Bird's-eye view
This concluding section of Psalm 83 is a raw, potent, and thoroughly biblical imprecatory prayer. Having laid out the case in the first part of the psalm, detailing the confederacy of God's enemies and their malicious intent to wipe out His people, the psalmist now turns to God with a series of petitions for judgment. This is not personal vengeance. This is a plea for God to vindicate His own name and His own covenant people. The prayer is filled with violent, elemental imagery: whirling dust, chaff in the wind, a raging forest fire. The psalmist asks God to pursue His enemies with the full force of His divine power. Yet, woven into this fierce prayer for judgment is a surprising thread of evangelistic purpose. The ultimate goal of the disgrace, the shame, and the perishing is redemptive: "that they may seek Your name, O Yahweh," and "that they may know that You alone...Are the Most High over all the earth." This is holy warfare, where the desired outcome is not simply destruction, but the establishment of God's undisputed sovereignty and glory, a glory that can even be recognized by His defeated foes.
We moderns are often squeamish about such prayers, but they are an essential part of the biblical witness. They teach us that God is not indifferent to evil, that sin has consequences, and that God's justice is a terrifying and glorious thing. These prayers are a righteous appeal to the only just Judge, asking Him to do what He has promised to do: set the world right. They are prayers that can only be prayed rightly by those who have first surrendered their own cause to God's, and who desire God's glory above all else, even above the destruction of their enemies.
Outline
- 1. A Prayer for Divine Judgment (Ps 83:13-18)
- a. The Petition for Destabilization (Ps 83:13)
- b. The Imagery of Consuming Judgment (Ps 83:14)
- c. The Request for Divine Pursuit (Ps 83:15)
- d. The Redemptive Goal of Shame (Ps 83:16)
- e. The Final Plea for Utter Defeat (Ps 83:17)
- f. The Ultimate Doxological Purpose (Ps 83:18)
Context In Psalms
Psalm 83 is the last of the psalms attributed to Asaph. It stands as a powerful climax to a collection of psalms that often deal with national lament and the problem of God's apparent silence in the face of arrogant evil (e.g., Psalm 74, 79). This psalm is unique in its detailed listing of a ten-nation coalition arrayed against Israel. It is a corporate, covenantal prayer on behalf of the entire nation. The first twelve verses serve as the indictment, the presentation of the evidence before the heavenly court. The psalmist lays out the threat, identifies the enemies, and quotes their blasphemous ambition. The final section (vv. 13-18) is the psalmist's appeal for a verdict and sentence. This structure, moving from complaint to petition for judgment, is common in the psalms of lament. The imprecations here are not outliers; they are part of a robust biblical pattern of calling upon God to act decisively against those who have set themselves against Him and His kingdom. These prayers find their ultimate fulfillment in the final judgment, but they are also prayers for historical interventions, asking God to act within time and space to defend His people and glorify His name.
Key Issues
- Imprecatory Prayer
- The Justice and Wrath of God
- The Sovereignty of God in Judgment
- The Relationship Between Shame and Repentance
- The Doxological Purpose of Judgment
- Corporate Guilt and National Enemies
- The Vindication of God's Name
Praying for a Forest Fire
When we get to a passage like this, our tidy, well-mannered, praise-chorus Christianity gets a bit flustered. We are being invited to pray for God to make people like whirling dust, to set them on fire like a forest, to pursue them with a tempest. This is not a prayer for your adversary to have a flat tire on the way to work. This is a prayer for total, catastrophic, public overthrow. And it is in the Bible, which means God wants us to learn how to pray this way.
The key to understanding these prayers is to see that they are never about personal pique. Asaph is not angry because someone cut him off in traffic. This is a corporate prayer against a confederacy of nations whose stated goal is to blot out the name of Israel, to erase God's people from the earth (v. 4). An attack on God's people is an attack on God's name, His reputation, and His covenant promises. Therefore, the prayer is for God to act for the sake of His own glory. The psalmist is aligning his desires with God's revealed justice. He is asking God to be God. He is asking the divine Judge to bring the gavel down. And as we will see, the ultimate goal is not merely punitive; it is doxological and even has an evangelistic edge. The fire is intended to clear the ground so that something new can be seen: the undisputed reality of Yahweh as the Most High.
Verse by Verse Commentary
13 O my God, make them like the whirling dust, Like chaff before the wind.
The prayer begins with a plea for utter destabilization. Whirling dust, or a tumbleweed as some translate it, has no control, no direction, no stability. It is entirely at the mercy of the elements. Chaff is the light, worthless part of the grain that is blown away during threshing. The psalmist is asking God to strip His enemies of all their perceived power, stability, and substance. He wants their proud confederacy, which seems so solid and threatening, to be revealed for what it is: weightless, rootless, and easily dispersed by the slightest breath of God's power. This is a prayer that God would undo them, to reverse their plotting and render them helpless before Him.
