Dr Paul Allen

“I find myself turning again and again to the imprecatory psalms,” wrote Tish Harrison Warren this week at Christianity Today.  “Each morning I’m praying Psalm 7:14–16 with Vladimir Putin in mind: ‘Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends’ (ESV).” Like Warren,  “I don’t usually know what to do with” poetry that comes from a source I regard as divinely inspired, perfect, and authoritative, yet “[calls] down destruction, calamity, and God’s judgment on enemies.” Like her, and I’d guess most people who follow Jesus, “I am often uncomfortable with the violence and self-assured righteousness found in these psalms.” Perhaps even more so than her; I can’t say I’ve been praying imprecations on Vladimir Putin, much as I despise his actions. But I understand her argument that the c...

King David in Prayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Destroy thou them, O God ; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee.” ( Psalm 5:10 ) No less than 20 of the psalms contain what are known as “imprecations”—that is, prayers to God to judge and destroy the wicked—and this verse is the first of them. As such, it sets the pattern, helping us to understand why the Lord would include such vindictive prayers in His inspired Word. At first, they seem incongruous with a God of love and mercy who has told us to love our enemies, but they help us to understand that God also must judge sin —especially the sin of rebellion. In them, we are taught to see the sin of rebellion in its true light—through the eyes of a loving Creator who has been rejected to the point of no return. It is one thing to commit an act of wickedness when overcome by temptation; it is quite another thing for men to deliberately rebel...