Chris Carter

There is much to be gained by singing and praying the Psalms. Aldo Leon has compelling sermons on the benefits of doing so here and here. In short, the Psalms teach us how to pray, and how to sing. They are divinely inspired songs and hymns and prayers, serving as precise regulation of God on how his people are to sing and pray to Him.

In a day of happy slappy Christianity and worship songs from Big Eva Christian Music Inc. (which are theologically and spiritually shallower than a plate of cereal), the Psalms provide guidance for how we are to approach God in the sundry circumstances of everyday life. Are you grieving? Sing Psalm 6. Are you victorious? Sing Psalm 21. Are you praising God? Sing Psalm 150. Are you vexed over the wicked? Sing Psalm 37. Are you in sin? Sing Psalm 51.

One aspect of the Psalms that is missing from our prayer and song lives in the anemic state of the church today is their imprecatory content. An imprecation is simply a curse against someone, and an imprecatory psalm is a petition to God to curse one’s enemy for their wicked deeds.

Psalm 109 is an example of such a psalm. It is not a request for God to crush the wicked in general; it is directed towards the psalmist’s wicked adversary. The psalmist has been wronged and damaged personally; this is someone the psalmist knows.

For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. (Psalm 109:2)

As a result, the psalmist is petitioning God to utterly destroy and curse this enemy. He expounds his petition to God with curse after curse, in specificity and detail.

Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. (Psalm 109:8-12)

These curses continue for many more verses beyond these. They fall not only upon the temporal life of the accursed and his family, but also upon the spiritual and eternal life of him as well.

Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. (Psalm 109:6-7)

The modern anemic evangelical church would balk if a Christian prayed these kinds of prayers today. We fear that if we pray such prayers, we will open ourselves up to the kind of bitterness, resentment, and vengeance that our Lord tells us not to endulge in. My thesis is that our omission of imprecatory singing and praying is gives bitterness and vengeance a foothold, and compromises the ability of Christians to properly hate wickedness.

We must remember that the same Jesus who said this:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:44-45)

Also inspired the writing of Psalm 109. There is no contradiction here. You can love your enemies and also hate them. You can pray that their prayers are not heard, and also pray for their salvation. You can even do good for your enemy without bitterness, or resentment, or vengance, yet knowing, expecting, and trusting God that judgement awaits him for it.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. (Romans 12:20)

For the Christian, who has recieved new life and a new mind from God to love Him and love His law, it is entirely natural to hate wickedness and the wicked who commit it. If you are in Christ, you should earnestly desire to see God bring justice against those who do great evil; you should praise God that he will heap coals of fire upon the head of your wicked enemy whom you have done good to. You should hate the wicked.

Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies. (Psalm 139:21-22)

And yet, you should not desire vengeance against the wicked. Those who do so are in great sin, acting from the flesh and contrary to the very law they claim to avenge.

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. (Deuteronomy 32:35)

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

Imprecatory songs and prayers are the key to both hating the wicked and yet refraining from vengeance. They’re a pressure relief valve which allows the Christian to express their utter hatred for iniquity in their enemies, and yet ensure them that they do not need to take revenge against their enemies. They teach the soul to hate transgressions of God’s law by declaring, “God, my enemy is wicked!”. Yet they leave no room for vengeance, for prayer is the chief act of faith, as Calvin says. Imprecatory prayer is therefore faith that God will deal with the wicked. It says, “God, deal with this enemy!”, thus freeing you up to feed him, give him drink, and pray for him.

This reality is even at play within the imprecatory psalms themselves. The psalmist is boiling over with hatred, yet goes to God to deal with it.

For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer. (Psalm 109:4)

If you don’t pray imprecatory prayers and sing imprecatory psalms, you are missing out on the ultimate solution to dealing with the spiritual condition this psalmist finds himself in. You will either hate evil, and yet refrain from vengeance by stewing on it and ranting about it and cultivating bitterness in your heart because of it, or worse, you will seek to release the pressure by compromising on the evil of your enemy.

We have fallen into the latter in evangelicalism. We capitulate to abortionism, feminism, and homosexuality, to the point of welcoming these iniquities even into our churches. We outright withdraw from confronting evil with escapist eschatologies, hoping the rapture comes soon. We develop ahistorical emasculated public theologies which divorce the clear teaching of scripture from political engagement, like the neutered Radical Two Kingdoms (R2K) theology from Escondido. We speak in soft, pacifistic, feminine tones, careful not to speak against evil too harshly lest we be “unwinsome” and damage our “witness” with the world. Our sermons against homosexuality and transgenderism open with a 20 minute laundry list of qualifications to appease the effeminate in the congregation.

Why is this? Why do we have such an unmasculine, anemic, and simplistic understanding of the Christian life? I would wager it is because we do not have the scriptures. We naval-gaze at justification by faith alone, and neglect study of the law, the covenants, the prophets, the writings, the typology, and the wisdom of the word. We must read the word, and pray the word, and sing the word, and so internalize the word that its ways become our ways, and its dispositions our dispositions.