Dear God, Please Kill Babies. Amen.: Godward Anger & Context
This series so far:
- Dear God, Please Kill Babies. Amen. (or, my thoughts on the Imprecatory Psalms)
- Dear God, Please Kill Babies. Amen.: Justice Is At The Core
- Dear God, Please Kill Babies. Amen.:Imagine A Cross-less World
- Dear God, Please Kill Babies. Amen.: Hyperbolic Art
Having looked at several considerations that must be taken into account when thinking about the imprecatory psalms, I now come to to the last one that I will discuss. This consideration is actually quite elementary and obvious. However, one mistake that many exegetes make is to speed past the most basic parts of the text in an effort to plumb their depths. I think that these psalms would have made much more sense to me originally if I had adequately considered two facts: they are directed to God and we have no context!
For any of the psalms to be properly understood, the reader cannot forget that the psalms are primarily man’s word to God rather than God’s word to man. They are certainly inspired by God. But their purpose in Scripture is to give us examples of godly communication from man to God in prayer, praise, and song. So the words arise out of the dirt and grime of a sinful world rather than coming down from the pristine ideal of heaven. (I know my language may prompt questions related to my understanding of inspiration. That is beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say that I believe the psalms are fully inspired, yet they arise from the human experience.)
The desires expressed in the imprecatory psalms reflect the dirt and grime which gave birth to them. But a key point is that they are desires that were not acted upon, but were entrusted to God. They are desires which arose from feelings and emotions that are , whether we like it or not, a part of the human experience. As fallen beings, we will have anger, hatred and violence at work within us. Our task in these situations is to give those feelings to God so that God can heal the parts of us that gave rise to those emotions, and also so that God can take responsibility for rectifying the external factors involved. I believe that, in the imprecatory psalms, the psalmist is taking the sinful human emotions that he was feeling, expressing them in a raw, unfiltered way, and entrusting them to God. When looked at from that angle, these psalms suddenly have a respectability that they didn’t have before.
Another factor that we must keep in mind when studying these psalms is that these words were not spoken/written in a vacuum. They are the cries of real people who were shedding real blood and real tears at the hands of real enemies. While we are not privy to the context in which these psalms were written, we know that there was certainly a context. Our limited perspective makes it easier for us to pass judgment on these psalms. God’s unlimited perspective very well may see things very differently.
Perhaps a good illustration of this point can be made by looking at the following words:
I curse the messenger who told my father,
“Good news—you have a son!”
Let him be destroyed like the cities of old
that the Lord overthrew without mercy.
Terrify him all day long with battle shouts,
because he did not kill me at birth.
Oh, that I had died in my mother’s womb,
that her body had been my grave!
Some may assume that these words were taken from one of the imprecatory psalms. The language is certainly reminiscent of the language found therein. However, as interpreters of Scripture, we have a huge advantage when considering these words that we do not have when looking at the psalms — we know the context.
The above quotation is actually from Jeremiah 20:15-17. We know that Jeremiah’s curse of the man who didn’t perform an abortion on his mother was an outburst that took place during a dark stage in his life in which he was doubting/questioning his calling as a prophet. We also know that this dark season of Jeremiah’s life actually strengthened and deepened him in the long run. Yet if these words were recorded as Psalm 151 with no surrounding narrative, we would be shocked by them in much the same way we are with the imprecatory psalms.
Context means everything. In the psalms, we don’t have the context to tell us “the rest of the story.” However, we must rest assured that God heard these words within the context of the lives of the psalmists. God knew the exact faces, incidents, dates, and times involved in every tear shed and every ounce of blood spilled.
So while we have difficulty understanding these psalms due to the lack of contextual clues, we must remember that these were outbursts of anger and vengeance that were entrusted to God rather than acted upon. If only we could do the same with our sinful outbursts. Perhaps that is why we have these psalms — to show us how even with the most heinous of desires can be put on God’s shoulders.
