I Feel an Imprecatory Prayer Comin’ On . . .

Growing up, I never heard anyone mention imprecatory prayers, which are mostly found in the Psalms. What are they? Imprecatory prayers are prayers in which you ask God to send calamity or hardship upon someone else.

David was a man of great passion–he rejoiced with all his heart, and he prayed with all his heart. Like this: “Lead me, Adonai, in Your righteousness, because of my enemies. Make Your path straight before me. For nothing upright is in their mouth. Inside them is a ruin–their throat an open grave. They flatter with their tongue. Declare them guilty, O God! Let them fall by their own schemes. Banish them because of their many transgressions–for they have rebelled against You” (Psalm 5: 9-11).

Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but did He say we should pray that their way would be easy? No. Sometimes, for our enemies and our loved ones, we need to pray that the Lord would make their way hard; that they would learn not to trust in worldly wisdom or drugs or false friends. But most of all, we need to pray that God would have His way in peoples’ lives.

Without going into too many details, there is a situation in my life where an evil person is making life difficult for people I love. And every time I learn of yet another lie, another situation of abuse, anger rises within me. With David, I could pray those verses above . . . but as someone raised on “love your enemies,” something inside me feels guilty when I feel even righteous anger. What should I feel in this situation?

I ran across a great article on imprecatory prayers–here’s the link, if you want to read all the details. There is a time and place for imprecatory prayers. Using Scripture, the author points out several principles:

1. By asking God to execute vengeance, we are dealing with the desire we might feel to take retribution into our own hands. Paul wrote, “Repay no one evil for evil . . . for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ saith the Lord.”
2. Allowing God to do the punishing means it will be executed with precision and perfect love.
3. Imprecatory psalms recognize it is God’s good hand steering the story of redemption. These psalms acknowledge that God is sovereign, and the only One with the right to bring judgment. We set aside our anger and give Him His rightful place to judge the evildoer.
4. Should we rejoice when God pours out wrath on evildoers? Proverbs 24 says: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased . . .”

Yet–the Israelites rejoiced when the Egyptians drowned, and Miriam wrote a song about it, praising God. Time after time in the Old Testament, the Israelites rejoiced when their enemies were defeated. At the messianic synagogue I attend, we had a Purim party to celebrate Esther’s victory over Haman, and it’s supposed to be the happiest party of the year! But we’re not celebrating Haman’s downfall, we’re rejoicing in God’s victory.

We do not rejoice because our enemy suffers, we rejoice when God executes His righteous judgment–because it is good. Even when He chastises us.

I was dumbstruck when I heard about the Hamas terrorists who strangled the Bibas baby and his young brother, and killed their mother. I was horrified when I heard about even more gruesome atrocities committed on October 7th–I won’t describe them. My human nature would like those terrorists to be found, tortured, and killed just as their victims were.

But my spiritual nature reminds me that God alone is the righteous Judge. He knows who will repent and who will not. Some evildoers repent and are saved; some do not. So it is not my place to decide or judge; I must–I will–leave judgment and vengeance to God, who sees and knows the future. I must not hate my enemies; I must pray for them and consign them to God’s hands.

A couple of weeks ago, fifty Christians in the Congo where herded into a church and beheaded. The new leader of Syria has just executed thousands of Christians. And the war continues in Israel. Evil is loose in this world, and we cannot ignore it.

Pull out your Bible and pray Psalm 94 aloud. It ends with this:

Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute?

They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.

But the Lord has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.

He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness;

the Lord our God will wipe them out.

Amen.

~~Angie