The Kindness of Calamity Text: Psalm 83:13-18
Introduction: Prayers We Are Afraid to Pray
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has traded the robust, sinewy Christianity of the Scriptures for a soft, therapeutic deism that would blush at a psalm like this. Our modern sensibilities are easily offended. We want a God who is always nice, always affirming, and never, ever terrifying. We have domesticated the Lion of Judah and tried to turn him into a housecat. Consequently, when we come to what are called the imprecatory psalms, psalms that call down judgment on the enemies of God, we tend to skip over them, or explain them away, or treat them as some unfortunate remnant of a primitive, pre-Christian ethic that Jesus supposedly did away with.
But this is a profound error, and it is a dangerous one. These prayers are in the Bible. They are God-breathed. They are not the rantings of a vindictive poet; they are the inspired words of the Holy Spirit, given to the people of God to be sung in corporate worship. To be embarrassed by these psalms is to be embarrassed by the Holy Spirit. To refuse to pray them is to refuse to pray biblically. To believe they are somehow sub-Christian is to place our own flimsy, modern standards of niceness above the revealed justice of Almighty God.
Psalm 83 is a corporate lament, a prayer of the entire nation of Israel as they are surrounded by a confederacy of enemies bent on their total destruction. The first part of the psalm identifies the enemies and their malicious intent, "that the name of Israel be remembered no more." This is not a personal squabble. This is a satanic assault on the covenant people of God, and by extension, on the covenant God Himself. The psalmist is therefore not praying out of personal spite. He is praying for the vindication of God's name, the preservation of God's people, and the advancement of God's kingdom. And in these final verses, he tells us exactly what that looks like, and more importantly, why he prays for it. What we find here is not raw vengeance, but a profound, doxological, and surprisingly evangelistic purpose behind the most severe prayers for judgment.
The Text
O my God, make them like the whirling dust, Like chaff before the wind.
Like fire that burns the forest And like a flame that burns up the mountains,
So pursue them with Your tempest And dismay them with Your storm.
Fill their faces with disgrace, That they may seek Your name, O Yahweh.
Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, And let them be humiliated and perish,
That they may know that You alone, Your name is Yahweh, Are the Most High over all the earth.
(Psalm 83:13-18 LSB)
A Prayer for Divine Deconstruction (vv. 13-15)
The prayer begins with a series of vivid, violent images of deconstruction and holy chaos.
"O my God, make them like the whirling dust, Like chaff before the wind. Like fire that burns the forest And like a flame that burns up the mountains, So pursue them with Your tempest And dismay them with Your storm." (Psalm 83:13-15)
The psalmist asks God to make His enemies like "whirling dust" and "chaff before the wind." Chaff is the worthless husk of the grain, light, rootless, and useless. It has no substance. The prayer is that God would reveal the enemies for what they truly are: insubstantial nothings. John the Baptist uses this very image to describe the ministry of Christ, who will come with His winnowing fork to "gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:12). This is a prayer for God to bring eschatological clarity into the present moment. These enemies appear powerful, organized, and threatening, but the psalmist asks God to show them, and everyone else, that before the breath of God they are nothing.
The imagery then intensifies from wind to fire. Not just any fire, but a wildfire that consumes a forest, a conflagration that sets mountains ablaze. This is a picture of swift, uncontrollable, and total judgment. Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). The psalmist is not asking God to act out of character. He is asking God to be God. He is praying for the enemies of God to have a direct, unmediated encounter with the raw holiness and power of God. He wants them to be pursued by God's tempest and terrified by His storm.
This is a prayer for their world to be utterly undone. It is a prayer for their pride, their security, their plans, and their confederacy to be shattered by a divine intervention so overwhelming that it cannot be mistaken for anything else. It is a prayer to unmake their world, to dismantle their rebellion from the foundation up.
The Redemptive Purpose of Shame (v. 16)
Now, if the prayer stopped there, we might be tempted to agree with the sentimentalists. But the next verse is the hinge upon which the entire psalm turns. It provides the glorious, God-honoring purpose behind this prayer for deconstruction. It is the "why."
"Fill their faces with disgrace, That they may seek Your name, O Yahweh." (Psalm 83:16 LSB)
This is one of the most merciful requests in all of Scripture. Let that sink in. The psalmist prays for his enemies to be pursued by a divine hurricane so that they might be saved. He prays for their faces to be filled with disgrace and shame so that they might seek the name of Yahweh. The worst possible fate for a proud rebel is to be left alone in his pride. The most gracious thing God can do for a man who is marching confidently toward Hell is to break his legs.
