who have armies and would overthrow him if they can. Rather, the enemies he's most concerned about are those enemies that are right there in Jerusalem, in his court, and who are using words, innuendo, lies, and slander, false accusations, to try and harm him and bring him down.

You and I don't generally think very much about words. We sort of have this false idea to bolster ourselves at times that words really don't hurt. We say, "Can't hurt me by words. Say anything you want, it won't bother me." But it's not true. Words do hurt. And I would go so far as to say words probably have done more harm to other people in the long course of the world than any amount of outright violence or evil actions. Words really are very damaging things.

Now we ask the question here, we have to get the tone where David is coming from at the beginning, how is he responding while all of this slander and false accusation is going on? What does David do? Well, he gives a clue here at the beginning. Verse 4 says, "But I," there's a great contrast there. They're out there slandering me, but David says, "But I, I'm a man of prayer."

Now, the Hebrew is even stronger than that. In the Hebrew, you don't have all those extra words. And if you were to translate the Hebrew literally, the Hebrew merely says, "But I, prayer." In other words, what David is saying is this: "I'm all prayer," or "I'm characterized by prayer," or "While my enemies are using their words to slander me, I'm directing my words to God because I want to lay my entire case before the Lord."

And so that causes me to ask, before we go any further, whether that's the way you and I react when people say evil things against us. Many evil things are said against us that we never hear, hopefully. It'd be good if we didn't hear them. But sometimes we do. So-and-so said this, so-and-so said that. What happens when something like that comes into your life?

Do you find that you're getting your back up and you want to fight back against it? And you say, "Well, they're only saying that because..." and then you retaliate and hit back at them with words as well? You see, all that does is create more turmoil, and it certainly doesn't do you any good. David says, "No, the right reaction to that is to lay it all before the Lord, to come to him in prayer."

You know, many bad things were said against the Apostle Paul even by Christians, but certainly by his enemies. And Paul said, nevertheless, when he was writing to the Philippians, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." And I suppose he could have gone on to say whether being praised or slandered.

And we read that statement and we say, "Well, yes, Paul, that's wonderful to be content in all situations, but what is that secret that you mention there in verse 12 of the fourth chapter?" You only have to go back a couple of verses to find what it is.

Paul says, writing again and encouraging them, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." That was Paul's secret.

Now, we pass in verse 6 from that opening stanza to this central main portion of the psalm that contains the curses. And when we do, we find an interesting change, quite apart from the curses themselves. The references to David's enemies, which in the first verses were plural—he refers to them as "them"—now become singular. And so he's now talking about "he," "him," and "his." And this continues the whole way up to verse 20 where the reference becomes plural once again. He talks about accusers, plural.

Now, what are we to make of this? There are different ways we can handle it. It could be a Hebrew idiom, which is simply a way of saying in that language, "When I'm saying what I do now, I'm speaking it about each and every one of them: that one, and that one, and that one." It could be a Hebrew idiom meaning that. It's more likely that he's speaking of a specific individual, however.

And if we want some biblical encouragement along that line of thinking, we only have to recall that the Apostle Peter, recorded in the first chapter of Acts, refers to this psalm in reference to Judas, and he takes it literally as referring to a specific individual. So probably what David is doing here is focusing on one individual who has been particularly harmful.

Now, the only reason I take some time to elaborate that is that there has been a way of handling this psalm which reads more into the change from the plural to the singular than I believe is justified. The argument would go like this. Commentators argue that when it changes from the plural to the singular, what's going on here is that David now is not actually cursing his enemies, but rather he's quoting them as saying these things about himself, so the singular refers to David.

In other words, it's as if those verses were prefaced by the words "this is what they say." And so it would read like this: they're saying this, "Appoint an evil man to oppose him. When he's tried, let him be found guilty. May his days be few. May another take his place of leadership," and so on.

Leslie Allen, who contributes to the Word Bible Commentary series, which is supposed to be a conservative series, takes that point of view and actually puts all of those verses in quotation marks. Another conservative commentator who does the same thing is G. Campbell Morgan. He says this explicitly: the passage contains the singer's quotation of what his enemies say about him rather than what he says about them.

Now, that's sort of attractive, isn't it? It's why these commentators like that because it takes away the force of the curses. It's a way of saying, "Well, this is what the enemies do, but of course, I would never do a thing like that." And so it makes it a little more acceptable to our sensibilities. There are a number of problems with it.

For one thing, that's not the way Peter took it. And not only that, Peter was rather explicit because he says, quoting now from Acts 1, that "these are words which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas." And then he refers to verse 20 particularly, "May another take his place of leadership." So Peter took it as referring to an individual and spoken by David.

Furthermore, you have the other imprecatory psalms. There's no one suggesting so far as I know that all of them are to be understood as being in quotation marks. And you don't even really solve the problem that way because if you look at the psalm carefully, you find that after you get through that section that contains all the curses in the singular, you get in verse 20 to a verse in which David says, in effect, "May the curses they have pronounced on me fall on them."

