The War of Words and the Justice of God Text: Psalm 56:5-7
Introduction: The Serpent's Native Tongue
We live in an age that pretends to be sophisticated about conflict. We talk about dialogue, and finding common ground, and the marketplace of ideas. But the Bible, from the very beginning, is far more realistic. It tells us that we are in a war. This is not a war of tanks and bombs, primarily, but a war of words. It is a war that began in a garden when a serpent asked a question, "Did God really say?" The native tongue of the serpent is the lie, the half-truth, the insinuation, and the distortion. And his children are fluent in it.
When David writes this psalm, he is a man hunted. He is in Gath, of all places, the hometown of Goliath, feigning madness to save his skin. His enemies, both the Philistines without and Saul's cronies within Israel, are breathing down his neck. And in this crucible, he diagnoses the central tactic of the ungodly. It is not honest opposition. It is not a forthright philosophical disagreement. It is a war on words. They cannot win the argument, so they must rig the debate. They must twist and distort and lie.
This is not just David's private complaint. This is a description of the antithesis, the great chasm fixed between the city of God and the city of man. The children of God are called to be people of the Word, which means we are called to be people of words, true words. The children of the devil are people of the lie. And so, the central battlefield is always meaning, definition, and truth. What David describes here is the perennial experience of the righteous in a fallen world. If you stand for the truth, you must be prepared to have your words tortured on the rack until they confess to a crime they never committed.
The Text
All day long they distort my words;
All their thoughts are against me for evil.
They attack, they lurk,
They watch my heels,
As they have hoped to take my life.
On account of their wickedness, will they have an escape?
In anger, bring down the peoples, O God!
(Psalm 56:5-7 LSB)
The Deconstructionist's Playbook (v. 5)
David begins by identifying the unceasing, intellectual assault of his enemies.
"All day long they distort my words; All their thoughts are against me for evil." (Psalm 56:5)
Notice the persistence: "All day long." This is not a momentary lapse in judgment on their part. It is their full-time occupation. The word for "distort" here is a powerful one. It means to vex, to grieve, to twist into a painful shape. They take David's innocent words and put them on the rack. They are deconstructionists before their time. They believe that words have no fixed meaning, or rather, that they can be made to mean whatever serves their malevolent purpose. The goal is not to understand, but to weaponize.
We see this every day. A pastor preaches on biblical sexuality, and the headline reads, "Local Hate Preacher Calls for Violence." A Christian politician argues for fiscal responsibility, and the talking heads declare him an enemy of the poor. This is the straw man fallacy elevated to a spiritual discipline. They cannot refute what you actually said, so they must attack a grotesque caricature of what you said. This is because the lie is parasitic; it cannot live on its own but must attach itself to a host, which is the truth, and suck the life out of it through distortion.
And David tells us the motive: "All their thoughts are against me for evil." This is not a simple misunderstanding. This is not a failure to communicate. This is a settled, deep-seated hostility. Their entire intellectual project is geared toward one end: evil. They are not seeking the truth. They are not interested in a fair hearing. Their minds are made up, and every thought, every scheme, every strategy is bent toward the goal of your ruin. This is the essence of what the Bible calls a reprobate mind. It is a mind that has become so committed to the lie that it can no longer think straight. It sees good as evil, and evil as good.
The Tactics of Cowards (v. 6)
From the intellectual assault, David moves to their physical methods. Their tactics reveal their character.
"They attack, they lurk, They watch my heels, As they have hoped to take my life." (Psalm 56:6 LSB)
The ungodly do not fight fair. They are not noble adversaries who meet you on the field of battle for an open contest. No, they "lurk." They hide. They operate in the shadows. They are conspirators and schemers. They form committees in secret. They send anonymous emails. They whisper in the hallways. They do not have the courage to make their accusations to your face because their accusations cannot withstand the light of day.
