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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)

There was a song that came on the country radio a decade or so ago now called “Pray for you.”  It has lines like “I 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’d like to.”  Those lyrics probably make you cringe a little bit, right?  But they might not be quite so far from the Bible as we might piously think.    

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

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

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

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

But notice that the psalmist does not take matters into his own hands.  For his part: the psalmist has been a friend.  The psalmist has loved this man, even though he has only received hate in return.  And so the psalmist lays it all out before God in prayer—asking for the Lord of unfailing love to intervene on behalf of him: the one who has shown love.  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.  God, after all, is a God of love, of life, and of blessing.  Not of cursing, death, and destruction. 

The Apostles saw Jesus in the words of the psalmist.  He was the one who loved his enemies unfailingly in the face of their curses and persecutions, even though it cost him his life.  The apostles saw Judas as the one this psalm is prayed against—as the one who returned curse for blessing, hate for love.  They quote this psalm as evidence of the judgement of God when they select Judas’ 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.  Not only through words and prayers of lament: but also through prayers that ask God to curse those who curse. 

But we do well to remember always that it is the Lord’s to dole out the judgements—not ours.  We can be brutally honest with God about what we’ve experienced and what we’d like to see done—but it ends there by surrendering that prayer to God to work it out as he will.  God is the one who vindicates and God is the one who repays.