So even if he's only quoting what they're saying, in the end, he turns it all back upon them. He says, "That's what I want to have happen to them anyway." So you haven't really solved the problem. Well, I think we have to take it as David's own words against his enemies, and we have to begin to try and understand it that way.

Now, let me just point out some things about this section. First of all, begin with verses 6 and 7. The reason it's important to emphasize those verses is that the setting here is that of a court of law, and that gives the entire section a legal or judicial tone. In other words, the curses that follow are not to be understood simply as David, a private citizen, flailing out against some individual who has harmed him, but rather David saying, "Look, evil should be judged, and all of this needs to be brought before the court of God's justice."

In other words, he's appealing to God to give justice to a person who has been especially harmful and to make sure that others who have been damaged might be rescued. In verse 6, that word "accuser" is important. It's sort of a theme for the psalm. If you read through the psalm and look for that word, you'll find it in a number of places.

It's there not only in verse 6 but in verse 20—I've already mentioned that—and in verse 29. And the corresponding verb "to accuse" is found at the very beginning in verse 4. Now, what this is saying is this. If you can picture a court of law, the one who stands at an individual's right hand in a court of law is supposed to be his advocate or defender. In other words, he's the one that's going to plead on his behalf.

What David is asking here is that this one who is standing at the right hand of the evil man might actually turn out to be an evil man himself. And instead of turning out to be this man's defender, he actually finds his lawyer or his advocate accusing him. So, if I can put it this way, here's a man who has tried to harm others, and David is saying when he comes to be judged, may he find that the person who should be defending him actually turns out to be accusing him because, of course, that's exactly what he deserves. He doesn't deserve to be defended.

And there's this interesting point too. That Hebrew word "accuser" is the word "Satan," which is the word "Satan" from which we get the name and the description of the devil, who is an accuser of the brethren. That's what he's doing. The devil is accusing us. And David is saying may he find when he comes to judgment that the one he actually thought might be his defender turns out to be Satan accusing him as well.

Now, I don't know if David specifically was thinking of Satan when he used the word because the word does mean accuser and is probably translated rightly here, but it is a reminder, you see, that when people persist in evil, somehow in this life they many times get away with it and they suppose that when they get to the end and there's accountability, if there is any, somehow they're going to find the devil on their side.

And what the text reminds us is that even the devil's not going to be on your side when you stand before the bar of God's justice. The devil himself will be your accuser. He's not your friend. The only one who can ever be your advocate is the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the price of your redemption by his death upon the cross.

I think of that wonderful description that comes at the end of Christopher Marlowe's *Faust*. The Faust legend, you know, is written up by a lot of people: Goethe's *Faust* is the best known, it's in Gounod's opera, and so on. But Christopher Marlowe, the English playwright, wrote a marvelous play about it. And at the very end, Faust is waiting, the devil is about to come, and Faust is asking that time will slow down so the devil won't come for him.

He has a Latin phrase for it. The Latin phrase is *O lente lente currite noctis equi*. It means, "Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night." And then he continues, "The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come, and Faustus must be damned." What terrifying words. They're meant to be. In that final judgment, the devil will not be on your side. Everything will be against you unless Jesus Christ is your defender.

Now, the hardest part of this imprecatory section of the psalms is what comes next. You find it in verses 9 through 15. And the reason this is the hardest part is that here curses are pronounced not only on the man who is doing evil, but they're projected forward into the future in the form of maledictions on his children, sideways in the present as curses on his wife, and then backwards in time as curses on his parents, his mother in particular being singled out.

Now, the best I know to do with that is to say that it points to something that is true, namely the solidarity of human beings in sin and the effect that sin has on other people. We might not want it that way. We sometimes say, "Well, it may be I'm doing something wrong, but it's not going to hurt anybody but myself." But, of course, that's not true. Sin always hurts other people. And you don't have to go only to the imprecatory psalms to find this acknowledged. You find it in the Ten Commandments, for example.

How about this one? "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." Exodus 20 verse 5. It's the way it works out. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.

Or even Jesus, when he was praying over Jerusalem, weeping because he saw the day of its destruction coming, acknowledged that the children in Jerusalem were going to suffer for the sins of their parents. We may not like that, but that's the way it is. It's a warning about how serious sin really is.

There's another section of these imprecations in which it's made very clear that the person being spoken about here is an incorrigible evildoer who shows no sign of repentance or turning from the sin. In other words, this isn't merely a case of a person who sins as we all do. This is one who sins against God and others knowingly, deliberately, gleefully, and has no intention of stopping. He's going to keep right on doing that as long as he can get away with it.

David says here, "This person never thought of doing a kindness." Verse 16. "He loves to pronounce a curse. He finds no pleasure in blessing." Verse 17. Well, we turn to things like that and we say a person like that will experience the judgment of God. And that's what David says. David says as he begins to wrap that section up that this person's going to get exactly what he gave others. He cursed others, and so these curses are going to come back upon his own head.

Now, we're glad when we get to that place in our study and find that David doesn't leave the psalm there. He began by asking God to help him, protect him from the slander of his enemies. We have this serious, grim section that we move through quickly. But when we get to verse 21, we find him turning to God again.

