‘break the teeth of the wicked!’
If you have ever experienced praying by using the psalms you will know the experience of flying along on the words of an inspired ancient prayer and feeling as if the writer has given you back some of your own prayers back in a better, truer form than you ever had to begin with. It’s transporting.
‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ Amen.
‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ Amen!
‘Strike my enemies on the jaw, break the teeth of the wicked’. Ah, what?
In the space of a verse your prayer wings are stripped off and you plummet to earth, dazed and confused.
What do you do with lines of vengeance? How can you pray them? ‘Strike my enemies’ (Psalm 3: 7) has the same rhythm as ‘Love your enemies’ (Mt 5:55) but they are clearly not singing the same tune. What should we do about this?
Firstly, we have to learn how to think about it, then we can learn how to pray it.
How to Think About it
When we encounter violence from past times we automatically think that those people then were less developed and were basically unreconstructed cave-dwellers. We imagine ourselves beyond such blood. This is historical self-deception, but that rant is for another day.
There are things we must remember about the vengeance of the Psalms.
They are calls to God for vengeance, not us
We hear ‘Strike my enemies’ and imagine ourselves praying it and rightly stop right there. We know we couldn’t make that call. Our enemies are not all wrong, and we are certainly not all right.
But the important thing is not that the psalmists ask God to do vengeance, it’s that they ask God to do vengeance. This makes all the difference for two reasons.
- Because God loves the truth
You can’t think of the psalmist calling on God like he is a big stick. They know who He is. He is the God who loves truth and justice. That’s why they call out to him! Listen,
‘You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.’ (Psalm 10:17-18)
So you see, they call on God because he is able to know what is true and do what is right and just. Vengeance is not bad in the bible, it’s just bad when we do it. This is why the New Testament says
‘Do not repay anyone evil for evil….do not take revenge’, and adds ‘but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay”, says the Lord.’
Our vengeance is bad, but God’s vengeance is justice. Think about it – every time a judge hands down a proportionate sentence – we call it justice, but it is the same thing as good vengeance.
2. Because God loves the enemy
The New Testament reminds us of something else. Not only does God love truth and so do justice – he also loves the enemy. Even the one he strikes. When Jesus tells us to ‘love your enemies’ (Matthew 5:44) he says ‘so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’ See, God loves the enemy. After all, we were God’s enemies when he loved us and sent Jesus to die for us, his enemies. (Romans 5:8)
So you see, God loves truth and justice enough to strike truly, and he even loves those he strikes.
So there can be no suggestion that this is religious cave-dwellers simply calling for blood. These are victims of evil calling for justice. They entrust that justice to God, not themselves. If only we would.
How to Pray It
So then, how can you pray this stuff?
- Don’t pray it about individual people, for they are not your enemies
Firstly, if you have in mind people who you are angry towards or offended by – DO NOT PRAY IT! What you should pray is for blessing upon them and for God to intervene: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44); ‘Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse’ (Romans 12:14); ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’ (Romans 12:21
2. Do pray them about people as a group who do evil
Individual people are not your enemies. But that does not mean we have no enemies.
In a just war you might well pray for the defeat of the enemy. This is not because you know you are right, but because you are trusting God to do the right thing. Darn it, he may answer that prayer by dumping you on your butt and showing you your evil.
You might pray also against great evil designs from people – predatory crime, abuses of power, greed that corrupts. Why not? Pray for judgment and mercy. These are extraordinary prayers, of course, and for most of us won’t come up every day, thankfully.
3. Do pray them about your ultimate enemies
But even on the good days, in the New Testament we are still surrounded by enemies. They ‘assail us on every side’ and their names are sin, the world, the flesh, the devil and death. Satan is real and he has really evil designs on us, and he has his good mates sin, the world & the flesh in his gang of bullies. He has death at the end of a one way lane with a very big stick.
Pray to God that he would intervene for you with these and he would break their teeth. Praise him that he smashed them on the cross, pray he’d keep giving them a beating for you day by day.
So here is the trick to praying the vengeance bits in psalms:
- Don’t assume the people who first prayed them were afflicted by blood-lust and wrong.
- Don’t pray them about individual enemies, rather pray for their blessing.
- Do pray them against structures of evil perpetrated by people.
- Do pray them against sin, death, the world, the flesh and the devil.
Hopefully, these words give you wings again. Pray the psalms.
Pilgrim's Slow Progress 