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Help me, Lord my God; save me according to your unfailing love. Let them know that it is your hand, that you, Lord, have done it. While they curse, may you bless; may those who attack me be put to shame, but may your servant rejoice. May my accusers be clothed with disgrace and wrapped in shame as in a cloak. (Psalm 109:26-29)

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There was a song that came on the country radio a decade or so ago now called \u201cPray for you.\u201d\xa0 It has lines like \u201cI pray your brakes go out running down a hill. I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill and knocks you in the head like I\u2019d like to.\u201d\xa0 Those lyrics probably make you cringe a little bit, right?\xa0 But they might not be quite so far from the Bible as we might piously think.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

Psalm 109 is the most imprecatory of the imprecatory psalms.\xa0 Imprecatory is a fancy word for a curse.\xa0 So to say: this is a cursing psalm.\xa0 Yes, says the Bible: there are times when even the person of faith needs to curse.\xa0 Maybe not quite like that country song did.\xa0 But close.

The psalmist goes on for 15 verses praying awful things toward their enemy.\xa0 Things like: \u201cmay his prayers condemn him\u2026\u201d \u201cmay his days be few\u2026\u201d \u201cmay a creditor seize all he has\u2026\u201d \u201cmay his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation.\u201d\xa0

Why all this hate?\xa0 Well, the psalmist identifies himself as one who is poor and needy, his heart wounded within him.\xa0 He has been a friend to this man he now prays against.\xa0 To describe this person, the psalmist says this: \u201che never thought of doing a kindness, but hounded to death the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted. He loved to pronounce a curse\u2014may it come back on him. He found no pleasure in blessing\u2014may it be far from him.\u201d\xa0

In short: this is a prayer that the one who would not bless be not blessed\u2014that the one who only cursed be cursed.\xa0 It\u2019s the golden rule.\xa0 May it be done unto him as he did it unto others.\xa0 May he get what he gave.

But notice that the psalmist does not take matters into his own hands.\xa0 For his part: the psalmist has been a friend.\xa0 The psalmist has loved this man, even though he has only received hate in return.\xa0 And so the psalmist lays it all out before God in prayer\u2014asking for the Lord of unfailing love to intervene on behalf of him: the one who has shown love.\xa0 Even though this enemy may dole out curses at the psalmists and all the other poor and needy people like him: the psalmist asks for God to transform those curses into blessing.\xa0 God, after all, is a God of love, of life, and of blessing.\xa0 Not of cursing, death, and destruction.\xa0

The Apostles saw Jesus in the words of the psalmist.\xa0 He was the one who loved his enemies unfailingly in the face of their curses and persecutions, even though it cost him his life.\xa0 The apostles saw Judas as the one this psalm is prayed against\u2014as the one who returned curse for blessing, hate for love.\xa0 They quote this psalm as evidence of the judgement of God when they select Judas\u2019 replacement in the book of Acts.

If nothing else, this psalm gives a second way for Christians to deal with the evil of this world.\xa0 Not only through words and prayers of lament: but also through prayers that ask God to curse those who curse.\xa0

But we do well to remember always that it is the Lord\u2019s to dole out the judgements\u2014not ours.\xa0 We can be brutally honest with God about what we\u2019ve experienced and what we\u2019d like to see done\u2014but it ends there by surrendering that prayer to God to work it out as he will.\xa0 God is the one who vindicates and God is the one who repays.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

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