Omitting the Imprecatory Verses: Is that any way to form disciples?

For the Second Sunday after Epiphany, the Episcopal Organization's Lectionary slashes quite a few verses from Psalm 139. Regular readers of this blog should be able to easily pick out which parts of this Psalm that Sunday pewsitters will not hear. Read the whole thing and guess what gets the ax.

139 Domine, probasti

1 Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.

2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.

3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.

4 You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.

5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?

7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

8 If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

9 Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.

10 If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,"

11 Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.

12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

14 My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.

15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.

16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!

17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

18 Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.

19 They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.

20 Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

21 I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.

22 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.

23 Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.


If you guessed verses 18-23, you are mostly correct. Verses 6-11 were also omitted from the Sunday reading.

Imprecatory verses like vs. 18-21 in which the psalmist prays for God to slay the wicked and in which the psalmist extols his hatred for those who hate God are the parts of the Bible least known by Sunday pewsitters.

The Asbury Bible Commentary on the imprecatory issue should be studied by all who are offended by these verses,

"The Christian reader must begin by accepting these prayers as they are, by and large the cries of God's people for vengeance for unspeakable atrocities against them as God's people and those places sacred to them and to him. The best reading will refrain from spiritualizing the enemy or the petitions or the blessings thereby diminishing the depth of the agony felt and the vehemence of the action sought."

Spiritualizing the enemy would separate the psalm from its historical context in which the enemy was flesh and blood, coming at you and your family.

"The disciple of Jesus must also realize that any disquiet he or she feels in reading these prayers is due to the redeeming influence of the Lord and his apostles, not to any particular moral sensitivity naturally possessed by the 'enlightened' reader. Contemporary readers would have no problem, were it not 'given' them by the same Scripture that preserves both these poems and the teachings that call them into question. This sensitivity surely does not rise out of pure Enlightenment refinement or 'modern maturity.' Secular humanism can never on its own support values sufficient to impugn these prayers. Thus one will do well to refrain from patronizing or moralizing approaches to these works."

In other words, our discomfort is due to Christ working within us and not due to some other moral authority.

"Contemporary readers, particularly those in more affluent societies, can allow these prayers to help them enter the suffering life of the people of God, to transport them from their relative ease into the ghastly suffering and consternation of persons who have been uprooted, mocked, or abused. These prayers awaken the conscience to the human cry for redress, the cosmic demand for moral order and justice. They can lead one to feel as deeply as one ought the horrendous insult to Yahweh and his creation perpetrated by those who lie and cheat and kill and abuse and blaspheme. Made callous by exposure to continual evil, one may lose the sense of outrage these evils deserve, whether done to us or to others or to God. These prayers awaken that outrage, which is to be offered to God and which motivates to redemptive action.

Beyond these instructive appropriations the imprecatory prayers must point the followers of Jesus beyond themselves to a loftier vision of prayer, as noted above, for, not against, 'the enemy,' a form of prayer taught by our Master (Mt 5:11, 43-48) and modeled by the earliest church (1 Pe 2:19-25). This vision does not set aside the call for justice and vindication, but places these matters in God's hands for the eschaton (Ro 2; Rev 2:19ff.; 18)."

Sadly, the average churchgoer will never learn these lessons because they will only be exposed to a sanitized version of this and many other passages read from the Bible during the typical Sunday morning worship service when that church utilizes the Episcopal lectionary.

What student can ever hope to become a professor when they only learn selected fragments cherry picked from a study guide?

Is that any way to form disciples?