This psalm sounds very
harsh to most. Wash your feet in the blood of the wicked? This doesn't sound
very loving or good. Yet as we read we have to know the person is speaking
metaphorically. However, can we rejoice when wicked people are destroyed? I think
we can. I don't think anyone can argue the death of Hitler's Third Reich was a
bad thing. Mankind rejoiced then and even now that the plans of the Third Reich
were stopped. The righteous are glad when evil is stopped and bad people are
punished.
This does not mean as
Christians we want to see people killed or destroyed. I don't want to kill a
dog, but if it's attacking my child, I will be glad when it is dead. We would
rather people change their ways and do what is right. However, if they refuse I
can be glad that God has removed them.
This is a tricky place,
for it is easy to become completely passive or to become filled with anger and
unforgiveness. This middle road can be walked in God. He can give us the
ability to truly love people and hate sin.
Psa 58:1-11
(1) To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David. Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?
(2) Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.
(3) The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
(4) Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;
(5) Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.
(6) Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.
(7) Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.
(8) As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
(9) Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.
(10) The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
(11) So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.
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