Vindicate Me, O God

Yes, the David describes weren’t just against him. They were against the God whom David serves. In other imprecatory Psalms we see this, too. For example, in Ps 79, Asaph mourns over the destruction of Jerusalem. He asks God to vindicate his Name, for this violence against God’s city was violence against God himself: “Pay back into the laps of our neighbors seven times the reproach [ – the reproach] they have hurled at you, O Lord” (v 12).

When God’s children are mocked for our faith, God also is mocked. When we are laughed at for doing God’s will, God also is laughed at. When God’s church is besieged because of her faithfulness, God also is besieged. An attack on David as a man of God – an attack on you as a man or woman of God – is an attack on God himself. For you belong to God! It’s in this light that we have to read David’s passionate prayer.

And it’s in this same light that we can start to understand the ending of Ps 137, where the Psalmist longs for the dashing of Babylon’s infants on the rocks. For what comes just before that brutal prayer? A remembrance of what the nations had first done to Israel on the day Jerusalem fell: “‘Tear it down,’ they cried, ‘tear it down to its foundations’” (v 7). The holy city – the city of God – was torn down, and God would not stand idly by. And so in zeal for the honour and glory of the Lord, believers ought to pray that God will destroy all who stand against him.

2) the passionate prayer he offers: Sometimes when we’re in the presence of evil, we stand there without reacting, without even blinking. But David does no such thing. After describing his suffering as a man of God, he offers a fierce prayer, full of abhorrence for those who hate the Lord.

In this prayer, there’s no question, David uses language that is very strong. He asks that the one who falsely accused him be falsely accused himself: “Appoint an evil man to oppose him; let an accuser stand at his right hand” (v 6). He asks that his enemies receive a taste of their own bitter medicine; he asks that all the things they were plotting fall on their own heads.

And David asks that God do as God so often does, that He visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. Punishment of a father was punishment for his entire family, and vice versa: “May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes” (v 10). What David’s asking for is lasting retribution: Their curses, their violence, their wicked deeds – may all these envelop those who conspired against him, David prays (v 19).

David, as he says himself, was a “man of prayer” (v 4). That may well be – but we’re still astonished: This is quite the prayer! He prays against his enemy, “May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children” (v 12). Those are hard words. Even if these people have attacked God himself, and even if this is a sincere prayer, isn’t all this a severe overreaction? Isn’t David getting carried away over a few lies?