What the Psalms say about enemies

What this entry is

Most readers’ familiarity with the Psalter is shaped by the psalms that appear in lectionaries, hymnals, and devotional collections — Psalm 23, Psalm 51, Psalm 100, Psalm 121, Psalm 139, and similar. These are pastoral, penitential, doxological, or trust-oriented.

The Psalter also contains a category of psalms that call down judgment on enemies in stark language. They are commonly called the “imprecatory psalms” (from Latin imprecari, “to invoke against”). They are part of the same canonical book of Psalms; they are often skipped or softened in popular readings, devotional collections, and lectionaries.

This entry documents what these psalms say. We are not endorsing them as personal models for prayer; we are not condemning them either. The RULEBOOK directs us to present what the text says without arbitrating how it should be received. The interpretive history of the imprecatory psalms — across Jewish and Christian traditions — is enormous and beyond this entry’s scope.

The principal imprecatory psalms

Scholars typically identify the following as the principal imprecatory psalms (or psalms with substantial imprecatory sections): Psalms 5, 7, 35, 55, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, 109, 137, and 140.

We give representative excerpts.

Psalm 137:8–9

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you according to what you have done to us. Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (BSB)

The KJV renders the same verse:

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

The psalm as a whole is the famous “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept” psalm — composed by exiles in Babylon. Verses 1–6 are familiar from songs and hymns; verses 7–9 are almost never sung.

Psalm 109:8–13

May his days be few; may another take his position. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander as beggars, seeking sustenance far from their ruined homes. May the creditor seize all he owns and strangers plunder the fruits of his labor. May there be no one to extend kindness to him and no one to favor his fatherless children. May his descendants be cut off; may their name be blotted out from the next generation. (BSB)

Acts 1:20 cites Psalm 109:8 (“may another take his position”) in connection with the replacement of Judas Iscariot. The cited verse is the gentlest of the section.

Psalm 58:6–8

O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O LORD, tear out the fangs of the lions! May they vanish like water that runs off; when they draw the bow, may their arrows be blunted. Like a slug that dissolves on its way, like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun. (BSB)

Psalm 69:22–28

May their table become a snare; may it be a retribution and a trap. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever. Pour out Your wrath upon them, and let Your burning anger overtake them. […] Add iniquity to their iniquity; let them not share in Your righteousness. May they be blotted out of the Book of Life and not listed with the righteous. (BSB)

Psalm 79:6, 10, 12

Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that do not know You, and upon the kingdoms that refuse to call on Your name. […] Why should the nations ask, “Where is their God?” Before our eyes make known Your vengeance for the bloodshed of Your servants among the nations. […] Pay back into the laps of our neighbors sevenfold the reproach they hurled at You, O Lord. (BSB)

Psalm 35:4–8 (selections)

May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame; may those who plot my ruin be repulsed and confounded. […] May their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD in pursuit. […] May ruin befall them by surprise; may the net they hid ensnare them; may they fall into the slimy pit of their own destruction. (BSB)

Some patterns worth noting

Reading the imprecatory psalms together, several patterns emerge.

The speaker is typically the persecuted, not the powerful. The voice in these psalms is the voice of someone under attack — exiled, oppressed, hunted, slandered. The imprecations are uttered from a position of weakness, not strength. Psalm 137 is composed by exiles whose city has been destroyed and whose children have been killed; their imprecation against Babylon is a response to actions Babylon has already taken.

The imprecation is addressed to God, not to the enemy. The psalmist asks God to act; the psalmist does not propose to act personally. The texts are not calls to vigilante action but petitions for divine judgment. Romans 12:19 — “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord” — quotes Deuteronomy 32:35 in the same register: leave it to God.

The language is patterned and conventional. The imprecatory passages use stock Hebrew vocabulary of judgment — “may their tongue cleave to the roof of their mouth,” “may their eyes be darkened,” “may their name be blotted out.” Some scholars argue this stock-language character is closer to ancient Near Eastern conventions of complaint than to actual personal wishes; others read the psalms as straight imprecation. We document the observation without endorsing either reading.

The psalms are part of the canonical Psalter. The compilers of the Hebrew Psalter included them. Christian and Jewish liturgical traditions have long been ambivalent about how to use them — some traditions (notably the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours after Vatican II) have removed certain imprecatory psalms or verses from public liturgical use; some Protestant traditions retain them; Jewish liturgical use likewise varies. The texts are not contested as canonical; their devotional and liturgical use is.

Why this entry exists

These psalms exist in the same canonical book that produced “The LORD is my shepherd” and “Bless the LORD, O my soul.” Most popular treatments of the Psalter quietly skip them. A site committed to documenting what the Bible actually says cannot do that. The imprecatory psalms are part of the canonical text. Whether and how they apply to readers’ own prayer life is a separate interpretive question that the text does not arbitrate.