If Only You Would Slay The Wicked, O God

For all the Bible is filled with inspiring and comforting passages, there are places in the scriptures that stop us cold. The imprecatory Psalms, for example, are passages that call down judgment or calamity on their enemies or the enemies of God. We don’t quite know what to do with that.

Meditating on them can help us to make sense of — and peace with — those uncomfortable passages.

Some of the most beautiful, comforting passages can be connected to one of these imprecatory sections. It can be quite jarring. I set out to memorize Psalm 139, which is a great example of this. This Psalm has been heavily mined for songs over the years, but we don’t tend to set that part to music. As I worked to memorize the first 18 verses, I wondered if I really wanted to memorize the whole thing. “I can skip that part. Or just stop at verse 18. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

It took many weeks to memorize those first 18 verses. Weeks of meditating on them, marinating in them. It really is such a beautiful Psalm; it truly can make your heart sing, make you feel wrapped in God’s love.

Then, after all those weeks, I got to verse 19: “If only you would slay the wicked, O God!” And I understood.

We have to remember that the Psalms are raw emotion. These aren’t logical arguments. They’re not carefully scripted pastoral prayers that rehash the points of the sermon. They are the heart’s cry. In this case, it is the cry of a heart that is deeply offended and jealous for God’s honor.

The song starts out

O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD. ...

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. ...

Feel with the author the love of God, how he watches over you, cares for you. Be amazed at how precious you are to God.

Then think about people who hate God.

If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?

David isn’t talking about everyday sinners, people who fall short of the mark. These wicked men kill those made in the image of God! They make his name part of false oaths and slander him. They hate God and intentionally rebel against him.

They hate the one who knows them so intimately! They rebel against the one who fashioned them together so lovingly! They kill the innocent and rob the poor with their false oaths! Why shouldn’t the psalmist be offended that these people exist?

But he’s not taking matters into his own hands. He’s referring them to God. “O Judge of all the Earth, deal with these wicked people!” That is the right thing to do. God is just and will see that justice is done. It is no more improper for David to pray for this than for the slain saints in Revelation 6 to cry out for justice on their murderers.

And David is not being self-righteous or proud when he says this. We know because the very next thing on his heart is “God forbid that I should ever become like them!” He knows his own sinful heart. He knows what he’s capable of. And so he cries out to God:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

Even in his rage at the wicked, David knows “there but for the grace of God go I.” Which is how we should respond to the sin in the world: We should be offended by it. And we should fear being corrupted by it.


I’m not suggesting that all the imprecatory Psalms will be this easy to get inside and understand. But I wanted to show how a long time spent meditating on a passage can open it up to you, or perhaps “put you inside it” is better. Don’t be afraid of these parts of the scripture. Study them and meditate on them, too. Join the authors in their grief, anger, and pain and see what they reveal to you about our great God and Savior.


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