Angry Psalms

In the month since the Russo-Ukrainian War began, many of us are learning again what it means to pray the imprecatory Psalms, namely, those psalms that call down God's wrath against his enemies. I recently had a conversation with Trevor Laurence, for whose Cateclesia Forum I sometimes write, and he told me of his interest in these particular Psalms, which puzzle many Christians. Laurence offers us this reflection in the online journal, The Biblical Mind: How the ‘Angry Psalms’ Fit within the Story of God and His People. An excerpt:

We have little trouble understanding how the experience of violence may prompt a human being to pray such angry psalms. Amid the scourge and scars of unjust attack, some of us have known firsthand the unspeakable pain the psalmists manage to speak. What many cannot come to grips with is how these understandable prayers can be good. But here they are in the songbook of the Scriptures, intentionally included in a liturgical collection that shaped the worship of Israel, canonically commended to the people of God as words from God to offer back to God—and without the slightest hint that within them there is anything ethically dubious at all. Neither the psalmists nor the writers of the New Testament seem to share our reservations.

Instead of asking what in the world the psalmists are praying, then, perhaps we might turn the question around and ask, In what world are the psalmists praying? Ethics emerges from narrative: our deliberations about what constitutes faithful action are always shaped by the narrative in which we believe we are characters.1 If the psalmists are as confident in their judgment prayers as we are incredulous, that may very well be because they perceive themselves as actors within a world governed by a different controlling story.

Laurence's forthcoming book, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer, will be published by Baylor University Press.