My God YHWH is real! His word is truth! Yes, the God of the Bible really acts in history! Yes, He really answers His people’s prayers through Jesus Christ! My imprecatory prayer on 911 is just another in a whole string of instances that could be cited.
An imprecatory prayer asks God to intervene with judgment for one or more reasons approved by Him in His word, the Bible.
Is it right to pray for God to send judgment? (Such is an “imprecatory prayer”).
How shall we determine? By what we think is right? Majority opinion? An authority figure’s say so?
During His earthly life and ministry, God’s Son Jesus constantly referred back to the Scriptures as the final arbiter of truth. When dealing with controversy, He would direct people to this question: “what saith the Scriptures” (cf. Romans 4:3; Galatians 4:30). That must be our question here too, for Scripture alone provides our Maker’s infallible thoughts concerning imprecatory prayers. As our Creator, God speaks with ultimate authority. He holds us accountable for all we do and think. His Word on everything -what to believe, how to live- is found in Scripture.
And God’s word is perfect. Just like our words, God’s are breathed right out of His mouth. But unlike our words, unlike us, God can never be wrong. His word is without error and so it will never fail us. And He has given it to us in the sixty-six books of the Holy Bible. There He teaches all men and nations He created that His word is the standard of truth, of right and wrong:
“Therefore all Your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right; I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:128)
“Your law is truth” (Psalm 119:142)
“Therefore all Your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right; I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:128)
“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:20)
“Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” (Jesus in John 17:17)
So it is to Scripture that we must go to find the answer to the question: is it right to ask God to judge?
It can take a lot of time to study out God’s word on a topic like this from Genesis to Revelation. It has taken me days to put this together. But because I care about you, and want you to have a relationship with God through Jesus, I invested that time. And please, don’t just take my word for it- I encourage you to get out the Bible, look the Scriptures up, and judge what I say by it (Isaiah 8:20).
“Do you not know?” or “Have you not read?” are questions Jesus and His apostle Paul often asked. Do you not know, have you not read Scripture how God punishes, curses and judges those who refuse to repent of their sins (sin is breaking His law, His Ten Commandments)? -look:
- God cursed the serpent and his seed so the woman’s Seed might bless those He in loving compassion chose to save and restore to Paradise (Gen. 3:15, 22)
- God promised Abram: “I will curse him who curses you” (Gen. 12:3
- God judged and drowned every last human on earth, except Noah and his family with a good purpose
- God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone (Gen. 18) as an example (says Jude 7) of the everlasting fire reserved for those refusing to repent of sodomy and immorality
- God called on His people to declare “cursed” is “the one who does not confirm all the words of this law” (Deut. 28:26)
- God brought Hannah to rejoice that “the LORD kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up….” – I Sam. 2:6
- God predicted that His Messiah Son, sitting at His right hand as He is today (see Psalm 2, 110 and Acts 13:46), will not only bless but will also curse: He will “execute kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies…” (Psalm 110:5-6)
- “God will wound the head of His enemies, the hairy scalp of one who still goes on in his trespasses” and tells His people He will so control things “that your foot may crush them in blood, and the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from your enemies.” (Remember Jezebel?) Psalm 68:21, 23
- God from Genesis to Revelation shows how true and right this is of Him to do, both in history and out into eternity
Is that hard to accept that God judges and destroys? All God does is just. Abraham said: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). The Bible says: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). So, if all of us got what we deserved, we would all be in hell right now. The fact that God is so longsuffering and allowing us to live does not mean we don’t deserve His judgment, it means He is patient and His patience invites us to repent of our sins and get right with Him by faith in His Son Jesus (Romans 2:4; John 3:16).
One thing God continually reveals -from Genesis to Revelation – is that He judges and curses those refuse to repent of their sins (that is, those refusing to be sorry for breaking His Ten Commandments in their lives and so to stop).
