Original Meaning
The Complaint (109:1–5)
IN MANY WAYS PSALM 109 follows the general pattern of a lament psalm with the first five verses including an appeal to Yahweh for assistance amid threatening circumstances.8
That both the direct appeal and a general description of the crisis are explicated in these opening lines sets the tone for the curses to follow and a second plea for help later in the psalm (vv. 21–29), followed by a vow of praise (vv. 30–31).
Do not remain silent. The first five verses refer repeatedly to acts of speaking. In verse 1 the psalmist announces that he praises God, while a few verses later he explains that those around him continue to assault him with lying words. In the midst of this context, the psalmist pleads with Yahweh not to remain silent. The verb hrsh can mean “to keep silent,” but it can also mean “to be deaf.” The nominal form of the verb heresh actually refers to someone who is deaf (Isa 42:18). The plea for Yahweh not to remain silent is actually a plea for Yahweh not to remain deaf to the cry of the petitioner. The psalmist’s ears have been filled with false accusations from the enemy; having heard those accusations, the psalmist cannot remain silent any longer, and he calls upon Yahweh to do the same. The psalmist associates action with having been heard, so the fact that nothing has changed in his present circumstance suggests to the psalmist that Yahweh has not heard, that he remains silent.
Words of hatred. In verses 2–5 the psalmist rehearses the situation that has prompted this prayer. Verses 2–3a refer to acts of speech. In verse 2 the Hebrew reads literally, “a wicked mouth and a deceitful mouth” are against the psalmist. This claim is amplified in the following cola as the psalmist complains about the “lying tongues” and the hateful words that surround him (v. 3a). The chief complaint of the psalmist is that these individuals “attack” him “without cause” (v. 3b). Military metaphors are frequently employed in laments psalms (cf. Pss 35:1–3; 56:1–2; 120:1–7), and the pictures of being “surrounded” and “attacked” only heighten the imagery in this text. This imagery may serve as a corrective for those who cannot understand why the psalmist is so vexed by a little gossip (“lying tongues”). For him, such “words of hatred” are life-threatening.9
The social relationships of the psalmist have been skewed as loyalty and friendship (vv. 4a, 5b) have given way to accusation and hatred.
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
Original Meaning
Request for an Accuser (109:6–7)
GIVEN THE SERIOUSNESS OF HIS PREDICAMENT, the psalmist turns to God for help in the form of an extended request. Nearly every verse in this section contains an imperative or a jussive verbal form (“May”), with the accuser as the recipient of that plea.
Let an accuser stand at his right hand. In verse 6 the psalmist makes a request. As he has been charged by a wicked person (rasha‘ [v. 2]), the psalmist requests that a wicked person be appointed over those who have made false claims. In the second half of verse 6 the psalmist requests that an accuser, or satan, stand against the enemy. Although the word satan accrues additional meaning in later biblical texts, the meaning here suggests a prosecutor. The entire request by the psalmist is meant as a mockery of the judicial process under which he has been tried.
The psalmist requests that once the enemy is tried, “let him be found guilty.” The Hebrew word for “guilty” is rasha‘; those with wicked mouths (rasha‘ [v. 2a]) will be declared rasha‘, “wicked” or “guilty.” And even if the enemy offers up a plea to Yahweh, the psalmist requests that such a prayer would be considered something like “sin” (hata’ah; NIV “condem him”) or, better yet, that such a prayer would simply “miss the mark.”10
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
Original Meaning
Request for a Just Sentence (109:8–19)
LET HIM BE FOUND GUILTY. Following the psalmist’s request for a trial and, even further, that the enemy be found guilty, the psalmist then provides a lengthy list of presumed punishments that should be exacted upon the enemy. Such an unadulterated list of curses challenges the modern reader. May his life be cut short (v. 8). May his wife and children endure a meager future as beggars (v. 10). May all his property be seized and his descendants blotted out (v. 13). The psalmist even requests that this curse be retroactive and that the enemy’s mother and father have their sins “be remembered before the LORD” (v. 15). The apparent vitriol in verses 8–15, however, may best be understood if the reader considers the psalmist’s claim in verses 16–19.