I don't know why the New International Version put verse 21 with the section preceding, that stanza that they begin with verse 16. Seems to me quite obvious that it's the beginning of the last section of the psalm. Because here David begins to pray to God and ask God to intervene on his behalf. We've seen it before, often when he's in a bad way, David will ask God to intervene.

And he argues with God in the sense that he gives God reasons why God should do that. Why God should not be silent, as he seems to have been when David was beginning the psalm. And here he has three good reasons. First of all, he mentions God's name and honor. This is what the words "deal well with me for your name's sake" refer to.

They mean save me so that you might be known to everybody as a God who is on the side of the righteous and against those who do evil. The evildoer would say there's no God up there, look, I can do evil and get away with it. Or they say God doesn't care. And all of that is a slander on the name of God. David says, "No, let your name be known as referring to the God you really are, a God who is on the side of those who do right."

The second argument is his own weak condition. He refers to himself as being poor and needy. Some of the scholars say, "Well, the psalm could hardly be by David because David was a king and powerful. How could he call himself poor and needy?" Well, of course he could and he did. All of us, no matter how powerful or how wealthy or how well-off or privileged we may be, go through times when we feel poor and needy.

And this is what David presents to God. He doesn't say, "I'm strong and you ought to make me stronger." He says, "God, I'm nothing without you." And so he knows that that's a powerful argument. And then finally at the end, he talks about God's steadfast love, verses 26 to 29. God is willing and able to help the psalmist.

And so what he's saying here is that although his enemies may be cursing David, God is not like those enemies. God desires to bless. And so he turns to God and says, "That's what I want. I ask for your blessing." Now, let's take just a minute, look at the last two verses. They're a fitting and a very powerful end to this psalm.

They anticipate the deliverance that David has been asking for because he's praying in faith, and that means he's praying believing, expects God to answer his prayer. And so he says what he's going to do is praise God. The accusers are using their words to curse him. He's going to use his words to praise God.

And here's what he says: "With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord; in the great throng I will praise him. For he stands at the right hand of the needy one, to save his life from those who condemn him." Now, notice in that very last verse the deliberate contrast between what he says there and what he said in verse 6.

He's talking about the evildoer in verse 6, and he says when he comes before judgment, may he have at his right hand an accuser, because that's what he deserves. He deserves to be accused. But he says the wonderful thing about belonging to the Lord is that you have God at your right hand—not to accuse, but God at your right hand actually to protect and defend you.

It's almost impossible to read that last verse without thinking of that scene that you find in the book of Zechariah, one of the minor prophets, the third chapter. It's a description of Joshua the high priest who is standing before the Lord, presumably in the act of worshipping and presenting the sacrifices of the people in the temple.

And although it's not introduced this way as the story unfolds, he must be standing there in the garments of the high priest, but it turns out that they're polluted garments representing the sin of Joshua and the people. And Satan is there, and Satan, the accuser of the brethren, is pointing to Joshua and pointing out his sin, and he's saying he's unworthy to stand before you and represent the people.

And Joshua isn't saying anything at all because he has nothing to say. He is unworthy. And then we get that wonderful picture. We find that God speaks up through his angel, and his words are a rebuke to Satan. And what God says is this: "The Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this man a burning stick which is snatched from the fire?"

And then the Lord instructs the angel to take clean clothes and clothe the high priest and to put a spotless turban on his head. All of that speaks, of course, of the righteousness which comes to us, not because of our own good works, but because of the grace of God through the work of Jesus Christ.

Now, that puts us in the proper place in the picture. You see, we read a psalm like this, we find David cursing, we get self-righteous, we say, "Well, of course I wouldn't be doing the cursing the way David did." But isn't it true that we instinctively see ourselves in the position of King David? With our enemies accusing us, and it's not wrong to do that.

Certainly, we do have enemies, and we ought to respond in prayer, and we ought to have the same kind of appeals that David has. But if you think of this not from our perspective but from God's perspective, you and I are not in the position of King David. You and I are the evil person who is accused.

What you and I need is a heavenly advocate who is able to plead our cause because he has cleansed us from our sin by his death upon the cross and has offered us his own perfect heavenly righteousness instead. What you and I need is Jesus Christ, who Paul says, in writing to the Corinthians, is alone our righteousness and our holiness and our redemption.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, this psalm as well as all the others. And if it does nothing else, it should warn you to flee from the wrath to come and find that perfect righteousness in Christ, by which alone you'll ever be able to stand before the bar of the justice of the holy God.

Our Father, we thank you that we've had time to study a psalm like this, and we ask that you'll bless it to our hearts. Sometimes we come to the easy portions of scripture and we get by them quickly, they don't mean much to us because we've heard them so many times before. But we come to something like this and it stretches our thinking, as we trust it has in this hour.

And we pray that you will use it to expose our own hearts as they appear before you, that we might flee to Jesus Christ as our refuge. We pray that you'll bless the psalm in that way to many people in this hour, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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