The Anatomy of a Curse: When Justice Must Be Prayed For Text: Psalm 55:15
Introduction: The Uncomfortable Prayer
We live in a sentimental age. Our Christianity is often soft, squishy, and altogether too polite. We like the comforting psalms, the ones about green pastures and still waters. But when we come to a verse like this one, a raw, jagged prayer for sudden death and damnation, we tend to get the vapors. We cough politely, shuffle our feet, and quickly turn the page, hoping for something a bit more encouraging, something more suitable for a coffee mug. We want a God who is nice, but not a God who is just. We want a Savior who welcomes children, but not a Lord who wields a rod of iron.
But the Holy Spirit did not stutter. He inspired David to write this, and He included it in the church's prayer book for a reason. This is an imprecatory psalm, which is a fancy way of saying it is a psalm that calls down a curse. And modern evangelicals, soaked as they are in the therapeutic feel-goodism of our day, do not know what to do with such prayers. Some, like C.S. Lewis, for whom I have immense respect, thought these were little more than the barbaric expressions of a less enlightened time, preserved in Scripture as a sort of museum piece to show us how far we have come. But this is a profound mistake. The New Testament writers did not blush when quoting these psalms; they used them. Peter quotes an imprecatory psalm when dealing with the treachery of Judas (Acts 1:20).
To reject the imprecatory psalms is to reject a portion of God's Word. It is to decide that we are more spiritual than the Holy Spirit. These prayers are not expressions of personal, petty vindictiveness. They are not the hot-headed lashing out of a man who got cut off in traffic. They are inspired, Spirit-led prayers for the public justice of God to fall upon hardened, unrepentant, corporate evil. They are prayers that God would vindicate His own name and protect His own people. And in a world that is drowning in wickedness, treachery, and deceit, we had better learn how to pray them rightly, lest we become accomplices to the evil we are too timid to confront.
This psalm arises from the crucible of intimate betrayal. David is not writing about a foreign enemy, an abstract "bad guy." He is writing about a close friend, a counselor, someone with whom he took sweet counsel and walked to the house of God (vv. 13-14). This was his Ahithophel, his trusted advisor, who turned on him. And in this, David is a type of Christ, who was betrayed by His own disciple, Judas. The sting of this psalm is the sting of the treacherous kiss. It is the pain of seeing evil not just on the horizon, but in your own home, at your own table. And it is in response to this deep, covenantal treachery that David, by the Spirit, prays this terrifying prayer.
The Text
Let death come deceitfully upon them;
Let them go down alive to Sheol,
For evil is in their dwelling, in their midst.
(Psalm 55:15 LSB)
A Fitting Sentence (v. 15a)
The prayer begins with a specific request for a particular kind of judgment.
"Let death come deceitfully upon them..." (Psalm 55:15a)
This is not simply "let them die." It is a prayer for death to come upon them in a certain way: deceitfully, or as some translations render it, "by surprise," "suddenly." Why this specific request? Because the punishment must fit the crime. David's enemies, led by his treacherous friend, were men of deceit. Their words were smoother than butter, but war was in their hearts. Their speech was softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords (v. 21). They operated through lies, flattery, and conspiracy. They were whispering in the shadows, plotting in the back rooms. Their entire enterprise was built on a foundation of deceit.
Therefore, the prayer is that God would answer their deceit with His own surprise attack. Let the judgment of God ambush them. Let the consequences they thought they could outrun overtake them suddenly on the road. Let the pit they dug for others be the one they stumble into in the dark. This is the principle of lex talionis, an eye for an eye. Not in the sense of personal revenge, but in the sense of divine, poetic justice. God is not a clumsy, brutish judge. His judgments are tailored. He answers the proud with humiliation, the greedy with loss, and here, the deceitful with a sudden, unforeseen end.
This is a prayer that their schemes would not come to a dignified, respectable conclusion. It is a prayer that they would not have time to arrange their affairs, to get their stories straight, to manage their public relations. It is a prayer that God would rip the mask off and expose the rottenness underneath in one swift, decisive stroke. Let death come upon them while they are still in the middle of their plotting, while they are still confident in their own cleverness. Let it be a shocking interruption, a divine veto that cannot be appealed.