He . . . hounded to death the poor. The psalmist offers a rationale for why the enemy is deserving of such a harsh sentence. In verse 16 the enemy is chastised for having never remembered to show hesed (“kindness”) to the “poor and the needy” or the brokenhearted but, instead, hounded them to death. To those in need the enemy showed no compassion. Not only did the enemy fail to show compassion to the most vulnerable, he actually thrived on the cursing of others (v. 17). To be more precise, the Hebrew in verse 17 actually says, “He loved cursing and it entered him.”11
The psalmist then offers an extended simile to illustrate how deeply seated this propensity to curse others was for the enemy.12
He wore cursing like a garment that wrapped about him. Like water and oil that soaks into the body, so too had curses saturated this enemy. Yet unlike water that can be lost through normal bodily functions or like oil whose effects gradually dissipate, for this enemy the proclivity to cursing is like a “belt tied forever around him.”
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
Original Meaning
Request for Deliverance (109:20–25)
IN THIS SECOND REQUEST FOR DELIVERANCE the psalmist invokes two images, one for Yahweh and the other for the psalmist. The first image references Yahweh as the covenantal partner of the psalmist. He cries out in verse 21, “But you, Sovereign LORD,” which invokes both Yahweh’s covenantal name as well as his position within the covenantal relationship. In addition, the psalmist pleads with Yahweh for the sake of Yahweh’s name or, better yet, for the sake of his reputation. In patron-client relationships, the failure of the patron to act would certainly have brought shame and discredit to the patron.13
The psalmist then requests that Yahweh deliver him “out of the goodness of your love.” The word hesed (“love”) appears again in this psalm, and once again it suggests covenantal faithfulness and loyal love. The psalmist pleads with Yahweh, his lord, to do his good work by demonstrating his faithfulness to the psalmist amid such dire circumstances.
The second image is that of the psalmist. Whereas Yahweh is depicted as the master, capable of delivering the psalmist (v. 21b), the psalmist describes himself as the servant, one of the “poor and needy.” The enemy was chastised for hounding the poor and needy to death earlier in the psalm (v. 16), but in this section Yahweh’s faithfulness to the poor and needy is foundational to the psalmist’s claim. By declaring himself among the poor and needy, the psalmist invokes the royal responsibility of Yahweh to act on behalf of the poor and needy, including the psalmist himself. The subsequent metaphors in verse 23 suggest that the life of the psalmist is gradually being extinguished; it is fading away like an evening shadow. The image of the locust could be interpreted in one of two ways. Like a locust easily shaken off one’s garments, so too is the life of the psalmist. Peter Riede, in his study of metaphors in the psalms, suggests that this metaphor might allude to the practice of rising early in the morning to shake the locusts off the trees or other structures to be boiled or fried.14
The implication is that without the aid of Yahweh, life is quickly coming to a disastrous end.
The psalmist shifts from metaphorical language about the psalmist’s life and the nearness of its end in verse 23 to a more graphic description of his body in verse 24. The psalmist appears as an emaciated figure, worn down and weary. Although the NIV explains that his knees “give way from fasting,” the meaning of the text is captured better in John Goldingay’s translation, “My knees have collapsed from hunger.”15
The psalmist has grown thin and emaciated; his very appearance invokes the scorn of others.
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
Original Meaning
Request for Deliverance (109:26–29)
THE PREVIOUS PETITION IN VERSES 21–25 gave attention to the plight of the psalmist with the intent of stirring Yahweh to action. The third petition of the psalmist appears in verses 26–29, where attention turns to the enemy. In verse 26 the psalmist pleads for Yahweh to save him “according to your unfailing love” (hesed). The same word appears in the first verse of the previous petition (v. 21) as well. The NIV, however, translates hesed as “love” in verse 21 and “unfailing love” in verse 26, thus, unfortunately, missing the intended connection seen between the two petitions.16
Both petitions begin by laying claim to the significance of Yahweh’s hesed; Yahweh will act for the sake of his name (v. 21); his action is rooted in his covenantal loyalty (vv. 21, 26).
The psalmist draws heavily from the language of cursing and blessing as well as honor and shame. The cursing of the psalmist by the enemies has led to great shame. The psalmist acknowledges that the enemies have the power to curse (v. 28), but he also believes that Yahweh has the power to bless—a power that is greater than that of the enemy. The psalmist, therefore, requests that Yahweh bless him (v. 28b) while clothing the accusers in shame (v. 29). At first glance such a request may appear retaliatory, but in a culture dominated by honor and shame, if Yahweh shows his “hand,” delivers the psalmist, and clears the psalmist of any wrong, then the enemies have lost face. They are “wrapped in shame as in a cloak” (v. 29). Even as the enemies had worn cursing as a garment (v. 18), their garments of cursing (and presumed power) will be replaced with a garment of shame (v. 29) once Yahweh acts.