So, given how God’s people are not at cross purposes with Him, but are one with His purposes to curse the impenitent wicked (when He decides to- we leave it up to Him), it is not surprising that we should find God’s saints in Scripture asking God to curse, kill, consume, and destroy His enemies who go on in trespasses.
Nor is it surprising then that we find God answering such prayers in both Old and New Testaments as well as history.
Just look at the following to merely illustrate:
“Pronounce them guilty, O God! Let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You.” Psalm 5:10
“Arise O LORD, do not let man prevail; let the nations be judged in Your sight. Put them in fear O LORD, that the nations may know themselves to be but men.” Psalm 9:19-20
“Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man; seek out his wickedness until You find none.” Psalm 10:15
“May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaks proud things” -Psalm 12:3
“Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors; give them according to the work of their hands, render to them what they deserve.” Psalm 28:4
“Let the wicked…be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence…which speak… against the righteous.” Psalm 31:17-18
“Plead my cause, O LORD, with those who strive with me; fight against those who fight against me….draw out the spear, and stop those who pursue me….Let those be turned backed…who plot my hurt….Let their way be dark and slippery, and let the angel of the LORD pursue them…Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly, and let his net that he has hidden catch himself;.” (verses from Psalm 35)
“He will repay my enemies for their evil. Cut them off in Your truth.” Psalm 54:4-7
“Let death seize them; let them go down alive into hell, for wickedness is in their dwellings and among them. But You, O God, shall bring them down to the pit of destruction; bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but I will trust in You” – Psalm 55:9, 15, 23
“Break their teeth in their mouth, O God! ….Let them be like a snail which melts away as it goes, like a stillborn child of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the burning thorns, He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, as in His living and burning wrath. The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, so that men will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely He is God who judges in the earth.” – Psalm 58:6-11
“O LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to punish all the nations; do not be merciful to any wicked transgressors….Scatter them by Your power….for the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips, let them even be taken in their pride….Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth….” (verses from Psalm 59)
“Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; let those also who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.” -Psalm 68:1-2
“Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let Your wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their dwelling place be desolate….for they persecute the ones You have struck….Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.” – verses from Psalm 69
“Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor who seek my hurt”- Psalm 70:13
“Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You, and on the kingdoms that do not call on Your Name. Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God’. Let there be known among the nations in our sight the avenging of the blood of Your servants which has been shed. And return tour neighbors sevenfold into their bosom their reproach with which they have reproached You, O Lord.” -Ps 79:6, 10, 12
“O my God, make them like the whirling dust, like the chaff before the wind! As the fire burns the woods, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your Name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose Name alone is Yahweh, are the Most High over all the earth.” – verses from Psalm 83
“May sinners be consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD!” – Psalm 104:35
All of these combined form one inescapable conclusion that God desires for His children to sometimes ask Him to be a just Judge and manifest His justice in time and in history and in very real, concrete situations.
If your sinful nature is sometimes tempted like mine, it might question God’s fairness or justice in so demonstrating His wrath. But this is entirely wrong. This is thinking and feeling that is the result of our fall in Adam, its all wrong.
The truth of the matter is that we have a wonderful Creator, who although He made us to walk with Him, rejoice in all His goodness, love, worship and enjoy Him forever, yet we knowingly, crazily rebelled and defiantly turned away from Him as though we did not need the Source and Father of life. Should you have difficulty yet with this, think: He who sent His Son to die for sinners like us did not do so in vain. If He really loved us enough to let His own precious Son (think of sending your son to die for your hateful enemies!) suffer death on the cross- eternal hell!-then His justice is something that is right, just and true. Its not too much, excessive, but just the right penalty for sinners like us.
Consider how the worst curse and judgment of all time was not 911, WWII or any other horror man has suffered. No, the greatest of all sufferings was what Christ the just One suffered for unjust sinners like us at the cross, so that those who turn to Him in humble faith to save them from their sins and God’s wrath may really be saved from them!
