The Necessary Hatred and the Everlasting Way Text: Psalm 139:19-24
Introduction: The Great Collision
We come now to the great collision in Psalm 139. For eighteen verses, David has soared in theological adoration. He has celebrated the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God with some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. He has marveled that the God who knit him together in his mother's womb also knows his every thought from afar. It is a breathtaking display of intimate, covenantal knowledge. And then, with the abruptness of a screeching halt, we crash into verse 19. "Oh that You would slay the wicked, O God!"
For the modern, sentimental Christian, this is a profound embarrassment. It feels like a beautiful symphony has been interrupted by a gunshot. We are comfortable with the God who is a gentle shepherd, a loving father, a creative artist. We are far less comfortable with the God who slays the wicked, and we are certainly uncomfortable with a psalmist who asks Him to do so. Our generation has been catechized in a soft, therapeutic gospel that has no categories for righteous hatred or imprecatory prayer. We have been taught to "love the sinner, hate the sin," a phrase that appears nowhere in Scripture and often functions as an excuse to do neither.
But the Bible is not a book written by 21st-century evangelicals. It is the Word of the living God, and it refuses to be tamed by our squishy sensibilities. These verses are not a bug; they are a feature. They are not an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise lovely psalm; they are its necessary, logical, and ethical culmination. The same man who adores God for His intricate knowledge and creative power is the same man who hates those who hate that God. His love for God is so white-hot that it necessarily creates a holy revulsion for all that stands against Him. You cannot have one without the other. A lukewarm love for God will produce a lukewarm opposition to evil. But a fervent, all-consuming love for God must, by its very nature, despise His enemies.
What we have here is not a descent into petty, personal vindictiveness. It is the pinnacle of theological integrity. David's profound understanding of who God is, celebrated in verses 1-18, inevitably leads him to take God's side in the great cosmic conflict. And then, with startling humility, it drives him right back to himself, to plead with this all-knowing God to search out any shred of that same wickedness within his own heart. This is the path of true holiness: a righteous hatred of God's enemies outside, and a ruthless suspicion of God's enemies inside.
The Text
Oh that You would slay the wicked, O God! O men of bloodshed, depart from me. For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Yahweh? And do I not revile those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
(Psalm 139:19-24 LSB)
A Prayer for Justice (v. 19-20)
The transition is jarring, but it is theologically essential. David moves from adoration to imprecation.
"Oh that You would slay the wicked, O God! O men of bloodshed, depart from me. For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain." (Psalm 139:19-20)
This is not a personal vendetta. David is not asking God to smite the guy who cut him off in chariot traffic. The prayer is grounded in God's character and God's honor. Why should the wicked be slain? Because they are "men of bloodshed." They are violent and destructive. But their ultimate crime is theological. "They speak against You wickedly." Their rebellion is vertical. "Your enemies take Your name in vain." They are blasphemers. David's concern is not primarily for his own safety, but for God's glory.
This is a prayer for justice. To pray for God to slay the wicked is simply to pray for God to do what He has already promised to do. It is to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." The coming of God's kingdom necessarily involves the vanquishing of His enemies. To be squeamish about this is to be squeamish about the holiness of God. When we refuse to pray these prayers, it is often because we have made a separate peace with the world. We have become so comfortable in Babylon that we have forgotten we are exiles. David has not forgotten. He knows there is a war on, and he knows whose side he is on.
His response is twofold: a vertical appeal and a horizontal separation. He asks God to act, and then he acts himself. "Depart from me." This is the principle of 2 Corinthians 6:17, "Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate." Holiness requires separation. You cannot align yourself with God and with those who take His name in vain. To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God (James 4:4). David understands this. His prayer for God's justice is authenticated by his personal pursuit of purity.
The Logic of Holy Hatred (v. 21-22)
David now explains the internal disposition that fuels his prayer and his separation. It is a disposition of holy hatred.
"Do I not hate those who hate You, O Yahweh? And do I not revile those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies." (Psalm 139:21-22)
Let us be very clear. This is not the same as the petty, sinful hatred that arises from personal slights, envy, or bitterness. This is a principled, theological hatred. The object of the hatred is defined by its relationship to God: "those who hate You." David is not setting the terms. God is. David is simply aligning his own affections with God's. He is loving what God loves and hating what God hates.
