Vinegar to Drink

The first three verses of Psalm 69 have been one of my favorite parts of scripture throughout my life. So much so, that I’ve put it to music. Save me, oh God. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to pray this in the darkest moments of my life.

But some of the rest of that psalm gets a little wild. The first half of the psalm – if you’ll accept this rough and ready paraphrase – goes something like this: I’m in deep doo doo, save me, even my friends and family despise me yet I remain faithful to you God. That section ends with:

Psalm 69:20-21

Insults have broken my heart,
    so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity, but there was none;
    and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food,
    and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

From what we know of the revelation of God in Jesus, we should think that the next rhetorical move by the psalmist is to pray for the ability to forgive, for strength to continue to live out God’s love in the world. Instead, the psalmist gives us the following.

Psalm 69:22-28

Let their table be a trap for them,
    a snare for their allies.
Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,
    and make their loins tremble continually.
Pour out your indignation upon them,
    and let your burning anger overtake them.
May their camp be a desolation;
    let no one live in their tents.
For they persecute those whom you have struck down,
    and those whom you have wounded they attack still more.^[b]
Add guilt to their guilt;
    may they have no acquittal from you.
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;
    let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

Vinegar to drink indeed. On a side note, I love that the psalm starts with the instructions, “To the leader: according to Lilies. Of David.” That is the NRSVUE being careful and literal in the translation, but our modern ears would hear this as a direction to our worship leader, “sung to the tune of Lilies.” Sounds pretty. I can’t remember ever singing, “make their loins tremble continually,” in church, but singing it to the tune of “Lilies,” might make it go down a bit easier.

The bigger issue is that it seems the psalmist’s requests – blind my enemies, destroy their villages, obliterate them from the book of the living – seems to conflict with Jesus’ commands to love neighbor, even love your enemy. Several parts of the Hebrew Bible include what is known as imprecatory prayer where the author, often a psalmist, tries to conjure up divine retribution.

Many psalms feature imprecatory prayer, which is a prayer for judgement, vengeance and punishment, usually in some pretty extreme forms, to be sent down upon anyone seen as an enemy. The tone seems antithetical to the Gospel message, yet you cannot deny the raw emotion felt in the reading of these verses. The language is harsh, but so are the circumstances. I’m not proud of this because I think it goes against the commands of my Lord, but I’ve prayed these kinds of things myself. These imprecatory prayers are honest, they’re authentic, they represent a warped but relatable faith in God’s eventual justice.

Yet, they provide a real challenge to Christians trying to harmonize these texts with New Testament teachings. So, what are we to do with these texts? I feel like it boils down to four main options (that aren’t necessarily exclusive of each other): believe imprecatory prayer is inspired by God despite what Jesus has said, look for creative interpretations of these texts, create your own reinterpretations of these texts, or believe that the revelation of Jesus is greater than any of our scriptures.

Is It OK to Pray Imprecations?

So, yes, I think it’s OK to pray imprecations. As I said above, it’s an unavoidable human emotion to wish for vengeance when others are continually wronging us. That doesn’t make it right or in line with Christian values, but clearly God understands where we’re coming from when we do it.

But if you think that the Bible is completely inerrant and each word, phrase and emotion is divinely authored and therefore beyond reproach, then you must somehow believe that God has also inspired these imprecations. God is fully in support of blinding our enemies and even adding some guilt upon their guilt, which sounds like a divine frame-up job. Maybe this is why so many conservative Christians feel comfortable saying so many terrible things about innocents in Gaza.

Personally, I’m more likely to believe that these olds psalms sometimes contain relics of a bygone and war-torn culture, where the character called Yaweh was often portrayed as a military leader. Discussing the character and history of this Yaweh is way beyond the scope of this article but suffice to say I think we’ve gotten a lot more loving and a lot more monotheistic because of the revelation of God in Christ.