They "watch my heels." This is a direct echo of the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15, where God tells the serpent, "he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." The seed of the serpent is always nipping at the heels of the seed of the woman. They watch for any slip, any misstep, any stumble, so they can pounce. They are not looking for an opportunity for reconciliation; they are looking for an opportunity for accusation. They are hunting for a pretext to justify their hatred.
And make no mistake about their ultimate aim: "As they have hoped to take my life." This is not hyperbole. The war of words is simply the preliminary bombardment before the final assault. Slander is the forerunner of murder. The one who assassinates your character today would assassinate your person tomorrow if he thought he could get away with it. Jesus taught this plainly in the Sermon on the Mount. Unjust anger is the seed of murder. The goal of the city of man is the complete and total eradication of the witness of the city of God. They want us silenced, and if necessary, they want us dead.
The Righteousness of Imprecation (v. 7)
Faced with this relentless, wicked, and murderous opposition, what is the righteous man to do? David shows us. He takes it to court. He appeals to the judge.
"On account of their wickedness, will they have an escape? In anger, bring down the peoples, O God!" (Psalm 56:7 LSB)
The first phrase is a rhetorical question that carries with it a profound theological confidence. "Will they have an escape?" The implied answer is a thunderous, "Absolutely not!" Why? "On account of their wickedness." David is not appealing to his own righteousness. He is appealing to God's justice. The argument is simple: God, you are a just God. You hate evil. You have established a moral order in the universe. Will you allow these men to flout your law, to mock your justice, and to get away with it? To ask the question is to answer it. A God who lets wickedness escape is not a just God, and therefore, is not God at all.
This leads directly to the imprecation, the curse: "In anger, bring down the peoples, O God!" Our sentimental, effeminate age gets the vapors when it reads language like this. We have been taught that the only acceptable prayer is a soft, gentle, Hallmark card sentiment. But the Bible is a red-blooded book. The saints in Scripture are not milquetoast pietists; they are warriors, and they pray like warriors.
This is not a prayer of personal vindictiveness. David is not asking God to settle a petty score. He is the Lord's anointed, the king of Israel. An attack on him is an attack on God's chosen instrument and God's holy nation. He is praying as a public magistrate, asking the supreme Magistrate to execute public justice on public evil. He is praying for the kingdom. He is asking God to act in history, to "bring down the peoples," the rebellious nations and factions that have set themselves against the Lord and against His Christ. This is a prayer for the establishment of God's righteous rule on earth. It is a prayer that God would vindicate His own name, His own law, and His own people.
Conclusion: Praying for Victory
This psalm is a pattern for us. We too are in a war of words. The world, the flesh, and the devil are constantly distorting the words of our God and the words of His servants. They lurk, they watch our heels, and they desire to stamp out our witness entirely.
What shall we do? We are not to take up carnal weapons. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. But we are not to roll over and play dead either. We are to do what David did. We are to report for duty. We are to take the enemy's slander and lies and file them as evidence in the court of heaven. We are to present our case before the righteous Judge and ask Him to act.
And we must pray these imprecatory prayers. To pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" is to pray for the downfall of every rival kingdom. It is to pray that God would, in His righteous anger, bring down the proud, arrogant, and wicked systems of this world. It is to pray for the victory of the gospel in time and in history. We are not praying for the damnation of any particular individual; we are praying for the destruction of wickedness itself. We pray that God would either convert our enemies, turning them into brothers, or that He would confound them, bringing their wicked schemes to nothing.
David's ultimate confidence was in God. Our ultimate confidence is in David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. His words were twisted more than any other's. They lurked and watched His heels. They succeeded in taking His life. But on the third day, God answered the ultimate imprecatory prayer. In righteous anger against sin and death, He brought down that entire kingdom of darkness through the resurrection. And because He was raised, we know that our prayers for justice will not go unanswered. We fight in a war that has already been won. Therefore, we can pray with confidence, "In anger, bring down the peoples, O God!" knowing that He will, in His time and in His way, bring every enemy under His feet.