by Gerald Wilson

For most evangelical Christians it makes sense to ask, WWJD (What would Jesus do?). “What Jesus says, goes! If Jesus affirms something, we should believe it, and strive to do it. If he prohibits something, we should avoid it like the plague. We should use Jesus' life as a model for our own.” These statements fairly represent, I think, a common and contemporary approach to life for most Christians. Jesus provides the standard—and rightly so—for the Christian life.

But what about those psalms of cursing?

As a student of the Old Testament, I am particularly interested in the tensions that arise between the life and teachings of Jesus and what we find in the Old Testament text. On the one hand, Jesus obviously honors the authority of the Hebrew Bible of his day and claims his own work does not “abolish the Law or the Prophets,” but fulfills them (Matthew 5:17-18). On the other hand, when we come to the Psalms of Imprecation (or cursing), it's less than crystal clear what Jesus would want us to think or to do. In light of Jesus' call to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43), some of the psalmists' violent railing against their persecutors seems particularly vicious and uncomfortable for a Christian who is serious about living a life modeled on that of Jesus. Further, if we were to ask the WWJD question about these psalms, it would be difficult to imagine these words coming from Jesus' lips, let's say from the cross. His own urgent, “Father forgive them…” (Luke 23:34) would seem to obliterate any possibility of his voicing the imprecatory psalms.

And yet, these psalms are part of Holy Scripture, the Bible of Jesus (cf. Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read), and a part of the Psalter he so often consulted for illumination of his own role in ministry, even quoting from it in his final, agonizing suffering on the cross (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). The church has often avoided the difficulty suggested by these passages in the psalms (see for example Psalm 69:22-28; 137:8-9; 139:19-22; 140:9-11) by simply refusing to use those difficult portions in the context of public worship. One hymnbook on my shelf includes in its Responsive Readings section all the verses of Psalm 139 except the “offensive” verses 19-22. This is fairly standard practice. How often have you read the “baby bashing” verses of Psalm 137 in church? We omit or deemphasize those portions of scripture with which we are uncomfortable, allowing our level of comfort to determine what is or is not God's word to us. We surely need to find some better way forward that allows us to retain these difficult words in our canon of scripture while understanding how we can appropriate them for ourselves.

Honest acknowledgment

One way that has been offered is to acknowledge these hateful words as an honest and necessary acknowledgment of the psalmists' very real anger and pain. A similar tack is taken by Philip Yancey in his chapter, “Psalms: Spirituality in Every Key” (from The Bible Jesus Read). Yancey very helpfully describes reading the psalms as looking at someone's spiritual journal over their shoulder. In this context, Yancey is able to commend the psalmists' honest expression of their real emotional state to God, without affirming their harsh and hateful words. As a result, we are encouraged, following the model of the psalmists, to allow our own hurt, and hate, to come openly before God. (There is no room for hiding in our relationship with God. He knows us at the very deepest levels of our being—in ways we do not even know ourselves. If we choose to cloak the anger and hatred that lurks in our hearts, we are fooling no one but ourselves and may do ourselves irreparable harm. Anger and hatred cannot be healed unless they are acknowledged and expressed.) Yet, ultimately the psalmists' imprecations are evaluated as wrong-hearted, and decidely un-Christian!

While I think Yancey is right and helpful in encouraging his readers to follow the psalmists in their open expression of the dark depths of their hearts and souls to God, I still think he has not gone far enough. There are other ways in which believing Christians may be called upon to understand and even appropriate these psalms besides honest expression and emotional catharsis. Consider the idea of…

Aligning ourselves with God

Even if we have never personally experienced the kind of pain and anger that wells up in the psalmists' words, it is important for us to know and to acknowledge that there are those who have and do on a regular basis. Talk to those who have experienced systematic sexual or physical abuse at the hand of a parent from an early age; consult with the survivors of the "killing fields" of Cambodia, or the genocide of Kosovo; or try to comfort those still reeling from the latest explosion of ongoing violence in Israel and the occupied territories, and you may find persons—even Christians—who can say these psalms with feeling. You have seen the families of murdered children who demand their right to sit and watch the execution of the guilty so that they may see with their own eyes that justice (or vengeance?) is done. And you have heard their hard words torn directly out of the imprecatory psalms.

