“Let their table become a snare before them : and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not ; and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate, and let none dwell in their tents.”—
PSALM lxxix. 22-25.
THIS is a part of one of those Psalms which are nowadays depreciatingly spoken of as Imprecatory. They are thought to be unworthy of a Christian audience. The reason for this depreciation is that David in such Psalms is supposed to be giving expression to his private grudges against his opponents. Well, it may be at once allowed that, if that were the real meaning of these imprecations, they would be unworthy of a Christian congregation. But, to suppose that such could be the meaning, were to miss the meaning of Scripture entirely. No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation or excitation. Those awful words, as we call them, which David uses in the sixty-ninth Psalm, did not come by the will of David at all, nor had they his private enemies as their object. He spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter i. 20-21), and uttered only the pure judgments of God. We have no certainty how many, if any, of David’s contemporaries were the objects of the imprecation implied in the verses quoted as our heading. We are certain that they had for their object some who did not live in David’s days at all. The Apostles Peter and Paul look upon these words of imprecation as being the pure judgments of God, and interpret them as having a predictive aspect. Peter (Acts i. 20) understood David to speak in verse 25th of our Psalm, concerning Judas Iscariot. “This man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity, and, falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. . . . For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein.’” Paul (Romans xi. 9-10) gives the words of our Psalm a still wider reference, taking them to be the declaration of God’s judgment upon his ancient people, Israel, because of their contempt of the Messiah. These judgments of God are a great deep. He punishes sin by permitting the sinner to fall into deeper sins, and the result is a heaping up of wrath against the day of wrath. But if God’s judgments are deep as floods, His justice in them is as mountains great.
It is from this point of view, then, that we must interpret the words of Psalm lxxix. 22, 23, as well as many other passages like them throughout the Scriptures. If we imagine that they are only private animosities on the part of the Scripture writers, we simply give the lie to Christ, and to His Apostles in their understanding of Holy Scripture, and we make it impossible to worship God in such portions of His Word as are now under consideration. But the true view is that of Christ and of His Apostles, who, in imprecations uttered by the writers of Scripture, understood no spleen on the part of Psalmist or Prophet, but the calm, deep, pure, awful judgment of God upon impenitent sinners. Taking the words under consideration in this sense, the spiritually minded will worship God in them. For an Apostle calls us to a beholding not alone of the kindness of God, but of the severity of God too (Romans xi. 22), and a Psalmist will lead us in singing not of mercy alone but of judgment also (Psalm ci.). We may surely suppose that the revelation which God will give of Himself on the great day of judgment is one in which the righteous will rejoice, and according to which they will worship Him. But according to Christ’s teaching, the Judge will as assuredly that day say, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,” as He will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father” (Matt. xxv. 34, 41).
The considerations already adduced ought, if rightly received, to tune our minds so as to adopt the words before us of the sixty-ninth Psalm, and others like them, in our worship not only reverently but even lovingly. For further help, however, in the same direction, consider that the fundamental speaker in the sixty-ninth Psalm is Christ Himself. In proof of that assertion, over and above the place cited in Acts i. and Romans xi., see also John ii. 17 and xix. 29. There may be some who take it upon themselves to speak concerning the severity and concerning the kindness of God, who themselves know little of one or the other of these perfections of God. Such was not the way with Christ. He had an experiential knowledge of the severity of God. The cup could not pass from Him without His drinking it. Because He would save others, Himself could not escape the sword. Thus in our present Psalm the guilt of those who are the objects of the imprecation under consideration is that they persecuted Him whom God had smitten, that they talked to the grief of God’s wounded. Christ had a personal experiential knowledge of God’s perfection as severity, for He was the object of the sword’s awakening and smiting, of which we read in Zechariah xiii. 7. And yet, as one has put it, although it was damnation, Christ took it lovingly. Need it be pointed out that Christ had a profound experiential knowledge of the goodness or kindness of God. What other do we read of in Psalm xvi. 11, “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy”? Or in our present Psalm: “I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving”?
Seeing, then, that the just judgments of God, which are declared in these imprecations to which we are now drawing attention, come from the heart of Christ, who had such a profound experiential knowledge of the severity and kindness of God, and, in fact, rejoiced as none else could in these perfections of God, we ought not to be driven away from God or from His Word on account of them, but we ought to be afraid of hardening our heart against His fear, whilst, at the same time, we should have the assurance that His delight is in mercy, and that, in confessing our sins on the head of Him who had a perfect experiential knowledge of mercy and of judgment, we ourselves shall be delivered from the severity which we deserved, and made to experience a kindness which we did not deserve.