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Justification
The principle upon which this must be done, may be best stated by two or three illustrations.
Doeg, an Edomite herdsman in the time of Saul, slew eighty-five unarmed, helpless priests, whom he knew to be wholly innocent of the charge made against them, and when no one else dared to lay hand upon these consecrated servants of the Lord. And with this he was not satisfied; every woman and child, every breathing thing, fell under his murderous knife. Does not the very mention of this atrocity stir up feelings which cannot be repressed, and which are only rendered more poignant by reflection upon the attendant circumstances?
The slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by Herod, another Edomite, was an act of gratuitous cruelty which the imagination utterly refuses to carry out into the details. The shriek of the frantic Rachel in every dwelling where there was a little child to be struck down, is all that the heart can hear. Towards the author of this massacre, every reader of the history, from that day down to this, has had but one feeling. The horrors of conscience that, as stated by Josephus, he suffered on account of his wife Mariamne, and which almost antedated the pains that know no end, do not awaken the least degree of sympathy for him. A happy end to that turbulent and blood-stained life, would have shocked our sense of right and justice.
The woman who wished the head of the revered forerunner of our Lord to be brought to her in a dish; who desired to glut her cruel and adulterous eyes with a sight which would have curdled the blood of any one else, has excited a feeling in every reader’s breast, that no lapse of time has in any degree diminished. The simple words of the gospel narrative are enough. We need no word of commentary. Every right-minded man has one in the living fibers of his heart.
The striking of a great bell at midnight in Paris, was the signal of a deed at which men shudder now, at the distance of nearly four hundred years. It was a night long to be remembered. It needed no record in the page of history. It is engraven in ineffaceable characters upon the moral sense of all Protestant Christendom. It was an outrage upon the nature which God has given to his creatures, which admits of no apology, and which necessarily demanded an atonement. And there are those who, in the horrors of the French Revolution, beheld the cup of retribution pressed to the lips of the nation stained with this blood; and when they saw her compelled to drink the very dregs, they felt that a debt to Divine justice had been paid, God’s moral government had been vindicated, and his word had come to pass—“They who sowed the wind had reaped the whirlwind.” The distance of time made no difference in their view. The respite was scarcely longer than that afforded to the doomed Canaanites. Centuries are but years in the life of a nation.
Now, what is the character of the principle manifested? what the nature of the emotions with which such transactions as these are rewarded?
A primary element of it is indignation. Before we have had time to reflect, there is an instant, a spontaneous burst of anger towards the wrong-doer. We cannot prevent it, if we would. It is prior to all deliberation. In its first outbreak it is beyond control. It is outraged nature, and will have vent. Another element is compassion towards the injured party. We have an intuitive pity for weakness crushed to the dust, for innocence betrayed and violated. The wailing cry of infancy is in our ears; the white locks of age, draggling in the dust, are in our sight. Another and principal ingredient is the sense of justice. When a crime of extraordinary atrocity goes unpunished, we feel that justice is defrauded of its dues. We are indignant that so great a wrong should go unredressed. While the crime is unatoned, we have a feeling not only of insecurity, but that justice has been violated. Public order is disturbed. A shock has been given to that sense of rectitude which is common to man. This is not of momentary duration, as the indignant or compassionate feeling may be. It grows stronger with the lapse of time, and reflection only adds to its intensity. When a great wrong has been committed, nothing suffices to calm the perturbation of our moral nature until the grievance has been redressed. A voice within us calls imperatively for reparation, whether we or others are the authors of the deed. We secretly desire the speedy infliction of the just penalty upon ourselves if we are conscious of guilt, and on others, if they are the evil-doers. And what we thus crave by an irrepressible instinct of our moral nature may we not, on suitable occasions, express in language?
This, reason as we may, is an original principle of our nature; a simple and ultimate fact. It has all the marks of being such, that can be affirmed in regard to any attribute of our nature. It is instantaneous in its manifestations; its movements are rapid as the light. It gives no notice of its coming, neither can it be stayed. It is also universal. It has shown itself in all ages, in every state of society, and in every period of human life, among the rudest and the most refined. Whenever the voice of a brother’s blood has cried from the ground, it has found an answering echo in every bosom, no matter whether in the midst of the most polished society, or in the remotest outskirts of barbarism.
