Salmos 109

CIX.

The peculiar horror of the imprecations in this extraordinary psalm does not lie in the dreadful consequences they invoke. Shakespeare puts curses equally fierce and terrible into Timon’s mouth:
“Piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And let confusion live!”

Nor is this horror due to the fact, assuming it to be a fact, that these imprecations are not general in their direction, like the misanthrope’s curses, but are levelled at a single individual, for the passions of revenge and hatred intensify by contraction of their range. The whole difficulty of the psalm lies in the fact that it was, as the inscription shows, actually, if not primarily, intended for use in the public service of the sanctuary.

But this very use at once divests the psalm of one of the greatest sources of difficulty, its personal character. Whatever its origin, whoever the original object of the imprecations, it is certain that they became public, ecclesiastical, national.
It is quite possible that from the first the writer spoke in the name of the persecuted nation against some oppressive heathen prince, such as Antiochus Epiphanes. Certainly, when sung by the congregation it expressed not an individual longing for revenge, but all the pent-up feeling — religious abhorrence, patriotic hatred, moral detestation — of the suffering community.
The continuance of its recitation in Christian churches opens up another question, and has, in a great measure, been the motive for the various apologetic explanations that have been started for the psalm. It is strange that even yet the old theory, which justifies the language of the imprecations as prophetically the language of Christ, should find advocates. The “quotation” theory is noticed in the Notes. On the quotation of the imprecations by St. Peter, see Notes, New Testament Commentary, Atos 1:20. The parallelism is synthetic.

Title. — “To the chief musician.” (See Note to title of Salmos 4)