Two words into this psalm and I was searching youtube for the song it triggered. I’ll save you the search right here.
140 is an ‘Imprecatory Psalm’. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘not only am I going to have a whinge, but I want God to smash the source of my complaint’.
Imprecatory Psalm are a form of lament. Sometimes they’re referred to as ‘problem psalms’.
I’m often reminded of them when I take off to New Norcia for a retreat. Posted on the noticeboard in the Guesthouse kitchen is a A4 page with the heading ‘Problem Psalms’.
Here’s how it reads:
You may be distressed by some negative and destructive things said in our psalms and other scriptures.
We have trouble with them too, but we keep using them, because:
• they show us the very slow progress made by Jewish and Christian people in the past in understanding themselves and the world in relation to God;
• they make us think more deeply about the things that are wrong now in our world, in our country, and in our own hearts;
• they help us to purify our idea of God.
The God we worship is total goodness, offering love and peace to the whole human race.
I love this. I love the acknowledgement of our own realities, albeit contextualised and sanitised into a relatively comfortable, trouble-free first world. And I love the recognition of God amidst this ‘whinge-worthy’ trouble.
Your stuff is real—it is your stuff. What dims, removes or heals the pain it is capable of inflicting on us, is the bringing of that pain into the light of God. The God who is total goodness and who offers love and peace, and expresses this completely in Jesus. The one worthy of our worship.
David reaches a place of rest at the end of 140. It’s brought about by a realisation that the battle belongs to the Lord. The cause of the afflicted—the stuff that he (and those around him) are enduring—will be maintained by the Lord, and he will measure out justice.
Whatever your afflictions this day, whatever your whinge or complaint, do something that is altogether perspective-granting: Drag it into the light of God’s goodness, love and peace, and see how he changes you…and perhaps ‘it’ as well.
(Simon Elliott, May 14, 2014)