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Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 5/27/2002 2:48 PM (GMT -6) |   | Imprecation means to invoke evil upon, or curse, someone. Some biblical passages (especially in the Psalms) are designated “imprecatory” because they invoke God to curse enemies. I’m interested in the implications of the presence of this kind of language in our scriptures. Do any of you ever pray this way? How do you think God hears these kinds of prayers? How do you think God answers them? Here is a broader way to frame the question: How are we supposed to handle our hatred toward those who wrong us (let’s include both human and angelic agents—whether real or metaphorical)?
I have a couple of very tentative ideas, but I really hope some of you will jump in with some responses first. I think this question has important implications for apologetics (sharing your faith with nonbelievers), biblical authority, and personal piety (how you practice your belief).
p.s. Feel free to post particular examples of imprecatory passages, if you know of some. That would be a good place to start in terms of finding clues for sorting through these difficult passages.
Thanks,
Electra
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He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Ezekiel 37:3
Edited by - Electra on 05/27/2002 8:55:13 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 5/27/2002 3:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok, here’s an example. Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved psalms. Most of us have parts of it memorized. However, the last five verses of this favorite are almost always skipped:
O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. (Ps. 139:19–24)
- The Liturgy of the Hours omits vs. 19–22.
- Dorothee Sölle does not include them in her interpretation of Ps. 139 in her book, Die Hinreise.
- Many “critical” commentaries argue for the omission of these verses.
- Some exegetes argue that they are independent of vs. 1–18. For example, Hans Schmidt questions whether, “these passionately intrusive verses, oddly uneven in their rhythm, really belong to the quiet poem in combination with which we have received them.”
What do you think?
Electra
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He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Ezekiel 37:3 | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 5/28/2002 1:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Here you go, Electra,
I think I need to balance passages like those you mention, with 1 Corinthians 13, where I find what someone has called the ‘Negative Characteristics of Love’ and I quote…
Love "does not rejoice in unrighteousness" (v. 6). Moffatt gives us the best paraphrase, "Love is never glad when others go wrong." Jesus stood overlooking the city of Jerusalem a few days before His death on the cross and He wept over the city. He knew the city would be destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. He cried, "O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling" (Matthew 23:37). His love did not rejoice when judgment came. He cried! How often do we fall on our knees and weep over the sins of those who do us wrong?
http://www.abideinchrist.com/messages/1cor13v4.html
In God’s Love,
Tim
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/28/2002 3:41 AM (GMT -6) | | Electra-
You like Ps. 139 don’t you?
This all relates to that heart-wrenching thread Doc started months ago which tried to reconcile the seemingly violent and unloving side of God presented in the Old Testament and the loving self-sacrificing God of the New Testament. Of course, God loves and suffers in the OT too, as well as acts in seemingly unloving ways in the NT (Ananias and Saphira was one example I think Mephi brought up). I still have a hard time with the “bash their babies on the rocks” stuff. However, there’s little doubt in my mind that such attitudes are unbecoming of those who follow Christ’s law of love now—“Bless those who curse you, and pray for them who despitefully use you.” For me the question is not “When might we offer imprecatory prayers to God?” (I don’t pray that way) but rather, “How do I account theologically (and hermeneutically) for relegating imprecation to the OT?” I’m still thinking on this one.
One possibility might be that “perfect hatred” is just that—perfect in a way UNLIKE our usual hatred; the way God hates—and Scripture clear attributes hatred to God. But even if there’s a godly sort of “hatred” of evil that we ought to have, I don’t see that imprecation is where it ought to take us today. If we can imprecate on the wicked, the what difference has the Cross made? Again, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who use you.” What does this mean if not the abolition of imprecation?
I have prayed something close to imprecation though.  I have been known to pray that a few scud missiles would find their way into the Kaba in Mecca (harming nobody of course), or that evil schemers would fall into their own trap in order to humble the wicked and make them desperate for God, or even that earthquakes would crumble mosques and other pagan houses of worship. Is that OK?
Lookin for answers too…
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde | | Back to Top | | |
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Mute
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Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 6
| Posted 5/28/2002 8:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Praying to curse someone else is wrong plan and simple. Jesus never prayed to curse someone. I despise anyone who would even entertain praying this way. I hate them. I pray that God would take their skulls and crack them with sledge hammers, that God would smite them and utterly and force them to slide down razor blades into a pool of alcohol. I pray that God would inject poison into their armpits and I can’t think of anything to pray for. They’re bad bad people who hate.
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/28/2002 8:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Now THAT'S what I call a storming first post Mute! But you forgot one thing: the itch from which there IS NO CURE!
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 5/28/2002 1:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Behold, yea and thus saith God,
You want curses? I say, DO YOU WANT CURSES? I'll give you curses:
Curse this Compaq Presario, it's chipset (angels look upon these things shaking their heads in dispair), it's ... well, so-called modem, and it's non-Intel chip--don't EVEN tell me about AMDs--that even the Lord, the Lord God Jehovah, couldn't even figure out (that bad, I'm telling you). Curse it to the pits and parts of hell yet still unexplored. (Okay, it's doing the job, barely, right now, but I'm praying for the 2.something-or-other gigamuchfaster system  )
The line to Pharoah in the movie "The Ten Commandments" should have been, "Thus saith the Lord; build a Compaq and I'll tan (curse) your rear end.
