The Judgment of Corrupt Leaders

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.

The Request for Justice

Psalm 58:6-9

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. Ponder for a moment what you were feeling when you first read the testimonies of Nazi Holocaust prisoners, victims of apartheid in South Africa, survivors of the killing fields of Cambodia. 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.

Pray for God to Restrain Corrupt Leaders (58:6)

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!

Pray for God to Remove Corrupt Leaders (58:7-9)

The psalmist ups the ante in the next three verses by going beyond asking God to go ahead and take them out! He wants them to evaporate, to become blunt and harmless, and to dissolve away and be completely removed as if they had never existed.

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.

The Response to Justice

Psalm 58:10-11

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). He said, “On that day the Lord will punish the army of the heights in the heights and the kings of the ground on the ground” (Isa 24:21). The day will come when God will vindicate his children and give them something to celebrate. At the same time he will exercise final and complete judgment against all evil authorities seen and unseen. The psalmist describes how both groups, the righteous and the corrupt, will respond on that day.

The Righteous Will Rejoice (58:10)

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).

This gruesome celebration at first seems morbid, and we are almost tempted to shy away from embracing it, yet it makes complete sense in light of the larger biblical picture of God’s righteousness. He wants us to anticipate the day when he will make right all the wrong in this world. The psalmist’s description of that justification pales in comparison to John’s vision of the bloodbath that will take place upon Jesus’s return at the end of the age:

So the angel swung his sickle at the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. Then the press was trampled outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press up to the horses’ bridles for about 180 miles. (Rev 14:19-20)

Our Lord’s righteous army will join him in this final exercise of justice against the wicked:

The armies that were in heaven followed him on white horses, wearing pure white linen. A sharp sword came from his mouth, so that he might strike the nations with it. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God, the Almighty. And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he called out in a loud voice, saying to all the birds flying high overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of military commanders, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and of their riders, and the flesh of everyone, both free and slave, small and great.” (Rev 19:14-18)

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.

The Corrupt Will Be Convinced (58:11)

The response of corrupt leaders and their followers to the justice of God will be different. They will not celebrate but instead regretfully and finally acknowledge what the righteous have always known. They exercise their self-serving and manipulative ploys during their reign with complete disregard that there will ever be a day of reckoning, but in the end they will be convinced of God’s justice and forced to publicly recognize and acknowledge that he never forgets his children. In fact, he ultimately will “reward” them and condemn those who seek to manipulate them.

This reversal of perception and fortune is a picture of every person who rejects Christ in this life. People live as if no judgment were coming, no day when they would have to answer for their hard-heartedness and self-service. They go through life looking out for number one and stepping on whomever they need to step on as they make their way to the top.

However, the Bible is clear that the day will come when their perception will be overturned and their understanding will be radically different. Those whom they spent their lives abusing and manipulating will one day be rewarded, and they will finally be convinced that there is a righteous Judge on the earth. His name is Jesus, and all who hear his gospel should embrace it while they still have a chance.

Conclusion

To be sure, God’s reign is no democracy, yet he does intend it to be for the good of the people he created (Rom 13:1-7). And he never intended for the governments he ordained to lord over people for the benefit of the leaders who run them. God ordained governments to benefit people, not to suppress and oppress them.

But evil governments and rulers seem to have free reign today. Yet the Bible is clear that God will have the last word. In that age “to come” to which Paul referred (Eph 1:21), every person who’s ever lived and every principality and every power will know that Jesus is Lord over all. Why? Because

God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

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).

Reflect and Discuss