You are on trial for a crime you did not commit. Your accusers know that you are innocent. This is a setup because they don’t like you; you are on the wrong side of the political lines, shaking everything up. You must be handled. They are aimed at taking away your position, family, fortune, and if they can swing it, your life.They are not like the thugs on the street who will walk up to you and take your life. They are using the justice system that they have corrupted to make it all “legal” and “above board.”
Who is your defense? What should happen to these people? It is not only your fate that is on the line here. This is the fate of Justice itself and with it the survival of society into the future. If the distortion of justice is allowed to go on, the entire society will be turned upside down. To make things right, those that seek to distort justice must be the subjects of true justice.
Psalm 109 makes today’s Christians wince. Imprecatory Psalms are not “New Covenant” type prayers, and this is the worst of the worst of the imprecations. We might ignore the fact that it is quoted by Peter in Acts 1.20 to speak of how it is fulfilled in finding a replacement for Judas, or the fact that Paul tells us to sing the Psalms without qualification in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, but there it is, as big as Dallas.
Like all the imprecatory Psalms, it seems harsh and unmerciful. What it concerns, however, is setting the world right. Psalm 109 is a prayer asking God to fulfill his righteous law that he laid down in Deuteronomy 19.15-21: if a man is found to be a false witness, he must suffer the fate he wished for the object of his lies.
The setting is the heavenly courtroom. David is calling upon God, his Judge, not to be silent. “God” doesn’t refer only to deity. A “god” is a judge. Elders were called “gods” in Exodus 21, and Psalm 82 also calls judges “gods.” Yahweh is the God of gods, the Judge of judges. Judges in Scripture were those who decided between right and wrong and acted to deliver the oppressed; they were saviors. This is what fills the book of Judges.
David addresses God as “the God of my praise.” He is the judge who has received praise for many deliverances in the past, and now David is calling upon him again to act in deliverance so that he can praise him again, which the end of the Psalm shows that he plans to do.
The wicked have borne false witness against David, encircling him with a lying tongue, attacking him without cause. But his life stands as a prayer—“I am prayer” (v. 4, literal translation)—before God, a witnessing plea that their testimony is false.
They invert justice, repaying evil for good and hatred for love. The imprecations David invokes beginning in v. 6 are not about personal vindictiveness. Rather, he says in v. 21 that all of this is for Yahweh’s name’s sake. Yahweh’s name is on the line. Yahweh prescribes that false witnesses receive the condemnation that they wished on the falsely accused. They accused him, desired that he be found guilty, cut off his life, remove him from his office as king, take him away from his family making his wife a widow and his children orphans, take his fortunes, and cut off his name/his posterity. These were the intents of the accusers. By God’s own law, the fate they wished for David should happen to them.
They turned justice upside down, afflicting the poor and needy, not being faithful to their covenant obligations as rulers. They loved to curse and did not delight in blessing, so David prays that they be given over to what they love and separated from what they hate. They have shown recalcitrance toward God’s mercy. They hate justice. They want nothing to do with God’s order. David is simply praying, “Give them what they want. Let them experience the full weight of their love of curses, like water and oil that completely penetrates down to the bone.”
In v. 21 David shifts from his accusers to himself and his prayer for deliverance. He calls upon Yahweh to be faithful to his covenant for his own name’s sake. David his Yahweh’s anointed, his messiah, but he is poor and needy right now, looking for a righteous judge to deliver him. Yahweh’s court is the only court above the one that is accusing him.
His life is fading like a shadow. He is being killed like farmers would kill locusts, shaking them from trees. He has been fasting, taking death upon himself, to plead for God’s mercy, but now his life is ebbing away.
“Help me, Yahweh my God! Save me according to your lovingkindness!” They may curse him, but YHWH will bless him, giving him life. When Yahweh arises to give his verdict, they will be put to shame, condemned, and punished as guilty in Yahweh’s court. When Yahweh comes through with his verdict, delivering David and condemning the wicked as David knows that he will, David will give thanks to him.He is confident that the Judge of all the earth, his Judge, his God, will do right.
Psalm 109 played out in Jesus’ relationship with the Judas, the Jews, and Jerusalem. They falsely accused him, taking everything from him. They denied his kingship and took all that he had, including his life. The case was sent to the Father’s court and he reversed the verdict of the lower court in the resurrection and gave the false accusers the destruction they hoped for Jesus.
Being fulfilled in Christ means that this prayer continues to be prayed and fulfilled in Christ’s body, the church. David’s prayer is our prayer. We long to see justice, for the world to be set right. This was man’s mission from the beginning: to establish God’s order for the world, for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. There are stubborn, recalcitrant enemies to God’s order: the seed of the serpent. We pray that God would grant them repentance, destroying them through death with Christ. But if God does not grant them repentance and they continually rebel against God’s order condemning the righteous and vindicating the wicked, that will overturn our mission of justice. We pray that they will get what they want: a world without God’s order; that they will be cast out of God’s world.
May God do so to all of his impenitent enemies.
Amen and amen