Specific texts from the Old Testament:
- Numbers 10:35 records Moses’ imprecatory prayer against other nations: “Rise up, O LORD! Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You.” (Cf. Psalm 68) How does God’s kingdom move forward in this world? By prayer! Psalm 136 celebrates God’s mercy to Israel when He justly “slew famous kings” in answer to this imprecatory prayer of Moses.
- Numbers 16:15 again records Moses praying an imprecatory prayer, this time toward those in Israel who refused to submit to his God given authority and summons. “Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, nor have I hurt one of them.” Moses was asking God not to uphold, forgive or bless them. He wanted God to show His approval of Moses and His disapproval of the rebels. In answer, God caused the rebels to go ”down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the congregation.” (v. 33)
- Elijah prayed for a terrible judgment to befall his own nation. His imprecatory prayer is mentioned in James 5:17f: “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.”
Perhaps the question you have for me is “WHY? Why pray for the events that occured on 911?” To answer, I quote from a well known Presbyterian pastor’s sermon: “Elijah earnestly prayed for a drought. Why would he do that?! Can you imagine anybody in an agricultural economy praying that it might not rain?- and particularly in that section of the world where it gets so hot and so on? Apparently his reason for praying that way was that the nation had turned to idolatry and he felt something was needed to bring the nation to its knees so that it would turn back to God. And very possibly, he was reading the Old Testament,…and he hit a verse like this in Deuteronomy 11:14. God says: “I will give you the rain of your land in its due season…that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine and thy oil” -v. 16- “take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish quickly off the good land which the LORD giveth you.” Maybe he read this and said, “God, You said if we turned to idols You’d withhold rain; I’m asking You to do that; to bring home to us the seriousness of what we’ve done and lead us to turn back to You.” You know when you read that prayer, it makes you wonder…. whether we ought to ask God to heal the economy of our nation?” James urges us to fervent prayer. And how does he illustrate the power of fervent prayer? By citing Elijah’s imprecatory prayer. James assures us Elijah was afflicted with a sinful nature like ourselves. Yet God, in answer to one man’s prayer, brought a drought that was used by God to glorify Himself, encourage the saints, and turn the nation back to Himself to some degree. Now, I took no pleasure in praying for the events of 911, and I’m sure Elijah didn’t either in praying for drastic drought.
What surgeon enjoys inflicting a wound to save a life? Who delights to see farmer’s crops fail? Or hear a friend’s livestock moaning and about to die? Or, worse, see fellow citizens die? Sobering. Sobering. Most sobering. But what did Jesus -the One who was perfectly and fully God (Isaiah 9:6-7) and perfectly and fully Man (Isaiah 9:6-7)- say about this? In Luke 4:25-26 Jesus gives His thought, and we see Him giving a full approval of such prayers. Though many people suffered God’s righteous wrath, Jesus did not apologize for Elijah, or say he should not have prayed that. No, Jesus said: “I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon., to…a widow.” Some have reproved me for praying for 911 on our country. But Jesus didn’t “correct” Elijah for praying for a severe tragedy on his own nation.
Jesus even went further than to approve of Elijah’s prayer. He highlighted that during the famine, God Himself sent Elijah NOT even to one of Israel’s widows, but to a Gentile widow! Just when Israel’s widows hurt the most, and needed God’s help through His prophet, God left them without it. To a nation that had apostasized, that refused to repent though God so graciously called them back to Himself through many prophets rising up early (Romans 9-11), God finally brought an end even to His prophetic voice and sent it to the Gentiles- in order to stir the Jews to provocation and jealousy (cf. Deuteronomy 32-33) so as to call Israel back to Himself! But then, what shall we say to this? Shall we be angry with a most gracious, longsuffering, just and righteous God for what He did through Elijah in his time? God’s design was to stir Elijah’s heart to his imprecatory prayer, to answer that prayer and to use the judgment to glorify His Name, to show that He alone was God and at last to bring His people back to Himself (I Kings 18:37). So to those who rebuked me for praying for the events of 911, I ask: how was my prayer different than Elijah’s? And if Jesus did not rebuke Elijah for it, but approved of it and more, why should you do any differently than the Son of God and Son of Man?