These hard and hateful words are witness that our world is filled with horrific and inhuman acts of violence and abuse that are opposed to all that God is and stands for. And those who—in the midst of their anger and pain—call for this kind of destruction are placing themselves soundly on the side of God. God is "not a God who takes pleasure in evil, with [him] the wicked cannot dwell" (Psalm 5:4). And this very telling passage goes on to read: "...you [God] hate all who do wrong...bloodthirsty and deceitful men [and women] the Lord abhors" (Psalm 5:5-6). These words refuse to turn a blind eye or deaf ear to human evil. They call evil what it is, and anticipate a world in which evil receives the divine judgment it deserves. I don't think we can do any less and still call ourselves children of a holy God. We must side with God against evil; we too must call evil what it is!

The danger of spiritual arrogance

Having said that, I realize that there are some very real dangers when we allow the psalmists' imprecations to flow from our lips. There are some important cautions we need to observe. One is particularly poignant in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York City. There are obviously many who experienced loss that day who might well take up the psalmists' words as their own. A whole nation was galvanized for a short while to understand communally the destructive impact of human evil in a broken world. But we need to be careful—extremely careful—when we are tempted to identify our enemies, especially our national enemies, with the enemies of God. While ancient Israel had some reason to think of herself as "God's nation" called by covenant out of all the nations of the earth to be his people, we do not. The people of God are no longer identified with any nation, but cut across the boundaries of all nations. So, if we are to name evil for what it is, and anticipate its ultimate destruction in the purpose and timing of God, we must take care not to let our political agendas and preferences influence our designation of evil. God will judge evil wherever it exists!

The boomerang curse

This leads me to a second caution we must observe in our appropriation of the psalms of imprecation. We must always be aware that these words have a terrifying way of boomeranging back to strike those who send them forth. I have noted that tendency in myself and in others. Whenever we read the psalms of lament, or even the cursing psalms, we tend to identify ourselves with the oppressed and suffering victims in these psalms. Even if we have never experienced anything approaching the oppression and suffering the psalmists describe, we can easily identify with them and interpret their very real struggles as symbols of spiritual attacks against ourselves.

The main problem I see with such a spiritualizing approach is that it can easily render us blind to the confronting word of God that should be a challenge to us. A quick survey of the psalms will reveal that the real victims are often the impoverished, powerless, and exploited of society. On the other hand, the enemies upon whom divine judgment is called are usually the secure, the comfortable, and the wealthy—those who have few needs and yet respond with little or no compassion toward those who do. It frightens me when I realize that I and my fellow Americans occupy the top 10 percent of the earth's wealthiest peoples! We are the ones whose ease and comfort is founded on the exploitation of the world's poor and powerless. Perhaps we are those to whom the curses of the psalms are most appropriately directed!

The best approach

Fear should not silence our reading of the imprecatory psalms. On the contrary, we should humbly follow the example of the psalmist who wrote Psalm 139. Immediately following the heated plea that God "...would slay the wicked" (139:19), the tone of the psalm changes decisively. As the psalm concludes, the psalmist turns his eye inward, inviting divine scrutiny. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (139:23-24). This is the psalmist's way of acknowledging that the curse can boomerang and strike the speaker. The standard by which we judge others is the standard by which we will ourselves be judged.

Yet Jesus had some very strong things to say about the “vipers” and “whitewashed sepulchers” he encountered among the religious leadership of his day. Not only that, but Jesus talked forcefully about the judgment and destruction of those who continued to resist his grace-full offer of salvation. They would become those whom Jesus refused to acknowledge and who would join others who spend eternity weeping and gnashing their teeth in an outer darkness far from God. So, if we are serious about shaping our lives in imitation of Jesus, then we will have to name evil for what it is. We may also need to admit that our own limited experience may need to be challenged and expanded by the suffering and angry agony of a broken world. Maybe then we will truly learn how to read the psalms of imprecation honestly and faithfully. May it be so!