The Cursed Table and the Book of Life Text: Psalm 69:22-28
Introduction: The Offense of Holy Curses
We live in a sentimental, syrupy age. Our generation wants a God who is all comfort and no confrontation, all mercy and no justice, a celestial grandfather who pats us on the head regardless of what we do. And so, when we come to a passage like this one in Psalm 69, the modern evangelical reader gets the vapors. This is an imprecatory psalm, a psalm that calls down curses, and it offends our therapeutic sensibilities. We are told by Jesus to love our enemies, so what on earth are we to do with a Spirit-inspired prayer that asks God to make their loins quake continually?
The answer is that we must submit our sensibilities to Scripture, and not the other way around. These are not the ravings of a bitter man seeking personal revenge. This is the Spirit of Christ speaking through David, prophesying the just judgment that will befall the enemies of God's Messiah. This psalm is one of the most frequently quoted psalms in the New Testament, and these very verses are applied by the Apostle Paul to the Jews who rejected their Messiah. So we are not at liberty to dismiss these words as some sub-Christian, Old Testament rant. This is the Word of God, and it reveals the heart of God toward intractable, covenantal rebellion.
The difference between a sinful curse and a righteous imprecation is this: a sinful curse is born of personal spite and seeks to establish your own kingdom. A righteous imprecation is born of zeal for God's holiness and seeks to establish His kingdom. It is not, "My will be done," but rather, "Thy will be done." It is a prayer that turns the matter of justice over to the only one qualified to execute it perfectly. When we pray this way, we are asking God to be God. We are asking Him to vindicate His own name, to protect His own honor, and to defend His persecuted people.
This passage is a prophetic glimpse of the cross and its consequences. The first part of Psalm 69 details the sufferings of the Messiah, "They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (v. 21), a direct prophecy of Christ's crucifixion. What we have in our text today is the second part of that equation: the righteous and terrible consequences for those who served Him that bitter cup. The cross is a savor of life unto life for those who believe, but it is a savor of death unto death for those who reject it. These curses are what that savor of death smells like.
The Text
May their table before them become a snare; And when they are in peace, may it become a trap. May their eyes darken so that they cannot see, And make their loins quake continually. Pour out Your indignation on them, And may Your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be desolate; May none dwell in their tents. For they have persecuted him whom You Yourself have struck down, And they recount the pain of those whom You have wounded. Add iniquity to their iniquity, And may they not come into Your righteousness. May they be blotted out of the book of life And may they not be recorded with the righteous.
(Psalm 69:22-28 LSB)
The Table as a Trap (v. 22)
The first imprecation strikes at the very heart of fellowship and blessing.
"May their table before them become a snare; And when they are in peace, may it become a trap." (Psalm 69:22)
The table is a place of peace, provision, and communion. It is where we receive God's blessings, where we share life with family and friends. For the ancient Israelite, the table was laden with covenantal significance, pointing to the sacrificial meals and the provision of God. The prayer here is that this central place of blessing would be inverted, becoming a source of judgment. The very things that should have been for their welfare, their covenantal blessings, become the instrument of their downfall. The Apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 11 and applies it directly to the Israelites who rejected Jesus. Their greatest blessing, the Law, the covenants, the temple, the Messiah in their midst, became a snare to them because of their unbelief. They stumbled over the cornerstone.
This is a terrifying principle. When God's grace is spurned, that grace does not simply evaporate. It curdles. The sweetest wine becomes the sourest vinegar. The Passover meal, which should have been for their life, became a trap because they rejected the true Passover Lamb. The blessings of God, when met with a hard heart, become instruments of judgment. The peace they think they have, their security in their traditions and their own righteousness, becomes the very thing that entraps them. They are at ease in Zion, and that ease is their ruin.
Blinded Eyes and Trembling Bodies (v. 23)
The curse moves from their external blessings to their internal faculties.
"May their eyes darken so that they cannot see, And make their loins quake continually." (Psalm 69:23)
This is a prayer for judicial blindness. Again, Paul picks this up in Romans 11, arguing that Israel has experienced a hardening. They had the light of the world standing before them, and they could not see Him. This prayer asks God to make that condition permanent. It is a prayer that God would give them over to the darkness they have chosen. When men refuse to see, God helps them along. He gives them up to their delusions. This is one of the most fearful judgments in all of Scripture. It is not that they are seeking for truth and cannot find it; it is that they have hated the truth, and so God confirms them in their blindness.