Creative Interpretations

One common rhetorical move of modern biblical literalists is creative reinterpretations of difficult texts – even when the text itself seems straightforward. Maybe, these apologists offer, the psalmist is simply using exaggerated and even shocking language to inspire our spiritual reflections. Sung to the tune of “Lilies.”

Despite what seems like a plea for violent retribution, the author of the psalm is simply drawing our attention to a broken world, giving us some catharsis for our pains. I think it’s cute when Biblical literalists suddenly find creative literary explanations for the parts of the Hebrew Bible that are clearly not in line with Jesus. These creative interpretations make literalists feel better without addressing the real conflicts in the Bible. You don’t like that Paul clearly supports slavery in the Bible? Then try to redefine slavery as indentured servitude. Frustrated by the differences in the resurrection accounts? Twist the narratives so they can somehow be harmonized.

While I appreciate the spirit of trying to remain faithful to scripture, isn’t it much better to admit that scripture is contradictory, flawed, written by humans and then study those moments for greater spiritual clarity in the light of Jesus?

Creative Reinterpretations

One fun approach is the one taken in by the New Testament authors. Following the resurrection, the early Christian community began to scour their scriptures – the Hebrew Bible as well as perhaps other texts that are not considered canonical for today’s Christians – to look for explanations for such a mind-bending and life-altering event. In this way, Psalm 69 seemed to foreshadow Christ’s suffering.

I happen to think that the early church didn’t understand these things as literal as some of our conservative sisters and brothers take them today. I think they came out of a tradition of evolving interpretations and were ready to point to their own scripture to explain Jesus even if it wasn’t actually intended that way by the original authors. I could be wrong of course, but I don’t think the psalmist’s goal here was to magically predict Jesus’ suffering. I think the psalmist was angry like we all are sometimes and crying out to God for violence.

But there is a real beauty in the handling of this psalm by the New Testament authors and it models a way for us to transition to the stark violence of parts of the Hebrew Bible to some creative reinterpretations. Our primary story starts at the resurrection, and it is totally fine for us to rewrite the interpretations of any scripture that we want in light of the revelation of Jesus. The New Testament authors are telling us directly not to worship scripture but to worship Jesus. Scripture can mean whatever we want it to mean through the lens of Christ, regardless of the author’s original intent.

So, despite the angry imprecations seen in Psalm 69, it is quoted widely in the New Testament.

In John 2:17, right after Jesus tosses out the money changers in the Temple, “His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” They connected a famous story about Jesus with this psalm.

In John 15:25 Jesus says that the world will hate, reject and persecute He and His followers and the author writes, “It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’” Another creative use of Psalm 69.

Of course, Jesus was given vinegar to drink on the cross. Did it really happen this way or was this another creative reinterpretation of Psalm 69? It doesn’t bother me either way because the important message is that to the early Christian church Jesus was the ultimate climax to their story. And guess what? Jesus doesn’t care what side of that interpretation you fall on either. Faith has nothing to do with demanding that you profess ideas that are forever beyond our understanding.

When Acts 1 discusses the suicide of Judas, verse 20 quotes Psalm 69, “For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his house become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; And ‘Let another take his position of overseer.’”

Paul gets into the action in Romans. In Romans 11:9-10, Paul uses the verse to try to explain why so many Jewish people have not yet understood the Gospel. “And David says, ‘Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and keep their backs forever bent.’” The imprecatory prayer becomes a metaphorical explanation of the early church’s success with Gentiles while people in their own communities weren’t joining up. And in a great turn in Romans 15:3, Paul takes this imprecatory psalm and instead of leaning into violence, turns it into an illustration of how we should steadfastly suffer for each other. “For Christ did not please himself, but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’”

We Worship Jesus, Not the Bible

These New Testament writers were geniuses. Not only could they creatively reinterpret these difficult texts and find fresh meanings that helped them connect them to Jesus, but they also turned these harsh imprecations into a source of hope and promise. They didn’t paper over the tension; they grabbed it and ran with it creatively. This freedom to read the Bible with new lenses based on the revelation of Jesus. We would be wise to approach our stories in a similar way.