A few years back, I was a chaplain in a large care facility. One of the residents was a retired Episcopal priest. He developed a brain tumor and had surgery to remove it. However, getting rid of the tumor damaged his ability to speak.

So, when I came to see him after his return to the nursing home, he labored intensely just to get a simple sentence out. And after each struggle to speak he would swear and utter some expletive, then apologize to me.

Finally, I said to him, “There’s no need to apologize. You have spent your life using words to bless and help others and now that has been robbed of you. You are angry. I am angry. Let’s just sit here and swear together about it!”

We raged together about disease. We swore like sailors about injustice. We cried out to God for vengeance on evil. And I was secretly praying that no one would walk into the room while we were doing this.

I adore the biblical psalms – they encompass the complete range of human emotion. In this past year of pandemic, many have recognized the need for lament, like we find in the psalms. However, I have yet to hear anyone mention another type of psalm, the imprecatory psalm (pronounced im-PRECK-a-tory).

Whereas psalms of lament express deep sadness, imprecatory psalms rage with deep-seated anger.

The term “imprecatory” means to call down a curse on a person or group of people. Maybe this surprises you that there is such language in the Bible.  In fact, there are eighteen such imprecatory psalms which make a clear petition for God to turn the evil back on the people who inflict it (or try to) on others. For example, consider David’s angry plea to God:

You know full well the insults I’ve received;
you know my shame and my disgrace.
All my adversaries are right there in front of you.
Insults have broken my heart.
I’m sick about it.
I hoped for sympathy,
but there wasn’t any;
I hoped for comforters,
but couldn’t find any.
They gave me poison for food.
To quench my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Let the table before them become a trap,
their offerings a snare.
Let their eyes grow too dim to see;
make their insides tremble constantly.
Pour out your anger on them—
let your burning fury catch them.
Let their camp be devastated;
let no one dwell in their tents.
Because they go after those you’ve already struck;
they talk about the pain of those you’ve already pierced.
Pile guilt on top of their guilt!
Don’t let them come into your righteousness!
Let them be wiped out of the scroll of life!
Let them not be recorded along with the righteous!
And me? I’m afflicted.
I’m full of pain.
Let your salvation keep me safe, God! (Psalm 69:19-29, CEB)

There is nothing sanitized about imprecatory psalms. They are as raw and real as it gets. Whatever you might think about how a proper pious person ought to pray, imprecatory curses are likely not your first thought. But here they are, out there for us to read in the Holy Bible.

One reason for the imprecatory psalms is that it is not any person’s place to engage in revenge or retaliation.  Instead, for people who are genuinely caught in the crosshairs of evil and have terrible trouble dogging them, prayer is their most effective recourse.

Sometimes you must tell it like it is. 

There is a time to do your best in putting up a good face and dealing with people who do not ever stop gossiping, slandering, and trying to get their way. But there is also a time to call such behavior “evil” and cry out to God for help.

There are many folks who consider imprecatory psalms a problem because of their detailed expressions of cursing. Yet, such psalms refuse to put a positive spin on malevolent motives, wicked words, and destructive actions. Desperate people utter desperate prayers. Their unflinching sense of injustice will not allow them to sugarcoat the villainous plans of corrupt people.

Evil is never toppled with tepid prayers from wimpy worshipers.

Rather, nefarious agendas are thwarted in the teeth of specific, focused, and intense prayers directed with spiritual precision to the very core of diabolical forces.

We need not be shy about being real with God, even with praying imprecatory prayers.  There really are people in this world, maybe even in your own life, that have malicious intent against you or others.  Our job is not personal revenge, but to entrust ourselves to the God who fights for the poor, the oppressed, and the needy against the arrogant and the powerful.  Let your prayers reflect your life.

With no cursing of disease, sickness, and death, it comes out sideways in an unkind sort of “snarky-ness” toward each other. What I am proposing is that our anger, our rage, even our vengeance needs recognition, just like our sadness does. Our bitterness must have an outlet, not directed toward one another, but toward the evil itself – and even toward God because God is big enough to handle our rage, whereas other humans are not.

Victimization needs a voice, and a bit of raging and cursing is the means to do it.

Giving voice to our deep anger is cathartic and therapeutic. Our speech needs to be congruent with the intensity of our pain because where there are no valued words of assault for victims, the risk of hurting each other becomes much higher. Despair with no voice and no one to hear will eventually transition to harming others.

Spiritual problems require spiritual implements to solve. And the tool of imprecatory psalms is a major way of not only pushing back the dark forces of this world but is the means of spiritual assertiveness against all forms of heinous acts and acerbic words from depraved people, evil systems, and horrible circumstances. God’s wrath is an expression of God’s love because God is not okay with evil taking root in the lives and institutions of humanity.

Prayer is our privilege of coming to the God who upholds justice and righteousness. For if God is for us, who can be against us?