And with spiritual blindness comes physical terror. "Make their loins quake continually." The loins were seen as the center of strength. This is a prayer that their strength would fail, that they would be filled with a constant, deep-seated dread and instability. When a man is alienated from God, he is alienated from reality. He has no foundation, no stability. The world becomes a terrifying place because he has rejected the one who holds it all together. This is the anxiety of the wicked, a perpetual trembling because they have no anchor and no hope.
Divine Anger Poured Out (v. 24-25)
The prayer now calls for the direct and unmitigated wrath of God.
"Pour out Your indignation on them, And may Your burning anger overtake them. May their camp be desolate; May none dwell in their tents." (Genesis 69:24-25)
This is not a request for a mild rebuke. It is a plea for the full measure of God's holy fury to be unleashed. The language is vivid, "burning anger," an anger that pursues and "overtakes" them. There is no escape. This is the cry of justice against those who have shed innocent blood, the blood of the Son of God.
The result of this divine anger is utter desolation. "May their camp be desolate." This found its fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The city that rejected its King was left desolate, its temple torn down, not one stone left on another. The apostle Peter, in Acts 1, applies this very prophecy to Judas Iscariot, the arch-traitor: "For it is written in the Book of Psalms, 'Let his homestead be made desolate, And let no one dwell in it'" (Acts 1:20). Judas's field was left empty, a monument to treachery. The principle is that those who betray the Lord will have their own place, their inheritance, turned into a wasteland.
The Reason for the Curse (v. 26)
Lest we think this is all baseless vindictiveness, the psalmist gives the grounds for this terrible prayer.
"For they have persecuted him whom You Yourself have struck down, And they recount the pain of those whom You have wounded." (Psalm 69:26)
This is a crucial verse. Who is the one "whom You Yourself have struck down?" This is the Messiah. Isaiah 53 tells us, "it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:10). The Father struck the Son, pouring out the wrath for our sin upon Him. But the wicked, in their blindness, joined in for all the wrong reasons. They persecuted the one who was already bearing the stroke of God. They saw Him wounded by God and, instead of showing mercy, they piled on. They took a perverse delight in His suffering; they "recount the pain."
This is the height of wickedness. They became willing, malicious instruments in the divine judgment of the Son, not to fulfill God's redemptive plan, but to satisfy their own hatred. They kicked a man who was already down, not knowing that He was down for them. Their sin was not in striking the Messiah, for God had ordained that He be struck. Their sin was the hatred in their hearts as they did it, and their subsequent gloating. They aligned themselves with the pain, not the purpose, of the cross.
The Ultimate Curses (v. 27-28)
The final requests are the most severe, moving into the realm of eternal destiny.
"Add iniquity to their iniquity, And may they not come into Your righteousness. May they be blotted out of the book of life And may they not be recorded with the righteous." (Psalm 69:27-28)
"Add iniquity to their iniquity." This is another prayer for judicial hardening. It is a request that God would let sin run its course. Let them heap up sin upon sin, filling up the measure of their guilt until the time of judgment. It is a prayer that they would be given over to their own rebellious hearts, so that they are never able to "come into Your righteousness." It is a prayer that the door to repentance would be shut.
This culminates in the ultimate curse: "May they be blotted out of the book of life." The book of life, in the Old Testament context, often referred to the registry of the living citizens of the covenant community. To be blotted out was to be excommunicated, cut off, to die. But in its ultimate, prophetic sense, it refers to the Lamb's book of life, the register of the elect from before the foundation of the world. This is a prayer that these enemies of Christ would be shown to have never been among the elect. That their names would not be found in the rolls of the redeemed. It is a prayer for their final and eternal damnation.
Conclusion: Grace in the Midst of Wrath
How can a Christian pray such things? We must remember two things. First, these prayers are ultimately fulfilled in God's perfect justice at the final judgment. We are handing these people over to God, who judges righteously. We are leaving room for the wrath of God. Second, the greatest miracle of all is that any of us are exempt from these curses. By nature, we were all enemies of God. We all stood with the persecutors and mocked the wounded one. Our sins nailed Him to that tree.
Why is our table a blessing and not a snare? Why are our eyes opened and not darkened? Why is our name written in the book of life and not blotted out? It is for one reason alone: grace. God did not "add iniquity to our iniquity." Instead, He laid all our iniquity on Christ. Christ was blotted out, cut off from the land of the living, so that we might be written in.
Therefore, we read these curses not with personal vindictiveness, but with sober awe. We see in them the terrible price of sin and the fierce holiness of God. And it drives us to our knees in gratitude, because the very indignation that was poured out on the head of our Savior is the reason it will never be poured out on us. He drank the cup of God's burning anger so that we could drink the cup of His everlasting fellowship. He was made desolate in His tent, crying out "My God, why have you forsaken me?" so that we might dwell in the house of the Lord forever.