Shame is the necessary precursor to repentance. Our therapeutic culture despises shame and seeks to eradicate it, replacing it with the empty calories of self-esteem. But biblically, shame is the emotional and spiritual recognition that something is profoundly wrong with us. It is the soul's fever, indicating the infection of sin. To pray for God to fill someone's face with shame is to pray for them to see themselves as God sees them. It is a prayer for the proud sinner to be granted a moment of terrifying sanity.
And notice the goal: "that they may seek Your name, O Yahweh." This is not a prayer for destruction for its own sake. It is a prayer for destruction that leads to desperation, and desperation that leads to devotion. It is a prayer that God would use calamity as a tool of kindness, and disgrace as an instrument of grace. This is how we are to love our enemies. We are to desire their ultimate good, which is their conversion. And if their conversion requires their world to be turned upside down by wind and fire and storm, then to love them is to pray for the storm.
The Great Alternative (v. 17)
But what if they refuse? What if, after their faces are filled with shame, they harden their hearts instead of humbling them? Verse 17 presents the solemn alternative.
"Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, And let them be humiliated and perish," (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
This is not a contradiction of the previous verse. It is the other side of the coin. God, through judgment, extends a severe offer of mercy. "Be ashamed and repent," He says. But if they refuse, if they say, "I will not seek His name," then the prayer is for that shame to become their permanent condition. It is a prayer that their temporary dismay would become an eternal dismay. If they will not be converted, then let them be confounded.
This is a prayer for God's justice to be final. If the enemies of God will not bend the knee in repentance, then the prayer is that they would be broken, that their capacity to do harm, to blaspheme God, and to persecute His people would be brought to a final, decisive end. It is a prayer for evil to be stopped. Loving God and loving our neighbor requires us to pray for the malignant evil that seeks to destroy them to be brought to nothing. This is not vindictive; it is protective. It is praying for God's kingdom to come, which necessarily means praying for rival kingdoms to go.
The Ultimate Doxology (v. 18)
The final verse gives the ultimate reason for everything that has preceded it. Whether through conversion or through condemnation, one great purpose will be accomplished.
"That they may know that You alone, Your name is Yahweh, Are the Most High over all the earth." (Psalm 83:18 LSB)
This is the ultimate goal. The chief end of God is the glory of God. And so the chief end of our prayers must be the glory of God. The psalmist prays that through these events, the world would come to know a fundamental truth about reality. They will know it one way or the other.
Those who are brought to repentance through shame will come to know that Yahweh is the Most High as they bow before Him as forgiven children. They will know Him as Savior. They will sing of His mercy and His sovereignty for all eternity.
Those who are brought to ruin through their rebellion will also come to know that Yahweh is the Most High. They will know it as they are broken before His judgment seat. They will know Him as Judge. As Paul says, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10-11). Some will bow in joyful adoration, and others will bow in terrified submission. But all will bow. No one gets a pass. God's name will be vindicated over all the earth.
Therefore, our prayers against the enemies of God are not fundamentally about our comfort or our safety. They are about the universal recognition of God's rightful, sovereign kingship. We pray for God to act in such a way that His name, Yahweh, is acknowledged as the ultimate reality. We pray for Him to confound the schemes of the wicked so that it becomes plain to all that He alone is the Most High.
Conclusion: Praying with Eyes Wide Open
This psalm teaches us how to pray in a world at war. We are not to be timid. We are not to be sentimental. We are to pray with biblical realism about the nature of sin, the reality of God's wrath, and the glorious purpose of His judgments.
We pray for the spiritual strongholds of our age to be thrown down like chaff in the wind. We pray for the proud ideologies that set themselves up against Christ to be consumed as by fire. We pray for God to pursue His enemies with His tempest, to fill their faces with the shame of their rebellion.
And we do this, not with hatred in our hearts, but with a deep love for the glory of God, praying earnestly that this severe mercy would lead them to seek the name of Jesus. We pray for their conversion. But we also pray with the sober understanding that if they will not be converted, they must be stopped. Because one way or another, through salvation or through judgment, the whole world will know that Jesus Christ, whose name is Yahweh, is the Most High over all the earth. And to that, all God's people should say, Amen.