Psalms 109 Footnotes

109:6 This prayer is a psalm of imprecation, calling for the evil man to be punished. The writer asked that another wicked man would be the accuser who finds him guilty. The word “accuser” translates the Hebrew satan, origin of the name Satan, also called the adversary and “the accuser of our brothers” (Rv 12:10; see Zch 3:1-2). The psalmist apparently hoped that human institutions of justice, however corrupted, would eventually result in condemnation of the wicked (Pr 14:32); in the process the righteousness of God would vindicate his faithful one.

109:8 The psalmist had leveled a curse against those who unjustly attacked him (vv. 2-5). The curse was that the attacker’s life be shortened and his place taken by another. The apostles used this passage to authorize replacing Judas among the Twelve (Ac 1:20). The psalm’s application was clear to them. Judas was accursed; he had betrayed the Lord and then hung himself, so another must fill his position among the disciples as a witness to Jesus’s ministry and resurrection (Ac 1:21-22).

109:9-10 The psalmist’s petition sounds unjust—that his attacker’s children should suffer because of his sins. In reality, the psalmist was only describing the normal effects of the judgment to be meted out on his evil enemy. When a guilty man was condemned to death, his wife and children would be without the resources they had formerly enjoyed. Under ordinary circumstances widows and orphans were to be cared for by the people of Israel, no matter how they had become destitute (82:3; Dt 10:18; 24:17; Is 1:17; Jr 7:6; Ezk 22:7). But their welfare depended on their faithfulness to God. The sins of the fathers would be visited on the children who hate the Lord (Ex 20:4-6), but for those who love the Lord, he would extend his loyal love (Ps 103:17-18).

If, in including his attacker’s family in his curse, the psalmist seems to be excessively vengeful, his passions were motivated by a desire for God’s justice to be fully effected. In OT thinking, a person’s life, or “soul,” did not end at the surface of his body but extended to his family, his property, his “name” or reputation, and all that pertained to him. The NT teaches believers to have compassion, to forgive, and to pray for their enemies. Jesus prayed, on the cross, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). Christian use of the psalms of imprecation, in corporate worship or personal devotion, is always aimed at the conversion of those who do evil and persecute the faithful. That is the ultimate aim of God’s own passion for justice (Ezk 18:23).