Journal

Psalm 5 - Praying for those who persecute you?

Posted on December 6th, 2005, in the evening

I've been reading and meditating on Psalm 5 this week as part of my series on Worshipping with the Psalms.

The major theme in Psalm 5 is again David contrasting himself with the wicked and his enemies. Trying to read this psalm in Christian devotion is quite confusing. David skips between devotion to God and condemnation of his enemies almost verse by verse. So, I'm returning to this theme sooner than I expected (don't hold your breath for conclusions yet, though.)

In the text, David first calls on God to listen and affirms that God will hear his cry. But in verses 4-6 he asserts that God will remain far away from, and in fact destroy, the wicked. Verse 7 talks of God's steadfast love, verse 8 his guidance. But in verses 9-10 David asks God to punish his enemies and that they should be held guilty. The psalm concludes with David celebrating God's protection for those who love him.

There are beautiful moments in this psalm, but the passages of gratitude for God's love and mercy are intermingled with passages in which David either asks or asserts that love and mercy should be withheld from his enemies. The hardest line is in verse 10, where David prays of his enemies "Make them bear their guilt, O God."

I'm not saying I don't understand the emotion, but I do find it very difficult to know how to use passages like that in corporate worship. The instruction in the text before the psalm is "To the leader: for the flutes," which certainly implies that Psalm 5 has a strong tradition of use in that context.

And I can't yet get beyond the difference between the attitude of the psalmist who would have his enemies condemned, and Jesus who says (and lives) 'love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.' I don't think that praying for your enemies to bear their guilt is quite the kind of prayer Jesus has in mind.

Perhaps David's sentiments in Psalm 5 (and elsewhere) have more in common Paul's apparently favourable quotation of Proverbs 25 in Romans 12, suggesting that by holding back evil from your enemy you can 'heap coals of fire on his head.' But that doesn't take me much further forward in understanding as I've always found Romans 12.20 a slightly strange sentiment too. The sense that God's love is or should be withheld from people just feels foreign to Christianity, and almost the opposite of Christ praying 'Father, forgve them' on the cross.

So what can I do with these passages? If I want to be true to the worship of the Psalms should I include songs and prayers about punishing our enemies in corporate worship at church? Is it just political correctness to want to find another explanation?

I'm not sure yet.

One possible avenue to explore is reading these passages as eschatological. I've been very moved this week reading about the Christian mother of murdered Anthony Walker who has publically forgiven her son's killers. In her statement of forgiveness she nevertheless affirms that God will judge their actions.

I believe that God will ultimately bring justice for the abused and the murdered, and it is certainly right for us to worship him for that, but I'm not fully satisfied with that fact as accounting for David's language. I will need to keep asking this question.

But I want to conclude by deeply owning the sentiments of verse 8:

Lord, lead me in Your righteousness,
because of my adversaries;
make Your way straight before me.

Psalm 5.8

We can surely only look to the love and righteousness of God to hope to walk a straight path through all the complexities of guilt, innocence, forgiveness and blame.