Lord God,
let the words of your servant’s mouth
and the meditations of our hearts
be pleasing in your sight,
O Lord, our Rock and Redeemer.
Through Christ. Amen.
—based on Psalm 19:14
As I read through these psalms, I remember different times in my life when some of these were my expression. Maybe someday I’ll start putting notes on them like the one on Psalm 51. “When Matt was struggling through…” or “When Matt rejoiced at…”
We use the name “imprecatory psalms” for the psalms that call for God’s justice and judgment. These can be very difficult to read, especially in light of commands like, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” I don’t think these are the kinds of prayers that command is requesting. I’m not proposing an easy way to think of them, but consider that these are God’s covenant people asking God to uphold the covenant he has made. These are people asking God to act out in justice. Maybe we’ll touch on that again soon.
Psalm 67 has a universal note of blessing. We might miss that as gentiles who have been brought in through Jesus. Consider how Israel felt as God’s chosen people in the face of the other nations, and now read Psalm 67 as a call for that special blessing to go out to all the world. Amazing!
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