When we encounter tragic, senseless evil, we experience many different emotions. One of those is often anger. Anger is a complicated and conflicting emotion for us because we too often see anger go wrong. So how can we direct our anger in a righteous way?
The Psalms demonstrate to us that there is a place for anger in the Christian life. We refer to these Psalms as imprecatory psalms. That is, they are prayers in which one asks God to bring justice on evil. These imprecatory prayers help us voice an anger rightly kindled against all deviations from God’s will in this world. As such, they provide a divinely inspired script for us on such occasions.
In these psalms, God provides the vocabulary we need to pray against the injustices of this world, those who work against his kingdom causes. They liberate us from anxious helplessness, free us from seeking personal vengeance, and connect us to true power. This is what we are praying for in the second request of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” In asking for Christ’s kingdom to come, we are petitioning that all other competing kingdoms will fail and ultimately be destroyed in the judgment.
When to Pray
So when can we pray such prayers? There are several occasions in which praying these Psalms is appropriate. One of those is when God’s church, His treasured possession, is suffering harm. In Psalms 129 and 140, the psalmists are complaining against the humiliating abuse of Israel. The history of Israel had seen perennial instability and suffering from the beginning (from their “youth,” 129:2). Their persistent humiliation is captured by the image of plowing the back (129:3, cf. Isaiah 51:23). The book of Revelation explains why Israel experienced such mistreatment through history; it is because the Messiah has come through Israel (Revelation 12:2, 13). At the dawn of redemptive history God told Adam and Eve to anticipate a perpetual, cosmic and historic battle in which Satan would attempt to destroy the human line through which the Messiah would come (Genesis 3:15). Not only did God preserve Jesus’s ancestry; the Bible indicates He plans revival among the Jews that will in turn spark a worldwide ingathering of all ethnicities (Romans 11:11–12, 25–26). The protection of His covenant people in order to bring the Messiah is a confirming sign of God’s intent to preserve all His covenant people, including Gentiles grafted into Abraham’s line by faith in the same Messiah (Romans 11:17; Galatians 3:6–8). Therefore, we can pray with confidence that God will answer when we ask him to protect His church.
It is also appropriate to pray these prayers when wicked people put up barriers to stop the progress of the gospel. David wrote Psalm 140, and his concerns were for the chosen kingdom he ruled over, which he recognized as the typological rule of Christ. We know by his own example that he was not interested in personal vengeance, because when he had the opportunity to kill Saul, his main tormentor, he refused to take matters into his own hands (1 Samuel 24:10, 26). Therefore, his complaint about slanderous speech was not just because his feelings were hurt. Yes, he was concerned about his people. He knew that untruthful speech in his court could spell the deaths of many innocent people (Psalm 140:3). Likewise, if he were destroyed in a trap, it could destabilize his whole nation and make the existence of God’s chosen people insecure (vv. 1-2, 4-5). But the greater reason for his concern was that if he and his kingdom were destroyed, there would be no greater Son of David to accomplish salvation—Jesus Christ.
So, what does it look like to be concerned about attacks on God’s kingdom rather than being personally vindictive? It first involves interrogating our motives. For instance, when we are angry about a political situation, we should ask ourselves if it is because true worship is being impeded or if the church is being attacked or if the gospel cannot spread. Or are we just afraid our way of life and standard of living might be hindered? There are plenty of things about our culture that can provoke indignation. The question is: are they the same things that make God angry? You and I have to answer that before God.
While emphasizing a corporate concern for the kingdom, I do not want to give the impression that personal matters are never kingdom matters. The protection of your children, the defense of your character, the abuse of human rights, and the freedom to worship personally can all be matters that ultimately serve God’s eternal kingdom purposes and therefore warrant imprecatory prayers. The point is to stop and ask, “Is this a matter that God is ultimately concerned about or is this only a private concern?”
