Psalm 58
It’s
David
What is Justice?
The heartbeat of the psalmist here provides us with one model of praying like Jesus taught his followers to pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). That’s what the psalmist is praying for, and that’s what believers today must pray for.
Psalm 58:1-5: The Rejection of Justice
Reflect God’s Heart for the Oppressed
The gospel of Christ compels its adherents to be aggressive advocates of the oppressed and careful critics of corruption. Both reflect God’s heart. The direct address in verses 1–2 reveals that God is far from passive when it comes to injustice. David wasn’t hesitant to speak against those who were unjust. He said it to their faces instead of talking behind their backs, gossiping about them, or accusing them only in the hearing of those who would be sympathetic with him. He models here the open and honest communication of charges with integrity. Such should be the practice of God’s children when addressing grievances and inequities, even with those who oppose us.
Furthermore, we have a moral obligation to defend the oppressed in this world because God’s Word is far from silent on his heart for them. He defends the oppressed (Job 36:6; Pss 9:9; 72:2, 4; 103:6; 146:7; Isa 14:32; Jer 50:33–34), delivers them (Judg 10:11–12; 1 Sam 10:17–18; Pss 72:12, 14; 76:8–9; 106:42–43; Isa 26:5–6), gives them hope (Ps 9:18; Isa 54:11; Zeph 3:19–20), hears their cry (Pss 9:12; 10:17–18; 22:24; 106:44–46), shows them compassion (Judg 2:18; Neh 9:27; Isa 49:13), and promises to punish those who punish them (Isa 10:1–3; Amos 2:6–7). So God’s children are to emulate his heart. We are to encourage the oppressed (Job 6:14; Ps 34:2; Isa 1:17), help them (Isa 58:6–11; 1 Tim 5:9–10), and cry out to God on their behalf (Pss 74:18–21; 82:3–4).
As we advocate for the relief of those who are the victims of oppression, we must always do so through the lens of the gospel and with the character of Christ. Amid the political turmoil in recent years, many professing Christians have felt that social media is a license for bad manners and unchristian rhetoric, using various platforms to maliciously attack opposing candidates. Our denunciation of unethical leaders and shady governments must always be done with integrity. It needs to be firm, fair, and honest, and at the same time “gracious, seasoned with salt” (Col 4:6). Even our approach to and interaction with those who persecute others must always be the same as that with which we engage our own enemies: with love. Only then can we give testimony to the gospel and rightly reflect the heartbeat of God (Matt 5:43–48).
The second application is one of honest introspection, of careful self-examination. As we can tell from Psalm 51, David obviously understood that the difference between himself and these wicked leaders was one of degree rather than nature. He confessed his own depravity: “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). And it’s the same for every person who’s ever been born. The description of these evil leaders in Psalm 58:3–5 is eerily similar to Paul’s assessment of us:
There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom 3:10–18)
Before rushing past this portrait of corrupt government officials, we need to see it as a mirror. Remember, beloved, we should look at these sinful men and conclude, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Don’t ever forget the grace of God in your own life.
Psalm 58:6-9: The Request for Justice
If the rule of Christ Jesus is going to be experienced at all on earth as it is in heaven, it’s going to take more than our activism on behalf of the oppressed. It’s going to take the forces of heaven to intervene on their behalf. Consequently, living out those early lines of the Lord’s Prayer will demand us to request God’s help and cry out to him on behalf of those who are the victims of injustice at the hands of wicked political leaders. Once again we’re likely to find ourselves wrestling to reconcile the psalmist’s prayer with Jesus’s command to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors (Matt 5:44–45) and Paul’s exhortation for us to bless those who come against us (Rom 12:14). Yes, this is another one of those imprecatory prayers, one in which he appears to be calling down ill will on the enemies of the suffering (see comments on Ps 54:5).