For the suffering, pain and horror of having to curse in utter hatred,
Starkman
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 5/28/2002 1:39 PM (GMT -6) | | Really though, I attribute the purpose of the acts of God in the OT--there's many strange acts of His, not just acts interpreted as those of hatred--to be very much an antithesis of the purpose and acts of God in the NT; He doesn't do those things He did in the OT because the context has changed.
Where there's no Law, there's no wrath. Where there's faithfulness, there's no Hosea marrying (either a whore or) someone who would become unfaithfull. Where there's no harlotry of God's people, there's no live demonstrations using the human element to make the point of the pain it creates for God and mankind.
The world is no longer a stage setting for either a sinless existence (as it was before the fall) or for demonstration of the heart and pain God puts up with and to which He responds in acts such as men commit. No, we're citizens of heaven now. The earth had been serving its purpose up to the death and resurrection of Christ. Now it's simply a hurry-up-and-wait situation. The earth itself waits for the redemption of the sons of God.
Does God hate as we hate? I don't think so. I see no reason to attribute to God the kind of hatred of which mankind is capable. When man hates, it's with the deepest, unclean (in the Biblical sense) darkness of hell itself. When God hates, I believe it's without sacrifice of all His faculities, if you will, of intelligence, understanding, and respect for proper judgment. Man never keeps these things in perspective when he hates. Man can't even love properly of his own efforts.
Why would God command the harshness of total slaughter, of children to be killed as well as man, women, and animals? First, as I said, the OT context is in a context of sin, rebellion and death. Second, that man dies by the sword verses cancer is still death. We set the rules, didn't we? Aren't we the ones who set the stage by being the first to kill? I mean, the whole world is now subjugated to this context. God works within it--despite how inappropriate WE may think His actions are. How can we claim foul-play to Him when we're the ones who set the rules of the game?
It would seem pretty clear that God's not a tyrant, not interested in torturing people, and certainly not out to get us; hence, the NT acts and teaching of God in a NT context. But that God worked within the OT context of our sin, death and destruction, killing, torture and pain (the way WE worked and lived) is only to have God thrust the point home. Same thing the Law did; it thrust home our misplaced relationship before God. Hosea thrusts home the hellishness of whoredom between God and His people. Job thrusts home the hell of evil against us. Men, women, and children dying hidious deaths thrusts home our own evil, causing us to stare at ourselves in the mirror for the ugly truth that is.
For the grace that now is,
Starkman
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Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 6/2/2002 6:57 AM (GMT -6) | | Tim, TGB, Starkman, Mute ( ), thanks for your responses. There’s lots to talk about already, but I’d really like to hear from some more people before I dig in. Thanks, Electra
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He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Ezekiel 37:3 | | Back to Top | | |
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Empiress
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 363
| Posted 6/4/2002 8:43 AM (GMT -6) | | Electra,
What a great thread starter!
I see the Psalms as expressing the full range of human emotions and not as truly "doctrinal" texts...their genre is poetry set to music.
I actually come up against this quandry quite a lot because I pray the Psalms according to the Daily Office every day. I have found that I feel lead to do one of two things:
-Skip all verses that involve curses
-Pray some verses in reference to demonic enemies rather then human enemies
I don't believe we ought to ever curse other creatures, and I also don't believe we ought to ever refer to other humans as "our enemies," as that encourages hatred rather then love. If we are to love our enemies, we ought to see them as "neighbors" rather then our enemies, as in the case of the Good Samaritan. However, the Scriptures make clear that Satan is our enemy to be dealt with accordingly.
As far as handling our anger or hatred towards others, I really do believe we need to offer those feelings up to God and ask that God transform those feelings. I don't think we, as fallible humans, can safely harbor such feelings without having detrimental effects on ourselves and others. Forgiveness is always to be our goal.
So what do you think?
~Empiress
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writerdad
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448
| Posted 6/6/2002 8:42 AM (GMT -6) | | I learned a lot about the Old Testament from reading Yancey's book The Bible Jesus Read. When discussing the Psalms and the references to crushing others and "smashing their babies," Yancey made the point that he feels that the Psalms many times are catharatic and are not meant to be taken literally. In other words, when David may, at times, use extreme language to vent what he is feeling. Harold
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 6/6/2002 5:53 PM (GMT -6) | | Harold said:
Yancey made the point that he feels that the Psalms many times are catharatic and are not meant to be taken literally. In other words, when David may, at times, use extreme language to vent what he is feeling.
Semeia:
Boy, can I relate to that!
Thanks,
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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adiaphora
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 123
| Posted 6/6/2002 6:44 PM (GMT -6) | | I’m thankful no one posted imprecations over the server burp incident. Then again, Doc hasen’t posted yet since then…
adiaphora
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writerdad
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448
| Posted 6/7/2002 1:38 AM (GMT -6) | | I have to say that what is equally disturbing to me is when I read some of the Psalms that talk about God always being there for his people and saving them from falling...I think, hey, what about me?! Harold
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