Israelites, Immigrants, and the Imprecatory Psalms

Psalm 83

One of the things we have lifted up this summer again and again is the breadth of emotions that can be found in the Psalms. No matter what you are feeling you can find some word in the Psalms that speaks to that experience: joy, sadness, fury, pain, regret, nihilism, hate, love… you can find it all. Today, that is on full display with a couple of the “hardest” Psalms, since these are Psalms written largely against groups of people. One of the things we have to be careful about doing thus far this summer is putting ourselves in the place of another group of people. Just because you feel upset and Jesus once felt upset does not mean that your anger is like Jesus’, and just because you feel particularly happy today does not mean your joy is like Mary’s Magnificat. It seems kind of obvious but it bears remembering when we read scripture that we are not the Israelites, we are not David, we are not Jesus, we are not Mary.

Just because you feel persecuted about something does not mean that you are persecuted like Israel. When we come across the experience of others it is perfectly normal to try to square their experience with our own. It’s why our first reaction to whatever a person is going through is to say, “I know how you feel” even when we obviously don’t. This tendency toward empathy is fine, but sometimes it goes awry, which happens most often when we put ourselves in the victim’s role, imagining that we are the ones persecuted even when we are not.

Psalm 83 lays down a foundation for what will come with Mary’s Magnificat song about turning the world around, but it comes in a very peculiar form. These are the hardest Psalms because they are imprecatory Psalms, and imprecatory Psalms are songs that call on God to defeat, conquer, even destroy the enemy. This is great for morale for those who are oppressed, but tough for us to deal with today because something inside of us knows that the Israelites are less a world power and more a subjugated minority. It causes us to wonder, “Are we the enemy?” From the first few verses of the Psalm:

O God, do not keep silence;
   do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
Even now your enemies are in tumult;
   those who hate you have raised their heads.
They lay crafty plans against your people;
   they consult together against those you protect.

I’m always wary when the Bible says “your people” because we too easily assume we are “your people.” And of course on one level that’s absolutely true: God claims us in baptism, God guides and directs the church as many members but one body; we couldn’t be anymore God’s people than we are. But this phrase, “your people,” implies that the world is broken into two kinds: God’s people and enemies. I don’t have a problem with that, per se. My problem is that those two kinds—God’s people and God’s enemies—both live within me. And I think they live within you too. And it’s way too easy to imagine that because I am part of God’s people, therefore the ones laying “crafty plans against your people” are people who are different than me, enemies of “Christendom.”

This is so dangerous. Psalm 83 is dangerous.

Do to them as you did to Midian,   as to Sisera and Jabin at the Wadi Kishon,
who were destroyed at En-dor,
   who became dung for the ground.
Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
   all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
who said, ‘Let us take the pastures of God
   for our own possession.’ 

Yes, God, give it to them! They deserve it! The Midianites, the Siseras and Jabins, and all those terrible people. You could probably fill in those blanks with different words today: Atheists, terrorists, Packer fans.

O my God, make them like whirling dust,
   like chaff before the wind.
As fire consumes the forest,
   as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
so pursue them with your tempest
   and terrify them with your hurricane.
Fill their faces with shame,
   so that they may seek your name, O Lord.
Let them be put to shame and dismayed for ever;
   let them perish in disgrace.

This is the hard word of the law, friends, and it is a heavy one. There is something profoundly human here. Those who have wronged me? They deserve to perish in disgrace! This is the kind of heightened emotion that we reserve for referees when they get calls wrong at high school sporting events. But what does it mean to pray like this? What does it mean that there are Psalms like this?

I told you that the Psalms take all of our emotions. Some of these emotions are just ugly. Of course, this God we find in the Psalms seems quite capable of wiping out groups of people, but we also have to remember that these aren’t God’s words. This is the words of a people oppressed. More than that, this is what history looks like without Jesus. It is nasty. And there’s part of us that revels in it. We love when bad guys get their comeuppance, when those who do things the wrong way get shown up, when God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. The Psalms cry out for this kind of justice.

But, friends, this is not the way of the cross. Jesus showed us a better way.

When people came up to Jesus and tried to justify themselves as the righteous ones deserving of salvation, while those sinners over there deserve damnation, Jesus’s response again and again was to set for them an impossible goal. Be perfect. Give away everything. So, you’re poor and oppressed, boo hoo, give away what little you have left. Jesus came not to lift up the poor and oppressed to the same level as the oppressors; he came to obliterate all their expectations about justice by claiming that none of them are righteous.

We have to be careful—extremely careful—when we look at the 83^rd Psalm that we read these words not as a prescription for how to live but as a description of how we do live. If we read them as a prescription we’re going to come away with the idea that God needs to round up all the baddies, drop a big rock on them, and then those of us who are good little boys and girls will get to dance on their graves. That’s bologna and it’s sinful. If we read these words descriptively we begin to see our own nature in them. We can begin to understand that I think like this sometimes and I have less reason to do so than the Israelites did.

How often have I wished that celebrity or that athlete or that referee would get what they deserve! How often have I looked upon people who believe differently than me as enemies—atheists, Muslims, “other” Christians! How often have I considered other places to be godforsaken—Sudan, Syria, even Detroit!

Psalm 83 finds the worst in us and magnifies it. It’s honest but it’s also dangerous. Because what if you are the oppressor? To an immigrant—legal or illegal in this country—do we look like the Midianites? To a person in a war-torn land across the globe do we look like the Edomites? We have a refugee crisis right now in Europe that betrays our true values. How can we resonate with the Israelites when we deny Syrians the chance to live apart from war?

It’s easy to imagine ourselves the persecuted. But persecuted people don’t get to go home and sleep in nice homes and have three square meals a day; persecuted people don’t get to come to church on Sunday morning and not only not be judged for doing so but actually judge those who don’t show up. That’s not persecution; that’s privilege.

Psalm 83 is a dangerous one because very quickly the roles become flipped and this turns to a song of judgment against you and me.

This is why Jesus had to come, because these games are getting tiresome. Clinging to the law of talons, where those who do wrong are dealt with according to their transgressions, will only leave all of us dead. Jesus came so that every time we came to him with a problem that pitted “us” against “them” he could set the record straight. There is no us and them. Not any longer. We are one body with many members. Some of our members don’t even have a clue they are part of the body, but that’s no excuse to think less of them. In fact, to wish them ill is to wish the whole body ill.

So, let’s read Psalm 83 together. Let’s reflect on what it says about us. Let’s argue and debate with God over our differences and what we think is fair. Then let’s admit that we can’t be the people we ought, and this kind of eye-for-an-eye attitude scares the living hell out of us. That’s honest, that’s the Psalms.