So, as we move into this section of the passage, let’s not forget to allow it to open a window into our own hearts. Take a moment to reflect on how you felt when you listened to the most recent news report of an ISIS bombing of a Christian church building in some other part of the world, or even the threat of the North Korean dictator to launch a nuclear missile. Similar to the self-reflections noted in the comments on Psalm 54:5, think about those Nazi Holocaust prisoners, South African apartheid victims, and killing fields survivors. Most of us will have to admit that our heart longs for justice when we hear these accounts. So we likely can identify with the psalmist as he pleads with God to take action to defend his suffering little ones. In righteous indignation David uses a series of metaphors and similes to articulate two requests believers can and should make of God regarding wicked rulers.
God’s name suggests that he always acts according to his character, not only on behalf of his children but also toward those who oppose them. The psalmist acknowledges as much when he says that God “will repay my adversaries.” He knows that God’s nature is to right wrongs, and that includes rendering justice to his people’s enemies. Basically, David is confidently claiming here that God will cause his enemies’ plans to backfire on them.
The fate of these slanderers is specified as the psalmist speaks directly to God in the parallel statement of the Hebrew poetry. God will annihilate them, destroy their lives. The preposition at the beginning of this clause indicates a cause: “on the basis of what your faithfulness demands.” God’s faithfulness is the truth that characterizes him. On the basis of God’s truth, the psalmist prays that his enemies would be exterminated (Ross, Vol. 2, 234). He’s asking God to act according to his name, his character.
Praying for God to act according to his character is always right and good. And it’s the most potent praying we can do because we’re always appealing to what is true, to what God has revealed about himself. John said, “This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15). This is the assurance we have whenever we pray according to God’s will, and God’s will always issues forth from his character.
But let’s admit, it does seem a bit awkward for us to ask God to obliterate our enemies. If we’re honest, some of the prayers we find in the Psalms bother us a bit. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:44–45)? And Paul seems to advocate the same sentiment: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Rom 12:14). As Christ followers, don’t we reflect the character of God by doing the opposite of what David is doing in Psalm 54? The gospel of Christ does seem to constrain us not to respond in anger toward our enemies or desire revenge for what they do to us but to forgive them, love them, bless them, and respond to their evil intentions with good (Matt 5:43–48; Rom 12:14–21).
However, the kind of praying the psalmist does here isn’t actually out of harmony with the gospel. First, this prayer lifts the lid off of our own hearts and reveals our need for the gospel. We really need to press pause before we start feeling too high and mighty and think that David was a lesser human being than us because he lived during Old Testament times. Think about the last time you heard of someone abducting a child, raping a woman, or walking into a public building and gunning down a mass of innocent people. Reflect for a moment on the most recent news report of a terrorist bombing a Christian church building in some part of the world or even the threat of a dictator to launch a nuclear missile. Consider how you felt—including the outcome you desired—as you followed the latest high-profile trial of a mass murderer. Ponder for a moment what you were feeling when you first read the testimonies of Nazi Holocaust prisoners, victims of apartheid in South Africa, or survivors of the killing fields of Cambodia (Wilson, Vol. 1, 803). Didn’t your heart long for justice? And what about the last time someone unjustly attacked you, whether physically or otherwise? Wasn’t there a part of you that wanted them to get what they deserved?
This is why I love the earthiness of the Psalms and the prayers that fill them. They are so me! While it’s easy for me to feel superior to the people of God who lived on the other side of the cross, I often hate those who hurt me and want them to get their due. The emotion of the psalmist in this prayer causes me to see myself and acknowledge the wickedness of my own heart. It causes me to see my desperate need for the gospel. Additionally, the heart cry of David always reminds me of the people in our world who are suffering to the point that they, too, want to pray this way. Bible prayers like this can actually raise our awareness of our own hearts and the hearts of others in seasons of suffering. And when we see our own wickedness, we see our need for the gospel.
This kind of praying is gospel praying for another reason. We should pray like this, not because it’s right for us to hate our enemies and desire their demise but because God wants us to be honest and intimate with him. The psalmist had such a genuine relationship with God that he could express his deepest feelings, even those that didn’t necessarily reflect citizenship in the kingdom that was to come. And guess what—God can handle that! He knows we live in a world infected by sin, and he knows the pain this world can prompt in us. As a good Father, he wants us to crawl up in his lap and express the deepest groaning of our heart, even if in the moment it’s the desire for our enemies to be zapped! When we are willing to come to God and pray this way, he always welcomes us and loves us, just as a father does with a child. And as we commune with him in such unguarded honesty, he responds to us with the gospel. And that gospel refines and tweaks and redeems our childish passions, motives, and desires.