How to Pray
The psalmist also spurs us to transform our anger into strategic petitions. We are not expressing personal vengeance; we are praying for God to impede attacks against the church. Those impediments can come in several ways. Most commonly, the psalmists pray that attacks on the church would come to nothing. In Psalm 129:5, the psalmist pleads that those who “hate Zion” would be shamed. Sometimes shame means embarrassment in the Bible, but in the Psalter it usually refers to disappointment. That is what it means in these psalms—that the enemy’s efforts would be short-lived
Similarly, David prays in Psalm 140 that the “desires of the wicked” would not be granted (v. 8), that their plans would not “succeed” (v. 8, NIV), that “burning coals [would] fall on them,” and that they would be “thrown into the fire, into miry pits, never to rise” (v. 10, NIV). This is similar to the way David prayed in Psalm 58:8 (NIV), when he asked that they be like a “slug that melts away.” He was not thinking of their persons but the effectiveness of their work.
Finally, the psalmists lead us to pray for the destruction of all of God’s enemies. Usually in the Psalms, that destruction is pictured as one falling into a trap he laid for someone else. Therefore, if he slanders, his downfall will be slander. If he attacks with force, force will destroy him. It is what we call poetic justice: “[M]ay the mischief of their lips engulf them…Let the wicked fall into their own nets” (Psalm 140:9; 141:10).
Notice that when the psalmists make these prayers, they are asking God to execute justice, not that He would enable them to do so on his behalf. They realize that but for the grace of God, they would also be under judgment and be under the same sentence they ask God to execute against evildoers. Therefore, while they do pray for justice against evil (in vivid terms!), they do so from a place of gratitude for mercy on themselves, which enables them to leave justice to God.
Praying this way ensures we will be angry the right way. It ensures that the anger we feel so passionately at times will not result in rash words and actions against others. Because we have taken these things to a God who cares about justice and has promised He can and will execute justice, we can live at peace knowing we have made our petitions before God, leaving them in His hands.
Praying with Jesus
Finally, these are prayers we pray along with Christ. In other words, these are His prayers that we are called to imitate. I believe they are useful to the church, especially the anxious Christian, when prayed within the parameters I have discussed above.[1]
The final question is this: do these prayers really work? Does God really hear the prayers of His people and bring down those forces that are arrayed against them in this life? If you think through contemporary history, there are several bad guys who tormented God’s people, like Nicolae Ceausescu and Slobodan Milosevic, who are now nobodies. It’s not difficult to remember a few longer ago like Herod the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Adolf Hitler. Andree Seu Peterson helps us remember more:
You forgot about Haiti’s “Baby Doc” Duvalier, now living on handouts in France; Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, under tight security in Zimbabwe; Chilean dictator General Pinochet, an old man hunted; Paraguay’s General Alfredo Stroessner, hiding out in Brazil; Uganda’s Idi Amin, forgotten somewhere in Saudi Arabia; Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who once crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Republic, dressed in robes and shoes of pearl, perched upon a gold-plated throne shaped like an eagle, living in a marble palace lit by chandeliers. His extravagance ruined his country and he was overthrown, and fled.[2]
Even if you could only think of one, you would have to conclude with John Calvin: “When any one crime calls forth visible manifestations of His anger, it must be because He hates all crimes; and, on the other hand, His leaving many crimes unpunished only proves that there is a judgment in reserve, when the punishment now delayed shall be inflicted.”[3]
Give your anger to God, receive His mercy toward you in Jesus Christ, and pray for His kingdom to come and for all others to be extinguished to the glory of God.
For more on justice watch “The Bible’s Deep Definition and Application of Justice.”
[1] On this see Cal Beisner, Psalms of Promise: Celebrating the Majesty and Faithfulness of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994), 165–185; James Montgomery Boice, Psalms, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 885–886.
[2] Andrée Seu Peterson, “Valley of the Gods,” World (Novem- ber 11, 2000): 28.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 1.5.7.
This article was excerpted from Soul Anatomy.