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
Original Meaning
Promise of Praise (109:30–31)
THE POEM CONCLUDES IN A MANNER typical of a lament psalm by promising worship of Yahweh and declaration of his name in the presence of others. In the final verse the psalmist concludes by claiming that Yahweh “stands at the right hand of the needy” to deliver them. This declaration appears to function as a response to the opening claim in the psalm. In verse 1 the psalmist pleads for Yahweh to remain silent no longer (v. 1). For the poet, the silence of God appears inextricably linked to the inactivity of God. In the opening of the psalm he suggests that God’s perceived inactivity and silence suggest something of God’s apparent absence in the midst of the situation of great suffering and unjust accusation. Despite this apparent silence, the psalmist can do nothing else but confess what he knows to be true, namely, that God stands at the “right hand” of the needy. In the end, the psalmist does not allow injustice and the resulting despair to define his world. On the contrary, he declares that God will stand alongside those unjustly accused, including the psalmist himself. According to him, this God will stand “at the right hand of the needy.” Earlier in the psalm the poet self-describes as “poor and needy” (v. 22). By declaring in the final verse that Yahweh stands at the right hand of the needy, the psalmist asserts his belief that God must be standing alongside him as well.17
Bridging Contexts
GOD OF JUSTICE. The rhetoric of Psalm 109, and particularly the language found in verses 6–19, can become a stumbling block for many readers. The explicit requests by the psalmist for God to destroy the enemy and make the enemy’s family vulnerable leaves the modern reader uneasy at best, if not theologically flummoxed. Instead of reflecting on this challenging text more deeply in an effort to explore the theological claims found in such a psalm, many readers understandably ignore it, thus jettisoning it from their own “canon within a canon.” Yet even on such a challenging psalm as this, extended reflection is profitable.
Within Psalm 109 there are theological strands that remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. One of the theological strands that spans both testaments is the notion of justice, and in particular the notion of Yahweh’s role as the God of justice. In the case of Psalm 109, the psalmist does not bring his complaint to God because he believes God is “on his side” or because he believes God is a vindictive or even vengeful god. Instead, the psalmist brings his petition to God because he understands God as the God of justice, the one who seeks to make things right. Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld actually reject the claim that this psalm should be labeled “a psalm of cursing and vengeance.” On the contrary, they suggest that this psalm should be called a “justice psalm” because of the psalmist’s reliance upon God to provide justice.18
This theological tenet (i.e., Yahweh is the God of justice) is found repeatedly in the prophetic literature. The prophet Amos, for example, alludes specifically to injustice in the courts in Amos 5:1–17. Amos roundly condemns those who lie in court (v. 10), those who take bribes, and those who deprive the poor (v. 12). At the center of this lengthy indictment, Yahweh announces, “I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins” (v. 12). As a result of such injustice, Yahweh announces that he will pass through their midst in judgment (v. 17). In short, the prophet Amos announces to those in the Northern Kingdom that injustice will not and cannot go unobserved by the God of justice. Not only will God see it—he will also respond to it.
Not surprisingly, this theme appears in the New Testament. James indicts the rich for egregious displays of wealth while failing to pay fair wages to those who worked for them. Worse yet, the rich oppressors condemn and murder those who are innocent (Jas 5:6). James warns the wealthy oppressors that the cries of the victims have “reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (Jas 5:4). Similar to the message communicated by the prophet Amos and the writer of Psalm 109, the message of James assumes that because God hears the cries of the oppressed, God will act.
In the opening strophe of Psalm 109, the psalmist outlines the injustice before him. He has been falsely accused, his enemies have spoken with “lying tongues,” and they have uttered “words of hatred” (vv. 2b–3a). As a result of such injustice and its effects, the psalmist refers to himself three times, each time using a verbless clause. In such clauses the first-person pronoun “I” is used plus a description of the “I” but without using a verb. These references tell us something about the psalmist’s sense of identity. Two are worth noting in particular. In verse 22, the psalmist confesses, “I am poor and needy.” In verse 25 he declares that, as a result of the unjust accusations, he has become an “object of scorn.” These labels position the psalmist as one without power, one unable to right this wrong. Because of his powerlessness in the face of injustice, the psalmist calls upon the God of justice to help him (vv. 21, 26) and to save him (v. 26).
