Psalm 79- Impecatory Psalms

Psalm 79 

Bible scholars call Psalm 79 an Imprecatory Psalm. The Imprecatory Psalms are a group of psalms that invoke judgement, or curses on enemies. They are among the more uncomfortable and difficult to process. I’ll read a few examples for you. 

From today’s Psalm 79:6-7-

Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call upon your name! For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.

From Psalm 109:8-9, 17-18-

May his days be few
may another take his office! May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow!
He loved to curse; let curses come upon him! He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him! He clothed himself with cursing as his coat; may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones!

And from Psalm 69:22-25

Let their own table before them become a snare; and when they are at peace, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be a desolation; let no one dwell in their tents.

And from Psalm 137:1, 8-9

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion….

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

These are uncomfortable words. And yet, they are in the Bible, so we have to try to understand what we are to do with them.

To our modern ears, they are especially hard to hear because of how Jesus has taught us to deal with our enemies. He teaches us to love our enemies, not spit curses at them. So, there are some who think these psalms don’t have a place in our worship services because they reflect a different age that dealt with enemies in a way that wasn’t informed by Christ. For this reason, when these psalms come up in our lectionary, they are often heavily edited to remove the uncomfortable bits.

It is important to remind ourselves of what the pastor Eugene Peterson said, 

“Psalms don’t pray as we should, they pray as we are”.

 It is easy for us to look at the psalms from our comfortable pews and judge them as terrible. … But we should look at them when we are being sued by a neighbour. Or when we have been raped. Or when our child has died because of a drunk driver. Or when a rebel army has attacked our village and killed our family, and stolen our little boy to be a child soldier. … That is when we should look at these psalms. The “Psalms don’t pray as we should, they pray as we are”. Sometimes everything in us calls out for vengence and the destruction of those who have hurt us.

Our Psalm was probably written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem by an enemy army, probably the Babylonian empire. The most holy place in all Judaism, the temple, has been desecrated. The dead were not given a respectful burial, which is very important for the Jewish people. Instead their loved ones were left in the open to become food for crows and wild dogs, which is particularly disgraceful and dishonouring.

If we always pray “as we should”, then we are not acknowledging where we are. We aren’t recognizing our darkness. Sometimes we have to admit how we feel and not how we think we should feel. Ignoring our darkness will not remove it. … Offering it to God will start transforming it. Sometimes that is where our call for justice starts. It starts with the painful recognition that something terrible has happened and we lament, and rage, and call for justice to be done. We start with what we are feeling. … We don’t have to stay there, but we need to recognize it.

The Imprecatory Psalms are the cries of those who have been wronged- those who have felt deep injustice. These are honest and painful words, but they include God in their desires for vengence. They don’t feel they need to get go out and give their rage to their enemy, they offer it to God, in all their darkness and honesty. They give God their cry for vengence. They leave their anger with God, rather than pouring their wrath on the person they are angry at. … As uncomfortable as these psalms are, we would do well to immitate them in our own anger and desire for vengence. Giving it to God is often the first step in healing the anger of the wrong that has been done to us.

These Psalms also recognize that there is real injustice and real wickedness in the world that needs to be confronted. Sometimes there is change that is required in the world, and the Psalmist is crying out for that change. The injustice and wickedness are real and they call for God to deal with that in a real way. We can sometimes be in danger of ignoring that need for real change. John Calvin taught that wickedness requires punishment. So these psalms ask for that punishment that justice requires. Change is truly needed in the world and these psalms recognize that. …

The church has often read these psalms in a deeper way than we are used to reading. We often read the Bible the way we would read a newspaper. We read too quickly and without taking time to meditate on what is being said. The Church often saw multiple layers in these psalms. The Catholic Theologian Peter Kreeft has said, 

“the cursing passages cannot, of course, be used by Christians unless we interpret them spiritually and remember that ‘we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12). We must hate sin, as the psalms and psalmists do; but we must not hate sinners, even if the psalmists did, failing to distinguish the two. Everything in Scripture is for our instruction, but not everything is for our imitation.”

For example, when the Ancient Christians read about dashing little ones against the rock (Ps 137), they didn’t imagine killing the child of an enemy nation. They read that to mean taking tempting thoughts, while they were still small, before they developed into sinful habits, and dashing them against Christ, the rock.

Origen: “…give up to destruction all their enemies, which are the vices, so that they do not spare even the children, that is, the early beginnings and promptings of evil. … for ‘the little ones’ of Babylon (which signifies confusion) are those troublesome sinful thoughts that arise in the soul, and one who subdues them by striking , as it were, their heads against the firm and solid strength of reason and truth, is the person who ‘dashes the little ones against the stones’; and he is therefore truly blessed.”

Ambrose: “…dash all corrupt and filthy thoughts against Christ…”

 They saw that their true enemies were the destructive systems of humanity, the devil, and their own inner desire to sin. These were what destroyed humanity. These were what drove their neighbours to betray each other. These were what led armies to destroy cities. The battle was not against flesh and blood, there were forces behind all these injustices and cruelties. To deal with them truly is to deal with them at their root. 

These parts of Scripture can make us feel uncomfortable, but the Bible is about real life. It is written by people who have dealt with all the circumstances human beings deal with- including tragedy and injustice and the desire for vengeance. God asks us to bring it all to him. God doesn’t want us to put on a mask as we approach Him in prayer. He wants us as we are. We are his beloved children and how we feel is how he wants us to come to him- even when we are at our darkest. AMEN






“The enemies referred to here are enemies of the cause of God, who lay hands on us for the sake of God. It is therefore nowhere a matter of personal conflict. … therefore he must dismiss from his own mind all thought of personal revenge. …The prayer for the vengeance of God is the prayer for the execution of his righteousness in the judgment of sin. … I myself, with my sin, belong under this judgment. I have no right to want to hinder this judgment. … God’s vengeance did not strike sinners, but the one sinless man who stood in the sinner’s place, namelt God’s own Son. … that was the end of all phony thoughts about the love of God which do not take sin seriously. … Only in the cross of Jesus Christ is the love of God to be found. Thus the imprecatory psalm leads to the cross of Jesus and to the love of God which forgives enemies. I cannot forgive the enemies of God out of my own resources. Only the crucified Christ can do that, and I through him. … I leave the vengeance to God and ask him to execute his righteousness to all his enemies… ” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer