Bird's-eye view
Psalm 94 is what we call an imprecatory psalm, which is a fifty-dollar word for a psalm that calls down curses and judgment on the wicked. Our soft-handed generation gets the vapors when we encounter such prayers, imagining them to be some sort of sub-Christian vestige of a primitive, angry religion. But this is a profound misunderstanding. These are not prayers of personal vindictiveness; they are prayers for public justice. The psalmist is not asking God to settle a petty score. He is looking at a world overrun by arrogant, violent, and atheistic men who are crushing the righteous, and he is asking the Judge of all the earth to please take the bench and do His job. This is a prayer for the kingdom to come, for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is a cry for God to vindicate His own name and His own people. The central theme is the plea for God, the ultimate and only rightful Avenger, to manifest His justice in a world that has grown dark with oppression.
The psalm begins with a direct, passionate appeal to Yahweh, identifying Him by His most fearsome and necessary attribute in a fallen world: He is the God of vengeance. This is not a bug, but a feature. A God who is not a God of vengeance is a God who is indifferent to monstrous evil. The psalmist calls for this God to "shine forth," to make His presence and power known. He then calls for the Judge of the earth to rise up and give the proud what they have coming. The foundation of this prayer is a robust theology of divine justice. God sees, He knows, and He will act. The alternative is to believe that the wicked have a free pass, that history is a meaningless tale told by an idiot, and that justice is a mirage. This psalm is a righteous refusal of that lie.
Outline
- 1. An Urgent Summons for Divine Justice (Ps 94:1-2)
- a. The Rightful Avenger Invoked (Ps 94:1)
- b. The Universal Judge Called to Act (Ps 94:2)
Context In Psalms
Psalm 94 sits within a collection of psalms (Psalms 93-100) that celebrate the kingship of Yahweh. Psalm 93 declares, "Yahweh reigns." Psalm 95 calls us to worship this King. But what does it mean for Yahweh to reign in a world where it so often appears that wicked men are in charge? Psalm 94 answers this question directly. The reign of God is not a sentimental platitude; it is a governing reality that includes the active, decisive, and often violent judgment of evil. This psalm provides the necessary grit and realism to the surrounding songs of praise. It reminds the worshiper that the throne of God is a throne of judgment. You cannot have a holy king who does not deal with rebellion in His kingdom. Therefore, this psalm functions as a covenant lawsuit, a cry from the faithful subjects of the King for Him to enforce the laws of His own kingdom against those who are in open revolt.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Divine Vengeance
- Imprecatory Prayer
- God as the Judge of the Earth
- The Problem of Pride
- The Justice of God in a Fallen World
The God Who Gets Even
Modern Christians are often embarrassed by the concept of God's vengeance. We have refashioned God into a cosmic therapist, a celestial Mister Rogers whose chief attribute is being nice. But the biblical God is not nice; He is good. And goodness in a world filled with rape, murder, and tyranny requires a fierce and holy opposition to evil. Vengeance, in our hands, is almost always sinful because our motives are polluted and our knowledge is partial. We seek personal revenge. But vengeance in God's hands is something else entirely. The Hebrew word for vengeance, naqam, is a legal term. It refers to the carrying out of justice, the settling of accounts, the vindication of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked. When the Bible says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom 12:19), it is not a prohibition against justice, but a prohibition against us usurping God's role as the ultimate judge. The psalmist here is not taking matters into his own hands. He is taking his case to the supreme court of the universe and demanding that the Judge act. This is an act of profound faith. He believes that justice is real because God is real.
Verse by Verse Commentary
1 O Yahweh, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth!
The prayer begins with a bang. The psalmist does not tiptoe into God's presence. He leads with the most startling and necessary of God's titles for the situation at hand. He calls Him the El-Neqamoth, the God of Vengeances. The repetition is for emphasis, like a man banging on a courthouse door in the middle of the night. "God of vengeance! God of vengeance!" This is not a name we are likely to put on a coffee mug, but it is a name that is precious to the oppressed. For the widow whose husband has been murdered, for the orphan whose inheritance has been stolen, for the people of God being crushed by a tyrannical state, the knowledge that God is a God of just retribution is not a problem; it is their only hope.
And the cry is for God to "shine forth." This is the language of theophany, of a visible and undeniable manifestation of God's presence and power. Think of the glory of God descending on Sinai, or the pillar of fire in the wilderness. The psalmist is asking God to stop being hidden. "Lord, the wicked are acting as though You do not exist. They say You cannot see (v. 7). Show them. Rip the heavens open and come down. Let Your glory blaze forth in righteous judgment so that every eye can see who is actually in charge here." This is a prayer for God to make His reality inescapable.
2 Be lifted up, O Judge of the earth, Render recompense to the proud.
The psalmist continues his summons. "Be lifted up" is a call for God to assume His high position, to take His seat on the bench. It is a plea for the Judge to assert His authority. The title used here is significant: "Judge of the earth." Not just the judge of Israel, but the Judge of all nations, all peoples, all rulers. No one is outside His jurisdiction. Abraham knew this when he asked, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" (Gen 18:25). The psalmist's faith rests on this foundational truth. God's authority is universal.
And what is the specific action requested of this Judge? "Render recompense to the proud." Recompense is a word of accounting. It means to pay back what is owed, to give a just return. And who is on the receiving end of this payback? The proud. Pride is the root sin, the original rebellion. It is the creature puffing himself up against the Creator, acting as though he is autonomous, a law unto himself. The wicked in this psalm are characterized by their arrogant boasting (v. 4). They act as they do because they are proud. They believe they are untouchable. This prayer asks God to disabuse them of that notion, to give them the reward their pride has earned them. God's justice is the great humbler of the proud.
Application
So how are we to pray a prayer like this? First, we must recognize that the world is still full of arrogant evil. Wickedness still frames mischief by a law, crushes the innocent, and boasts against God. To refuse to pray for God's justice to fall is to be complicit in the evil. We are not called to be passive observers of tyranny. We are called to pray for the kingdom to come, and the coming of that kingdom necessarily means the tearing down of rival kingdoms.
Second, we must pray this with clean hands. This is not a prayer for God to smite our personal enemies or the guy who cut us off in traffic. This is a prayer for God's public justice against His public enemies, those who hate Him and oppress His people. We must first examine our own hearts for pride and confess our own sins. We pray this as sinners saved by grace, who have taken refuge in Christ from the very wrath we are calling down on others. Our only standing to pray this prayer is that we are hidden in the one who absorbed the ultimate vengeance of God on the cross.
Finally, we pray this with faith. We do not know the times or the seasons, but we know that the Judge of all the earth will do right. We pray this because God commanded us to pray this way. He gave us these words. These prayers are instruments through which God accomplishes His purposes in history. So when we see evil swaggering across the world stage, we have our instructions. We are to go to the God of vengeance and ask Him, in the name of His Son, to get up on His throne, to shine forth in glory, and to render a just reward to the proud.