We will let the reader look up other instances of prayers for a curse or judgment, a few notables being the time Elijah prayed for fire to fall from heaven to consume over 100 of the king’s men (2 Kings 1), the time Elisha pronounced a curse on forty two youths who mocked his baldness (bears mauled them – 2 Kings 2:19-25) and Jeremiah the weeping prophet who so often wept for the sufferings of His people also breathed out fiery imprecations in chapters 11, 12 and 18.
David also was a man after God’s own heart. Though he was certainly the sweet psalmist of Israel whose psalms earnestly longed for and predicted the salvation of the nations once the Messiah came to earth (see Psalms 2, 22, 33, 51:12-13; 67, 68, 72, 86, 96, 98, 99,100, 102,138, 150), yet he was also a mighty prayer warrior, constantly voicing imprecatory prayers before God, the more that his enemies resisted or pursued him. Eight Psalms are almost entirely imprecatory (bold printed below), while at least twenty-eight others contain portions of imprecatory prayers. See such Psalms as 5:10; 9:19-20; 10:15; 12:3; 28:4; 31:17-18; 35; 40:14-15; 54:5; 55:9, 15; 58; 59; 68:1-2; 69; 70:2-3; 71:13; 79; 83; 104:35; 109; 119:78; 129:5-8; 137; 139:19-22; 140:9-11; 141:10; 143:12.
By the way, these Old Testament Psalms are supposed to be sung and prayed by God’s church and Christians today as well. Because we are fellow heirs and citizens with the children of Abraham (Ephesians 2:13-4:1). Further, the New Testament repeats this call and command to pray and to sing just such Psalms and hymns (written by men) in places like Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, James 5:13 and more.
For more explanation, you may find Matthew Henry’s comments on Psalm 35 (sections IV-V) helpful.
One commentator said about Psalm 109: “This psalm is the cry of the child of God who has no other recourse for justice [exactly as I felt on 911]…when the abuses of one’s enemies have reached the extent that the question of theodicy [is God dead?] is evoked, when the name of God and the enduring faith of His people are at stake. From such a context this prayer was first offered, and in such a context it may be voiced again.”
My morning devotions on September 11, 2001 included Psalm 79, which greatly motivated my prayer. As commentators tell, the imprecations are spoken against oppressive nations who go on murdering huge numbers of people. Similarly, Psalm 137 arose from the horrors of people taking helpless members of society- infants – and slaughtering them. Sound familiar, America?
Why should we scratch our heads when the Lord does through 911 just some of what He’s threatened America with for decades? We should scratch our heads and break our hearts wondering why and how He could have been so INCREDIBLY long-suffering for so long and not entirely destroyed us decades before! Remember how Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell – right after the attacks – said something like God had brought this as a judgment for abortion, homosexuality, etc? That God had – as He had with Jerusalem (Isa 22:8a) – “removed the protection” of America? They were absolutely right!!!
Alas, my treason to have forgotten and failed to fulfill my vow! Had I remembered my prayer then, I could have confirmed by my own testimony and the prayer I prayed that same morning before the attacks how absolutely right they were! It was with words like those from Psalms 79 and 137 that I asked God to turn His wrath to His enemies: don’t be angry with me/those trusting and obeying You Lord, pour out Your wrath – and even then – only to a limited degree- only one day’s worth of anger – only one day’s worth of showing and mirroring back to us what it is like for You to see what we do every day for weeks, months, and years to unborn children! I asked that because I knew from experience that my nation refused to repent of it brazen idolatry, abortion and homosexuality. Because it refuses to acknowledge the God of the Bible, His Son Jesus of Nazareth (Psalm 2) and His Commandments. So, like Israel in Psalm 79, I sought to move God’s hand to act to vindicate His own Name.
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