This is a loyalty test, and David passes it. He is asking a rhetorical question to the God who, as he just spent 18 verses declaring, already knows his heart. "Do I not hate them?" This is an appeal to the omniscient one. "You know I do." The word for "revile" carries the sense of being grieved, of loathing. It is a deep, visceral disgust for rebellion against the God he loves.
He says, "I hate them with the utmost hatred." The Hebrew is potent; it is a "hatred of perfection" or a "complete hatred." This is not a half-hearted dislike. It is an all-in, total commitment. And notice the result: "They have become my enemies." He does not say, "I have made them my enemies." He says that because they have declared themselves enemies of God, he recognizes that they are, by definition, his enemies too. He has no personal quarrel with them. His quarrel is God's quarrel. He has taken sides.
Now, how do we square this with Jesus' command to love our enemies? We must understand that the Bible commands different things in different contexts. We are to love our personal enemies, to pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). We are to feed them when they are hungry. This refers to personal relationships. But we are never commanded to love the corporate, institutional enemies of God who are dedicated to blasphemy and the destruction of His people. We are to hate the evil they do, and we are to hate them as representatives of that evil. We can pray for the conversion of an individual abortionist while hating the institution of abortion and hating him in his official capacity as a child-killer. This is not a contradiction; it is biblical wisdom. David's hatred here is for the implacable, high-handed enemies of God.
The Turn Inward (v. 23-24)
This is the master stroke. A lesser man, having declared his hatred for the wicked, would be filled with self-righteous pride. But David, a man after God's own heart, is immediately driven to profound self-suspicion.
"Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way." (Psalm 139:23-24)
This is the necessary guardrail for all imprecatory prayer. The man who is zealous to see God's enemies judged must be even more zealous to see his own sin judged. Having just looked out at the wicked with holy hatred, he now invites the holy God to look into his own heart with a searching gaze. He knows that the same seed of wickedness that has come to full flower in the blasphemers is present in his own heart.
He asks God to do four things. First, "Search me... and know my heart." This is an invitation for divine inspection of his deepest motives and desires. Second, "Try me and know my anxious thoughts." The word for "try" is a metallurgical term, for assaying metal to test its purity. David is asking God to put him through the fire to reveal any dross. Third, "See if there be any hurtful way in me." The Hebrew is literally a "way of pain" or a "way of grief." He is asking God to identify any pattern of thought or behavior that is grievous to God and ultimately destructive to himself.
And this leads to the final, glorious petition: "And lead me in the everlasting way." Having identified the way of grief, he asks to be led in the way of life. This is the path of righteousness, the ancient path, the way of faith and obedience that leads to eternal life. It is the way of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. David knows he cannot find or stay on this path by himself. He must be led. The same God who has searched him must also lead him.
Conclusion: The Integrated Saint
These final verses of Psalm 139 are not a contradiction, but a portrait of the integrated saint. True holiness is not one-dimensional. It is not just about private piety and adoration, as wonderful as that is. It is not just about hating evil, as necessary as that is. It is not just about introspective self-examination, as crucial as that is. It is all of them, held together in biblical tension.
The man who truly loves God will truly hate evil. The man who truly hates evil will be the first to suspect it in his own heart. The man who suspects evil in his own heart will be the one who cries out for God to search him and lead him. This is the pattern. Adoration of God leads to war with His enemies. War with His enemies leads to war with the sin in your own heart. And war with the sin in your own heart leads to a desperate, daily reliance on the grace of God to lead you in the everlasting way.
Our problem is that we want to pick and choose. We want the comfort of verses 1-18 without the confrontation of verses 19-22. Or we want the confrontation of verses 19-22 without the humbling self-examination of verses 23-24. But God gives us the whole package. He calls us to be lovers of God, haters of evil, and humble penitents all at the same time.
So let us pray this psalm. Let us pray it all. Let us adore the God who knows us completely. Let us take our stand with Him against the wicked who defy His name. And let us, with fear and trembling, throw our hearts open before Him and plead, "Search me, O God. Find the wicked way in me. Root it out. And lead me, for the sake of Your Son, in the way everlasting."