If you follow me on Twitter you will have noticed by now that I am participating in a small project of the Stuff Christian Like blog to tweet through the Psalms. After reading Psalm 55 the other day I noted that “its easy for me to identify with David’s reliance on and praise of God in the Psalms, the calls for vengeance are tougher”.
Well, John Piper to save the day… On the Desiring God site he posted today an explanation of how to deal with this.
Psalm 58 is an imprecatory psalm. David asks God to tear out the fangs of his enemies, blunt their arrows, melt them like a snail in the sun.
We sometimes stumble at these psalms because Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27).
Can humble, obedient, loving Christians ever pray Psalm 58 and mean it the way the psalmist did?
Yes. Here is one possible scenario.
He goes on to walk through the Psalm verse by verse and explain the a scenario in which this is a very applicable prayer. He provides an excellent point of view on this Psalm, one that will definitely help my further readings.