The psalmist first asks God to render these evil leaders impotent, to restrain their influence on their victims. The imagery he’s using at first seems extremely violent and harsh until we remember that the Holy Spirit isn’t likening the corrupt leaders to domesticated kittens but to savage beasts. The psalmist isn’t asking God to beat up someone who’s bullying him on a Near Eastern playground but instead to break the deadly grip these wild carnivores have on their trapped prey. We must pray as if the stakes are high!
Should believers actually pray like this? The psalmist’s prayer appears driven by outrage that these kinds of leaders exist at all. His desire for their end seems violent. Kidner says, “It prompts the question whether an impassioned curse of tyrants is better or worse than a shrug of the shoulders or a diplomatic silence” (Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 227). Jesus seemed to opt for the former, at least when it came to leaders who abused people and led them astray. In Matthew 23 he pronounced a series of curses on the scribes and Pharisees, all beginning the same way: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). These lead-ins are all followed by some of Jesus’s strongest and most damning words in the New Testament. While none of us are Jesus, and while our engagement of bad people must intend to overcome evil with good, our Lord did seem to affirm the practice of the psalmist in sometimes crying out for God to bring an end to malicious leaders.
Psalm 58:10-11: The Response to Justice
God will respond to the prayers of his children as they cry out to him with zeal and passion for justice and righteousness in the universe. He’s been clear about this all along. The prophet Isaiah declared that God ultimately will levy his comprehensive judgment against the wicked rulers of earth (cf. Ps 2) as well as those in the unseen world (cf. Ps 82).
The response of the righteous is the natural reaction of those who are passionate about justice being served. When they see the “retribution”—or punitive vindication—meted out by the righteous Judge of the universe, they “will rejoice” that justice is finally being realized. The picture of the righteous person as one who “will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked” magnifies the celebratory and triumphant atmosphere of this ultimate vindication. The expression is a traditional ancient Near Eastern way of describing the utter defeat of an enemy. So we’re not looking at some kind of twisted and ghoulish foot-washing ceremony but at victors as they wade through the blood left over from the carnage of battle (Wilson, Psalms, 842).
God actually is appalled when his followers don’t see themselves as warriors of righteousness and fail to join him in his campaign for justice (see Isa 63:1–6). This realization compels believers in Christ to long for Jesus’s return and his final vindication.
At the inauguration of the eternal kingdom, the host of heaven will declare, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15), for “he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Rev 19:16).
So we pray like Jesus told us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9–10). And because we’re reassured that prayer will be answered in Jesus’s promise, “Yes, I am coming soon,” we pray even more urgently with John: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).
3. What keeps us from reflecting God’s heart toward the oppressed?
4. What are some tangible ways we can speak out and take action on behalf of the oppressed?
5. David’s rebuke toward the ungodly was public. How should we publicly rebuke the ungodly?
6. What role does self-examination play in publicly rebuking sin?
7. Based on David’s prayer concerning ungodly rulers, how should we pray in regards to ungodly rulers?
8. How should we respond to the seemingly brutal and morbid images in the Bible of God’s judgment? Why would God use such language?
Psalm 58. The last line of this poem contains the essence of its imaginative protest. The Hebrew elōhı̂m (v. 1) means gods, or supernatural ruling spirits of the nations, as verse 2b confirms. Here, they are challenged for not “weighing” evil seriously and justly.
Evil begins at birth, and evil men are deadly as the cobra, deaf to all appeal. The psalmist prays that they will be thwarted, like toothless lions, spilled water, blunted arrows (or, grass drying to straw in the sun); like the slug wearing away in the trail it leaves, the stillborn child, the traveler’s fire scattered by wind before the cooking pot is even warm. All are figures of futility. The poet, and the righteous, long to see evil frustrated and good totally triumphant. Then men will know that this is a moral world, and that God is Judge.