A Swift Descent (v. 15b)
The prayer continues, specifying the destination of this sudden judgment.
"Let them go down alive to Sheol..." (Psalm 55:15b)
This is a direct echo of the judgment that fell upon Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in the wilderness. When they rebelled against the authority of Moses and Aaron, God executed a startling and terrifying judgment. The Bible says, "the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households... So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly" (Numbers 16:31-33).
To pray for them to go down alive to Sheol is to pray for a judgment so sudden, so catastrophic, and so undeniable that no one could mistake it for a natural event. It is a prayer for the ground to open up. It is a prayer for a public, visible demonstration of God's wrath against covenant-breakers. This is not a wish for them to die peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. It is a plea for God to act as God, to intervene in history in a way that makes everyone stop and tremble.
Sheol, in the Old Testament, is the realm of the dead, the grave. It is the place of departed spirits. But in a context like this, it is not a neutral destination. For the wicked, it is the antechamber of final judgment. To be sent there suddenly, in the midst of your rebellion, is a terrifying thing. It is to be removed from the land of the living and ushered into the presence of a holy God whom you have defied. David is praying that these traitors would be removed from their place of influence, that their rebellion would be cut off at the root, and that they would be brought immediately to account before the Judge of all the earth.
The Legal Basis (v. 15c)
The final clause of the verse provides the reason, the legal justification, for this severe prayer.
"For evil is in their dwelling, in their midst." (Psalm 55:15c)
This is the ground of the imprecation. David is not praying this way because his feelings are hurt or because his ego is bruised. He is praying this way because he is the king, the civil magistrate, responsible for the health of the kingdom, and he sees a cancerous evil that has taken root not just in individuals, but in their corporate life. The evil is "in their dwelling." This means their homes, their households, have become headquarters for wickedness. It is not a private, personal sin. It is a conspiracy. It is organized. Their houses are command centers for rebellion.
Furthermore, the evil is "in their midst," or in their inward part. This is not just about external actions; it is about a deep, internal corruption. Their hearts are set on destruction. Their very nature has become wicked. This is not a description of struggling saints who occasionally stumble. This is a description of a nest of vipers, a cabal of covenant-breakers who are wholly given over to their sin. They are not just doing evil things; they are evil.
This is the crucial diagnostic that must precede any such prayer. The psalmist is identifying a corporate, hardened, and unrepentant evil that threatens the very foundations of godly order. Because their entire dwelling is given over to evil, the prayer is that the entire dwelling be swallowed up. Because their hearts are filled with wickedness, the prayer is that they be removed from the assembly of the righteous. This is a prayer for spiritual and civil sanitation. It is a prayer that God would do what a good king must do: purge the evil from the midst of the people.
Conclusion: Praying for Justice Today
So what do we do with a prayer like this? We are not David. We are not inspired authors of Scripture. We are not theocratic kings. But we are the people of God, living as exiles in a world that is filled with Ahithophels and Judases. We are surrounded by corporate, institutionalized evil that seeks to destroy the church and defame the name of Christ.
We are commanded to love our personal enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). This is our first duty. We should always desire the repentance and salvation of the sinner. We should not be like Jonah, angry at the grace of God. But loving our enemies does not mean loving their evil. It does not mean being indifferent to injustice. When we are confronted with hardened, unrepentant, corporate evil, particularly that which masquerades as righteousness and threatens the people of God, we are not only permitted, but commanded, to pray for God's justice to be done.
We pray for God to bring down the abortion industry. We pray for Him to confound the councils of those who seek to redefine marriage and corrupt our children. We pray for Him to expose the wolves in sheep's clothing who prey on the flock. We pray these things not out of personal spite, but out of a zeal for the glory of God's name and the good of His church. We are asking God to do what He has promised to do: to crush the head of the serpent, to break the teeth of the wicked, and to cause His kingdom to come and His will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
These prayers are a declaration of war, but the war is the Lord's. We are simply asking our commanding officer to act, to bring reinforcements, to scatter His enemies. And when we pray this way, we are praying in alignment with the final prayer of the saints in Scripture, who cry out from under the altar, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:10). That is a divinely sanctioned prayer. It is a prayer for justice. And it is a prayer that God will one day answer, completely and finally.