Lewis thought these psalms “devilish,” naive, “diabolical,” given to “pettiness” and “vulgarity.” He believed their “vindictive hatred” to be contemptible—full of “festering, gloating, undisguised” passions that can in no way be “condoned or approved.”
As a corrective to Lewis, Wax recommends Trevor Laurence's new book, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer, published last November by Baylor University Press:
Within the world of the psalms, imprecatory prayer is a means by which we, today, sing songs against the Evil One. Laurence describes it as a way of guarding the people of God and leaning forward to the day when the entire earth will be filled with his presence (and purged of evil). The cursing songs are a peaceful, petitionary participation in God’s promise to strike the seed of the serpent and restore the peace of the garden.
Instead of seeing the imprecatory psalms as a problematic or outdated mode of praying, Laurence believes these are “the prayer-pangs of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (256). We pray against “violently unjust predators who prowl after and pounce upon the innocent” and “the unwarranted assaults of the wicked” that “terrorize the godly.”
A description of the book can be found at the publisher's website.
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