14 Like fire that burns the forest And like a flame that burns up the mountains,
The imagery intensifies from dispersion to consumption. A forest fire is relentless, indiscriminate, and all-consuming. It devours everything in its path. A flame that "burns up the mountains" speaks of a blaze of such intensity that it clears entire landscapes. The psalmist is not asking for a mild rebuke. He is asking for a judgment that is as swift, public, and devastating as a wildfire. He wants the wicked to be consumed by the holy fire of God's presence. This is the fire of divine wrath, which purifies the land of those who have set themselves against the Lord of that land.
15 So pursue them with Your tempest And dismay them with Your storm.
Here the psalmist pictures God as an active pursuer. The judgment is not a static event but a relentless chase. The enemies of God are to find no rest, no shelter. God's tempest and storm, His active, violent, and overwhelming power, are to hunt them down. The word for "dismay" carries the idea of terror and panic. He is praying that they would be thrown into a state of utter confusion and fear by the manifest power of God's opposition to them. There is to be no escape and no place to hide from the God they have defied.
16 Fill their faces with disgrace, That they may seek Your name, O Yahweh.
This is the pivotal verse of the entire section and the key to praying such prayers rightly. What is the purpose of this terrifying pursuit, this consuming fire, this public humiliation? It is explicitly redemptive. "Fill their faces with disgrace, THAT they may seek Your name." Shame and disgrace are the tools God uses to break the back of pride. Pride is what keeps men from seeking God. When a man's arrogant plans are smashed, when his power is revealed as impotence, when his face is filled with the public shame of his defeat, only then is he in a position to look for a god who is greater than himself. This is not a vindictive prayer; it is an evangelistic prayer. It is a prayer that God would do whatever it takes, no matter how severe, to bring these rebels to a place where they might actually repent and call on Him.
17 Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, And let them be humiliated and perish,
This verse seems to run counter to the previous one, but it doesn't. It presents the alternative. The prayer in verse 16 is for them to be shamed so that they might seek Yahweh. Verse 17 says, in effect, "And if they don't, if they refuse to repent in their humiliation, then let their shame and dismay be permanent. Let them perish in their rebellion." This is a recognition that not all will repent. God's judgment has a twofold effect: it either softens or hardens. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. The psalmist prays for their conversion, but if they will not be converted, he prays for their just condemnation. Let their humiliation be total, and let them be removed from the earth. There is no third option.
18 That they may know that You alone, Your name is Yahweh, Are the Most High over all the earth.
The psalm concludes with the ultimate purpose of everything that has been prayed for. Whether the enemies repent (v. 16) or perish (v. 17), the outcome must be the same: the universal recognition of God's supreme authority. The goal is doxological. The whole earth needs to learn a theology lesson, and the curriculum is the judgment of God upon His enemies. They will know that God's personal, covenant name is Yahweh, and that this God is not a tribal deity but is Elyon, the Most High over all the earth. This is a prayer for the vindication of God's name. When God's enemies are overthrown, His sovereignty is put on display for all to see. Every knee will bow, either in willing adoration or in forced submission. The prayer of Psalm 83 is a prayer that God would hasten that day.
Application
So, how do we, as New Covenant believers, pray these prayers? First, we must recognize that our primary enemies are not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). Our prayers should be aimed at the overthrow of demonic strongholds, false ideologies, and rebellious systems that set themselves against the knowledge of God. We pray for the "disgrace" of evolutionism, the "humiliation" of secular humanism, and the "perishing" of godless political agendas, so that those caught in these systems might be set free to seek the name of the Lord.
Second, when we do face human opposition, and the church always does, we pray these psalms with the built-in evangelistic qualifier of verse 16. We pray that God would bring down our persecutors, that He would thwart their plans and fill their faces with shame, precisely so that they might be brought to their senses and repent. We pray for God to defeat the abortionist, the pornographer, and the persecutor, and we pray that in their defeat, they would see the hand of God and cry out for the mercy found in the gospel. We pray for their conversion, but we also pray for their removal if they persist in their wickedness, because we love justice and the protection of the innocent more than we love the comfort of the wicked.
Finally, we pray these prayers knowing that their ultimate fulfillment comes in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the one who endured the ultimate shame and tempest of God's wrath on the cross, so that we, God's enemies, could be reconciled. And He is the one who will return with a tempest and with fire to judge the living and the dead. To pray these psalms is to align ourselves with His coming kingdom and justice. It is to say, with the saints under the altar, "How long, O Lord?" and with the apostle John at the end of the age, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."