By Pastor Bruce Oyen
The Christian faith is one that is known for its emphasis on love. Love, not only for its friends, but even its enemies. The New Testament portion of the Bible reveals that the central person of the Christian faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, was/is the embodiment of a love which includes even its enemies. One cannot thoughtfully read through the eye-witness accounts of his life, found in the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), and miss his emphasis on this kind of love. And this theme is also found in the rest of the New Testament, though to a greater degree in some parts of it than in others.
What, then, are we to make of those statements in the Old Testament, all of which is as much the Word of God as the New Testament, that seem to contradict the New Testament teaching about loving one's enemies?
The statements in the Old Testament to which I am referring are mostly found in the Book of Psalms. These Psalms are called "imprecatory Psalms" because in them we read prayers in which the Psalm-writer asked God to severely judge his enemies. What raises questions in our minds is the fact he did not ask God to forgive his enemies, but to judge them. How do we explain this? How do we reconcile it with the teaching of Jesus Christ, who said we should love and forgive our enemies, and who said we should want God to bless them, in spite of their wrong-doing?
Well, Franz Delitzsch, a Bible scholar from the 1800's, can shed some light on these dark passages in the Book of Psalms. Here (in red) is what he wrote on Psalm 35. It is applicable to the other imprecatory Psalms:
There are only a few Psalms of David belonging to the time of Saul's persecution, which, like Ps 22, keep within the limits of deep inward grief; and in scarcely a single instance do we find him confining himself to the expression of the accursed fate of his enemies with prophetic certainty, as that which he confidently expects will be realised (as, e.g., in 7:13-17). But for the most part the objective announcement of punishment is swallowed up by the force of his inmost feelings, and changed into the most importunate prayer (as in 7:7; 17:13, and frequently); and this feverish glow of feeling becomes still more harshly prominent, when the prayer for the revelation of divine judgment in punishment passes over into a wish that it may actually take place. In this respect Ps.; 7, 35, 69, 109 form a fearful gradation. In Ps 109, the old expositors count as many as thirty anathemas. What explanation can we give of such language coming from the lips and heart of the poet?
Perhaps as paroxysms of a desire for revenge? His advance against Nabal shows that even a David was susceptible of such feelings; but 1 Sam 25:32f. also shows that only a gentle stirring up of his conscience was needed to dissuade him from it. How much more natural-we throw out this consideration in agreement with Kurtz-that the preponderance of that magnanimity peculiar to him should have maintained its ascendancy in the moments of the highest religious consecration in which he composed his Psalms! It is inconceivable that the unholy fire of personal passion could be here mingled with the holy fire of his love to God. It is in fact the Psalms more especially, which are the purest and most faithful mirror of the piety of the Old Testament: the duty of love towards one's enemies, however, is so little alien to the Old Testament (Ex 23:4f., Lev 19:18; Prov 20:22; 24:17; 25:21f., Job 1:29f.), that the very words of the Old Testament are made use of even in the New to inculcate this love.
And from Ps 7, in its agreement with the history of his conduct towards Saul, we have seen that David was conscious of having fulfilled this duty.
All the imprecatory words in these Psalms come, therefore, from the pure spring of unself-seeking zeal for the honour of God. That this zeal appears in this instance as zeal for his own person or character arises from the fact, that David, as the God-anointed heir of the kingdom, stands in antagonism to Saul, the king alienated from God; and, that to his mind the cause of God, the continuance of the church, and the future of Israel, coincide with his own destiny. The fire of his anger is kindled at this focus (so to speak) of the view which he has of his own position in the course of the history of redemption. It is therefore a holy fire; but the spirit of the New Testament, as Jesus Himself declare sin Luke 9:55, is in this respect, nevertheless, a relatively different spirit from that of the Old. That act of divine love, redemption, out of the open fountain of which there flowed forth the impulse of a love which embraces and conquers the world, was then as yet not completed; and a curtain then still hung before eternity, before heaven and hell, so that imprecations like Ps 69:20 were not understood,even by him who uttered them, in their infinite depth of meaning. Now that this curtain is drawn up, the New Testament faith shrinks back from invoking upon any one a destruction that lasts l`wlm; and love seeks, so long as a mere shadow of possibility exists, to rescue everything human from the perdition of an unhappy future-a perdition the full meaning of which cannot be exhausted by human thought.
In connection with all this, however, there still remains one important consideration. The curses, which are contained in the Davidic Psalms of the time of Saul's persecution, are referred to in the New Testament as fulfilled in the enemies of Jesus Christ, Acts 1:20; Rom 11:7-10. One expression found in our Psalm, emi'seesa'n me doorea'n (cf. Ps 69:5) is used by Jesus (John 15:25) as fulfilled in Him; it therefore appears as though the whole Psalm ought to be, or at least may be, taken typically as the words of Christ. But nowhere in the Gospels do we read an imprecation used by Jesus against His own and the enemies of the kingdom of God; David's imprecations are not suited to the lips of the Saviour, nor do the instances in which they are cited in the New Testament give them the impress of being His direct words: they are treated as the language of prophecy by virtue of the Spirit, whose instrument David was, and whose work the Scriptures are. And it is only in this sense that the Christian adopts them in prayer. For after the pattern of his Lord, who on the cross prayed "Father forgive them," he desires that even his bitterest enemies may not be eternally lost, but, though it be only when in articulo mortis, that they may come to their right mind. Even the anathemas of the apostle against the Judaising false teachers and against Alexander the smith (Gal 1:9; 5:12; 2 Tim 4:14), refer only to temporal removal and chastisement, not to eternal perdition. They mark the extreme boundary where, in extraordinary instances, the holy zeal of the New Testament comes in contact with the holy fervour of the Old Testament.
Here is a link to the website from which this quote was taken: http://www.godrules.net/library/delitzsch/delitzsch.htm. This link even provides a photograph of the famous Bible scholar.
