Commentary - Psalm 140:9-11

Bird's-eye view

This section of Psalm 140 contains the razor-sharp heart of David's imprecation against his enemies. Having described their venomous slander and violent plots, he now turns to the court of heaven and petitions the righteous Judge for a just sentence. This is not personal vindictiveness; it is a Spirit-inspired prayer for the moral order of God's universe to be publicly upheld. The prayer is fundamentally for a divine recoil, that the evil his enemies have conceived and spoken would boomerang and land squarely upon their own heads. David asks that their own words would become their ruin, that divine judgment, pictured as burning coals and inescapable pits, would be their end, and that their entire enterprise of slander and violence would be systematically dismantled by the swift justice of God. This is a prayer for God to act like God, to defend the righteous, and to demonstrate that a world governed by lies and violence cannot stand before Him.

The logic is simple and profound: what they intended for David, may God visit upon them. It is a prayer that God would make the punishment fit the crime with a terrible and poetic irony. These are not the ravings of a man unhinged by hatred, but the settled plea of a man who understands that God's justice is the only true foundation for peace and righteousness in the world. He is asking God to vindicate His own name by showing that the way of the slanderer and the violent man leads to utter ruin.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 140 is one of the psalms of David where he is crying out for deliverance from wicked and violent men. The context is likely the persecution he endured under King Saul, where he was hunted and continually maligned by courtiers who sought to curry favor with the king by slandering David. The first part of the psalm (vv. 1-8) details the character of these enemies: they are evil and violent, their hearts plot mischief, and their tongues are as sharp and poisonous as a serpent's. David prays for preservation from their traps. The section in view (vv. 9-11) is the turning point, where David moves from a defensive plea for protection to an offensive plea for judgment. This is a classic imprecatory psalm, a prayer for God to bring calamity upon His enemies. Such psalms are common in the Psalter and teach the people of God how to pray when faced with intractable, malicious evil. They are an appeal to the supreme court of heaven for justice, entrusting vengeance to God rather than taking it into one's own hands.

Key Issues

Praying for a Divine Recoil

When we come to passages like this, our modern, therapeutic sensibilities can get a bit jittery. We have been taught to be nice, above all things, and praying for burning coals to fall on someone's head doesn't seem to fit the bill. But we must understand what is happening here. David is not engaging in some kind of scriptural voodoo. He is praying in accordance with the revealed justice of God. The central principle in these verses is what we might call a divinely appointed recoil. David is asking that the mischief his enemies have cooked up would come back on them. Their sin is like a projectile weapon, and David is praying that it would function like a boomerang.

This is a profoundly ethical prayer. It is a prayer that acknowledges God as the ultimate arbiter of justice. David is surrounded by liars and violent men. He cannot get a fair hearing in Saul's court. So he appeals his case to a higher court, the highest court. And in that court, he does not ask for something arbitrary. He asks for a specific kind of justice, a justice that demonstrates to all that a man reaps what he sows. He is praying that God would make the connection between the sin and the consequence plain for all to see. This is not about personal revenge; it is about the public vindication of God's righteous standards.

Verse by Verse Commentary

9 “As for the head of those who surround me, May the trouble from their lips cover them.

David begins his petition for judgment by focusing on the "head," the ringleaders of the conspiracy against him. The evil is organized, and he prays that the chief plotters would bear the chief consequences. And what is the consequence he asks for? That the "trouble from their lips" would cover them. The very instrument of their sin is to become the instrument of their punishment. They have woven a garment of lies, slander, and threats, intending to wrap David in it. David prays that God would take that very garment and throw it over them instead. Their mischief was verbal; their lips were the source of the trouble. So let that same trouble engulf them. Let them be drowned in the flood of their own malicious words. This is a prayer for perfect, poetic justice.

10 May burning coals be shaken out upon them; May He cause them to fall into the fire, Into bottomless pits from which they can never rise.

The imagery here intensifies dramatically. David moves from the trouble of their own lips to a judgment that comes directly from heaven. The prayer for "burning coals" to fall upon them is a prayer for the fire of God's wrath. This is not simply the natural consequence of their actions; this is a direct, divine intervention. It echoes the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, where God rained down fire and brimstone from heaven. This is not a light thing to pray for. It is a plea for utter and decisive destruction.

He continues, praying that they would be cast "into the fire, into bottomless pits." The picture is one of complete and final ruin. There is no escape. The pits are deep, and they can "never rise" from them. David is asking God to remove these wicked men from the scene permanently, so they can no longer threaten the righteous. This is the language of final judgment. While it had a historical application in David's context, it ultimately points to the final sentence of hell, the ultimate inescapable pit where the fire is not quenched.

11 May a slanderer not be established in the earth; May evil hunt the violent man speedily.”

In this final verse of the imprecation, David moves from the specific fate of his enemies to the general principle. He prays that the "slanderer," the man whose speech is a weapon, would not be "established in the earth." He asks that their projects would fail, their reputations would crumble, and their influence would come to nothing. The man who builds his life on lies has no right to a lasting legacy. David is praying for the failure of all such enterprises.

Then he turns to the "violent man," the one whose slander was just the artillery barrage before the invasion. For him, David prays that "evil shall hunt" him down "speedily." The slanderer and the violent man are often one and the same, as malicious words are the precursor to malicious deeds. David prays that the evil this man loves to inflict on others would turn on him, becoming a relentless predator that hunts him to his overthrow. Let the hunter become the hunted. And let it happen quickly. This is a prayer that God would not delay His justice, but would act swiftly to show that the way of violence is the way of self-destruction.

Application

So how does a Christian, living under the new covenant, pray a prayer like this? First, we must recognize that the desire for justice is not a sub-Christian sentiment. It is a righteous desire. When we see liars flourish and violent men prosper, we should long for God to set things right. These psalms give us inspired language to express that longing before God, which keeps us from bitterness and from taking matters into our own hands.

Second, we must pray these prayers through the lens of the cross. At the cross, the ultimate imprecation was fulfilled. All the curses of the law, all the venom of wicked men, all the fiery wrath of God against sin, converged on one man: Jesus Christ. He was covered by the mischief of our lips. The burning coals of God's judgment fell on Him. He was cast into the deep pit of death. He did this so that we, the guilty, could be spared. Therefore, when we pray against God's enemies, our first prayer should be for their conversion. We pray that God would destroy them as enemies by making them our brothers, as He did with Saul of Tarsus.

But if they will not repent, if they harden their hearts and set themselves as implacable enemies of Christ and His Church, then these psalms are still for us. We can pray with confidence that God would cause their wicked plans to recoil on their own heads, that He would thwart their purposes, and that He would vindicate His people. We are praying for the advancement of Christ's kingdom, which necessarily means the dismantling of the kingdom of darkness. We leave the specifics to God, but we can and should pray that He would act, that He would hunt down the violent man, and that the slanderer would not be established in the earth. For in this way, the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted and the right of the poor, and the upright shall dwell in His presence.