The Didactic Wrath of God Text: Psalm 59:9-13
Introduction: A Righteous Man's Prayer
We live in a soft and sentimental age, an age that has tried to domesticate the Lion of Judah and turn Him into a housecat. Modern evangelicals are often embarrassed by psalms like this one. They treat the imprecatory prayers, the prayers that call down curses on the wicked, as if they were the awkward, unrefined ramblings of an Old Testament saint who had not yet learned the niceties of turning the other cheek. But this is a profound misunderstanding, not only of the Psalms, but of the very nature of God's justice and the New Testament's ethic of love.
To pray an imprecatory psalm is not to vent personal spleen. It is not a sanctified tantrum. It is a righteous, covenantal appeal to the Judge of all the earth to do right. David is not writing this psalm because some fellows cut him off in traffic. He is writing as the Lord's anointed, surrounded by the bloodthirsty agents of a rogue state, men sent by Saul to murder him in his own home. These are not his personal enemies; they are God's enemies. They hate David because they hate the God who anointed David. To pray for their downfall, therefore, is to pray for the advancement of God's kingdom and the vindication of His name.
The New Testament does not abrogate these prayers; it fulfills them. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, He is not telling us to be indifferent to wickedness. He is telling us not to take up personal vengeance, because vengeance belongs to God. And how do we hand that vengeance over to God? We do it in prayer. We ask Him, the only one with the right and the wisdom to do so, to deal with His enemies. Our first and primary desire should be that God would destroy His enemies by making them His friends, as He did with Saul of Tarsus. That is the ultimate destruction. But if they will not repent, if they harden their hearts and set themselves implacably against the Lord and His Christ, then we are right to pray that God would remove them, for the sake of His people and for the glory of His name.
This psalm teaches us how to think about God's justice. It is not just punitive; it is didactic. It teaches. God's judgments in history are object lessons for His people, and they are advertisements of His sovereignty to the watching world. This is not raw, blind fury. This is calculated, intelligent, purposeful wrath. And we must learn to pray in harmony with it.
The Text
Because of his strength I will watch for You, For God is my stronghold. My God in His lovingkindness will approach me; God will let me look triumphantly upon my foes. Do not slay them, or my people will forget; Make them wander about by Your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield. On account of the sin of their mouth and the word of their lips, Let them even be caught in their pride, And on account of curses and lies which they utter. Destroy them in wrath, destroy them that they may be no more; That men may know that God rules in Jacob To the ends of the earth. Selah.
(Psalm 59:9-13 LSB)
Strength, Stronghold, and Lovingkindness (v. 9-10)
David begins this section by turning his eyes from the strength of his enemy to the strength of his God.
"Because of his strength I will watch for You, For God is my stronghold. My God in His lovingkindness will approach me; God will let me look triumphantly upon my foes." (Psalm 59:9-10)
The "his" in "his strength" refers to the enemy, Saul. David acknowledges the adversary's power. He is not naive. The men at his door are dangerous. But this earthly strength, this political and military might, is precisely what causes David to turn his gaze upward. He says, in effect, "Because their strength is so great, my only recourse is to watch for You." When we are confronted with overwhelming opposition, the temptation is to despair or to begin frantic political calculations. David's response is to watch. This is an act of expectant faith. He is looking for God to act, confident that He will.
He calls God his "stronghold." This is a military term, a high place of defense, a fortress. God is not an abstract concept; He is a practical, impregnable defense in the real world of swords and spears. And then David anchors this confidence in God's character. "My God in His lovingkindness will approach me." The word for lovingkindness is hesed, that steadfast, covenantal, loyal love of God. God's help is not a maybe. It is not a possibility. It is a covenant promise. He will approach. He will meet David in his moment of need. God is never late.
The result of this is that God will allow David to "look triumphantly" upon his foes. This is not a bloodthirsty gloating. It is the quiet confidence of a man who knows that God's cause will prevail. It is the vindication of the righteous. To see your enemies defeated is to see God's justice made manifest. It is to see God's promises fulfilled. For a righteous man, there is no greater joy than to see God's righteousness publicly displayed.
A Didactic Judgment (v. 11)
Here David makes a fascinating and instructive request. It is a prayer that reveals a deep understanding of God's purposes in judgment.