Contemporary Significance
GIVEN THE CHALLENGING NATURE of this psalm and its exclusion from the lectionary, the modern reader might question whether there is, in fact, any “contemporary significance” at all for a psalm such at this one. If, however, all Scripture is indeed “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training” (2 Tim 3:16), then Psalm 109 must have some word for the communities of faith that still understand it as part of its Scripture. To communicate rightly the contemporary significance of this psalm requires sound exegesis and careful theological construction. In biblical interpretation it is always possible to make interpretive moves that are less than desirable and often lead to troubling theological conclusions. Likewise, it is possible to choose interpretive moves that can and should be made—moves that allow the interpretive conclusions to remain consistent with the larger witness of Scripture. An example of each approach is considered below.
Praying people to death. Regrettably, in the history of the Christian tradition this psalm has often been used to “pray someone to death.” In other words, this psalm has been understood as a “curse psalm” in every sense of the word. In particular, Psalm 109:8–9 has been prayed against others to ask that a person’s “days be few,” thereby making his children orphans and his wife a widow. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Psalms, notes this frequent use of the psalm in his own time. He explains:
All the more to be condemned is the sacrilege committed by the monks, especially the Franciscans, when they desecrate this psalm. For it is no secret that anyone who has a deadly enemy he [or she] wants to ruin employs one of these villains to recite the psalm daily against him [or her].19
During the eighteenth century some people believed one needed only to pray this psalm for an entire year plus nine days in order to have its mortal effect upon a person’s enemy. Erich Zenger notes this type of usage was prevalent in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Swabia well into the ninteenth century.20
Such uses of the Scriptures were rooted in local superstition and a clear misunderstanding of the function of the biblical text.
One would like to hope that congregations and Christians no longer fall prey to such misuse of this psalm, but in an overly politicized and radically polemicized culture, such as the type found in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Christians are invited into this kind of misreading. Sadly, Psalm 109 has made its way into the headlines as pastors and other religious leaders have invited persons to pray its verse 8 against the President of the United States and other leaders. Bumper stickers ask for people to pray for our leaders, and then they include Psalm 109:8. When asked, most of those advocating for such use of these psalms have acknowledged that they are indeed praying for the death of another person.
Regardless of one’s view of another person, responsible biblical interpretation cannot allow such use of the psalm to go unchecked. As Zenger suggests, to pray someone to death collides with the overall meaning of the psalm itself.21
Moreover, such a reading fails to consider verse 8, and Psalm 109 as a whole, within the larger canonical witness of Scripture. As some have suggested, such use of this verse is tantamount to making it a talisman. The complexities of our world, however, demand a much richer and far more profound reading of this psalm.
Praying for justice amid injustice. How then does Psalm 109 assist the modern reader in thinking about such weighty matters as justice and injustice? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright wrestles with the question of evil and injustice in the world. In the second chapter of the book, Wright teases out four ways in which the Old Testament attempts to wrestle with this notion. In the conclusion to that chapter Wright explains:
The Old Testament never tries to give us the sort of picture the philosophers want, that of a static world order with everything explained tidily. At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep it in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God’s project of justice within a world of injustice.22
Psalm 109 confronts us with the injustice of which Wright speaks. For most readers of this commentary, however, personal exposure to injustice is limited at best. Or put differently, few of us understand this psalm fully because few of us understand the impact of life-altering injustice. Rarely have we seen the kind of raw injustice that leaves a person fading away like an evening shadow or feeling shaken off like a locust (v. 23). Few of us have witnessed a person waste away beneath the oppressive weight of injustice. Only on rare occasions have we sat with a person whose world has become so consumed by the sounds of injustice that the silence of God seems deafening. But if we have seen such a person, or if we ourselves have been that person, then a psalm like Psalm 109 makes more sense. This psalm invites the reader into a world filled with injustice. The jarring nature of the psalm itself is meant, in some sense, to replicate the jarring, life-altering, life-taking nature of injustice. To speak of injustice in docile and hushed terms, as perhaps we may prefer, only masks the devastating work of injustice in the world. The language of this psalm strips away such a veneer, thus exposing the inhumanity experienced by one trapped by injustice.
This psalm is about justice and injustice. Those who seek to “pray someone to death” are asking the wrong question. They seem to be asking, “Who is my enemy?” and “Against whom should I pray this psalm?” Those who desire to pray for justice, however, are asking a far different question. Those who desire justice are asking, “In whom can I trust and in whom can the oppressed person trust amid the scorn of injustice?” In the first instance, the person praying appears focused on the enemy. In the second, the prayer is focused on the Deliverer. In short, the hope of the psalmist, and the hope of all who endure injustice, is rooted in God’s hesed (“unfailing love”). This psalm asks us to acknowledge injustice but then to declare that injustice does not have the final word. Our prayers are meant to be joined with all those seeking justice so together we might proclaim that the God we serve is indeed a God of justice.
