A former Navy Chaplin was sued by an atheist organization who discovered that the former Chaplin was saying the prayer hoping that God would bring harm to the atheist and his organization. Which leads me to a recent news article. According to USA Today, there are people who are "praying" Psalm 109 against their enemies. Psalm 109 can help us realize that not everyone in the Bible had feelings of love for everyone, but asking God to kill the children of your enemy does not reflect the cruciform way that we should be viewing all of life. So while Psalm 109 may provide us some insights to the way the ancients felt and even expressed themselves to God, it is not necessarily a prayer we should pray. Jesus calls us instead to love our enemies. Jesus acknowledges in Matt 5:43-46 that the prevailing wisdom of the day was to love your neighbor but hate your enemy. You wonder if Jesus had ever read this Psalm when he was giving the Sermon on the Mount. 15 May their sins always remain before the LORD, that he may blot out their name The LORD may the sin of his mother neverīe blotted out. 14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before 13 May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the 12 May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherlessĬhildren. 11 May a creditor seize all he has may strangers plunder the fruits 10 May his children be wandering beggars may they be driven from 9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. 8 May his days be few may another take his place of 7 When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayers condemn him. And while we may feel and even pray this way sometimes, we also know that Jesus calls on us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt 5:44).īut what do we with all of those imprecatory Psalms? You know, the ones where the Psalmist asks God to come down and stomp out the Psalmist's enemies by making their lives hell on earth.
And we are all probably guilty of sending little wish prayers up that sound something like: "Lord, I would be most grateful if you would ring so and so's neck." Or we might wish that the Lord "would move them on" to another church, job, town, etc. They are people with whom we may disagree or find that they get under our skin. We all have people in life that we don't like, don't get along with or simply wish would go away.
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