"Do not slay them, or my people will forget; Make them wander about by Your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield." (Psalm 59:11 LSB)
His first instinct is not for a quick, clean annihilation. He asks for something else. "Do not slay them." Why? "Or my people will forget." This is profoundly insightful. A swift, sudden execution might be satisfying in the moment, but its pedagogical value is limited. The memory would fade. The next generation would hear stories, but they would not see the ongoing reality of God's judgment. We are a forgetful people. We need constant reminders.
So David prays for a protracted, visible judgment. "Make them wander about by Your power, and bring them down." He asks that God would make them living object lessons. Let them be stripped of their power, their honor, their stability. Let them become vagabonds, a public spectacle of failure. Let their ruin be a slow-motion collapse that everyone can watch. This is what God did to Cain, making him a "fugitive and a wanderer." This is what God did to apostate Israel in the wilderness. The judgment was not just an event; it was a condition. It was a forty-year sermon preached in the desert.
David wants God's people to see, day in and day out, what happens to those who set themselves against the Lord. He wants the consequences of rebellion to be undeniable, a constant warning against apostasy and a constant encouragement to faithfulness. He finishes the thought by calling God "our shield." A shield is for defense, and one of the things we need to be defended from is our own foolish tendency to forget God's mighty acts.
The Sin of Prideful Speech (v. 12)
David now identifies the specific sin that is ripe for judgment. It is the sin of the mouth, which is the overflow of a proud heart.
"On account of the sin of their mouth and the word of their lips, Let them even be caught in their pride, And on account of curses and lies which they utter." (Psalm 59:12 LSB)
The rebellion is not silent. It is vocal. It manifests in "the sin of their mouth and the word of their lips." Words are never just words. They are the primary vehicle by which the rebellion of the heart is exported into the world. And what is the root of this sinful speech? David names it: "Let them even be caught in their pride."
Pride is the original sin, the mother sin from which all other sins are born. It is the self-centered delusion that I can be my own god, my own source of truth, my own lawgiver. This pride inevitably expresses itself in speech. The proud man boasts, he lies, he curses. He uses his words to create a false reality that centers on himself. David's enemies were uttering "curses and lies." They were cursing the Lord's anointed and speaking lies about him to justify their murderous intent. They were trying to speak a new world into existence, a world where Saul was king and David was dead.
David's prayer is that their own words would become the net that catches them. Let their prideful boasts be the very things that bring them low. Let their intricate lies collapse upon their own heads. This is the beautiful irony of God's justice. He so often uses the sinner's own chosen tools as the instrument of his destruction. Haman builds a gallows for Mordecai and ends up swinging on it himself. The enemies of Daniel get him thrown into the lions' den and end up as lion food. God's justice is not arbitrary; it is poetic.
Consuming Wrath for a Global Testimony (v. 13)
After praying for a slow, instructive judgment, David now prays for a final, consummate end to their rebellion. The two requests are not contradictory; they are sequential.
"Destroy them in wrath, destroy them that they may be no more; That men may know that God rules in Jacob To the ends of the earth. Selah." (Psalm 59:13 LSB)
First, make them a long-running public lesson. Then, when the lesson has been taught, bring the curtain down. "Destroy them in wrath, destroy them that they may be no more." This is a prayer for their complete removal. Let their rebellion be utterly extinguished. Let their line be cut off. Let their influence be erased from the earth. This is not personal vindictiveness. It is a desire for the absolute triumph of God's righteousness.
And what is the ultimate purpose of this final, destructive wrath? It is not simply to get rid of a problem. The purpose is doxological. It is for the glory of God. "That men may know that God rules in Jacob To the ends of the earth."
The judgment is a global sermon. When God acts decisively to crush His enemies, it is a declaration to the entire world. It says that the God of Israel, the God of Jacob, is not a tribal deity. He is not a local god. He is the sovereign ruler of all creation, "to the ends of the earth." Every act of judgment is a missionary act. It is an advertisement for the kingdom. When God brings down the proud, He is inviting the humble from every nation to see His power and take refuge in Him.
This is the great end of all things. This is why we pray for God's kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are praying for the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Some will bow in joyful adoration, and others will bow because their knees have been broken by the iron rod of His wrath. But either way, they will bow. And all men will know that God rules, not just in Jacob, but to the ends of the earth. Selah. Pause and think about that.