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Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth. \u2026

The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked. Then people will say, \u201cSurely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.\u201d (Psalm 58:1-2,11)

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The world is full of injustice and violence.\xa0 There is nothing new under the sun.\xa0

This was David\u2019s complaint long ago.\xa0 He didn\u2019t blame it on fate, evil, the devil, or any other divine or impersonal force though: he blamed it on people.\xa0 Particularly on those with authority and responsibility to uphold justice and peace who had instead twisted the means at their disposal toward their own ends.\xa0 \xa0

We tend to be less precise in our blame for the evils of this world.\xa0 Sometimes we see the hand of the devil at work, other times it\u2019s the churn of impersonal systems that grinds people up in the gears, still other times we might blame it on our leaders, whether or not they had something to do with the issue.\xa0 Sometimes we simply blame it on the way the world is, which is akin to blaming it on fate.

But psalm 58 drives us back to facing ourselves as humans as the primary cause of injustice and violence in this world\u2014particularly those of us who have some measure of power and responsibility for others.\xa0 It is people who are wicked, and it would be difficult not to see ourselves in that condemnation, especially given David\u2019s description of the wicked in verse 3 that sounds eerily similar to the doctrine of original sin.

The pictures painted throughout this psalm are pointedly graphic.\xa0 The wicked are pictured as deaf cobras that cannot be tamed\u2014they slither unrelentingly for their own benefit using their power to bite and poison.\xa0 There is a prayer that God smash the teeth of these wicked, immature lions and cause them to disappear like water in the desert.\xa0 And finally at the end comes the most gruesome image of all: the avenged righteous dipping their feet in the blood of the wicked.

These sharply contrasting images would remind us that there are many people\u2014some of them among us and in our city\u2014who face violence and injustice that they cannot escape where the lines are very sharp indeed between oppressor and oppressed.\xa0 Some of us have felt this sort of helplessness ourselves.\xa0 This psalm is the cry of anyone who finds themselves in just that position: as the innocent afflicted one.

But this is perhaps a good spot to remember that Jesus was also a righteous innocent person.\xa0 Afflicted.\xa0 The rulers devised injustice against him.\xa0 They met out violence against him.\xa0 Their wickedness\u2014our wickedness as human people\u2014became manifest against him, putting him to death on the cross.\xa0 And this death of Jesus\u2014the lamb who was slain, but who became alive again\u2014becomes the backdrop of John\u2019s vision in Revelation.\xa0

As the battlefield image of blood-drenched fields from Psalm 58 is picked up by John, we take note that none of the violence of God that brings judgement and justice on the world is actual.\xa0 Jesus\u2019 sword comes from the words of his mouth.\xa0 And the only actual violence that shows up was the violence that Jesus himself absorbed from we human people as displayed in the wounded, but now living lamb.

Jesus himself took the punishment, the vengeance from God\u2019s justice, that should have been directed at the wicked, even though he was righteous.\xa0 And he did that so that we\u2014the wicked--might become righteous.\xa0 This is the shocking, humbling good news of our faith.\xa0 That we: sometimes innocent, sometimes wicked people, should receive the reward and vindication of the righteous.\xa0 \xa0

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