This feeling is, however, not necessarily accompanied by any ill-will or malice towards the offender. An atrocious crime has been perpetrated in our neighborhood. We have the strongest sympathy for the injured party, and indignation towards the wrong-doer. We unite in all proper measures to bring him to condign punishment. If we do not in so many words imprecate calamities upon him, we feel and we perform what amounts to the same thing. We rejoice to hear that he is apprehended, and that justice will have its course. If he is proved to be guilty, we are disappointed if he escape; and we strongly desire that he may suffer the punishment of his deeds But all this is without any desire to witness the sufferings of any human being, or that these sufferings in themselves should be felt. We have no malice or private revenge to gratify. The absorbing emotion is for the good of society. We have the persuasion that, if the criminal escape, the bonds that hold men together will be weakened, if not destroyed. That there may be this entire freedom from personal ill-will, is shown by the fact that feelings precisely similar—at least in kind—are awakened towards an offending contemporary or neighbor and towards a notorious culprit who lived ages ago, or who may now be living in the uttermost parts of the earth, and whose punishment or escape from it cannot be of the least personal concernment to us.
Shall we say that such a feeling is sinful? May it not rather be the evidence of a generous sympathy with mankind, of a finely educated conscience? Not to possess this moral sympathy may indicate a slow or cold or pusillanimous spirit, a dullness of spiritual apprehension, and the absence of any keen desire that the disorders in God’s kingdom should be rectified.
The connection of these considerations with the imprecations in the Psalms, will be by this time clear to the reader. If it does not account for all, it lies at the foundation of a large portion of them, by showing that these imprecatory passages are justified by a primary and essentially innocent feeling of our nature. If we had been placed in the position of the sacred writers, we should feel, and properly feel, as they felt. The sight of the shameless cruelty of an Edomite herdsman, if it did not dictate an imprecatory poem, would assuredly awaken the feelings on which that poem is founded. The impartial spectator, as he stood upon the smoking ashes of Jerusalem, and saw the Edomites as they stimulated the fierce Chaldeans to “raze” the Holy City to its foundations, and heard them suggest new and ingenious methods of cruelty, would join in the emotions that called forth, if he did not in the words which express, the maledictions of Psalms 137.
Let any right-minded reader look at the lives of Antiochus Epiphanes, of the first Herod, of some of the Roman Emperors, of the Fouquier Tinvilles and the Carriers of the French Revolution, and fail if he can to rejoice, yea exult, when the same cup is poured out to them which they had mingled for others. The feeling in the minds of those who penned Psalms 55, 69 was not malice. It was the indignation excited by cruelty and injustice, and the desire that crime should be punished. They doubtless followed the precept—“Be ye angry, and sin not.” If we were acquainted with the circumstances which called forth the imprecatory Psalms, we should doubtless find, as the cause or occasion, striking cases of treachery, practised villany, and unblushing violations of law.
The truth seems to be, then, that it is only a morbid benevolence, a mistaken philanthropy, which takes offence at these Psalms; for in reality they are not opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, or to that love of enemies which our Lord enjoined. Resentment against evil-doers is so far from being sinful, that we find it exemplified in the meek and spotless Redeemer himself, as when he looked around upon the Pharisees, “with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” Note: Mar_3:5. If the emotion and its utterance were essentially sinful, how could Paul Note: 1Co_16:22. wish the enemy of Christ to be accursed; or say of his own enemy—“The Lord reward him according to his work?” How then could he say to the high priest, “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall,” Note: Act_23:3. or how could Peter say to Simon, the sorcerer, “Thy money perish with thee?” Note: Act_8:20. Above all, how then could the spirits of the just in heaven be represented as calling upon God for vengeance upon their enemies and persecutors? Note: Rev_6:10. Assuredly it is not in the Old Testament only that God is set forth not only as a Father, but as a Judge and Vindicator—as one “angry with the wicked every day.” The God of the New Testament is also “a consuming fire;” Note: Heb_12:29. and it is still “dreadful to fall into the hands of the living God;” Note: Heb_10:31. and to those who fall away after having received the knowledge of the truth, there is “a fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation to consume the adversaries.” The Divine righteousness has indeed lost so little of its rigor under the new covenant, that he who despises the far richer means of grace offered under it, becomes the heir of a much sorer punishment than he who perished under the old law. Note: Heb_10:28-29.
Let us be satisfied. The Bible, even here, where many have deemed it most vulnerable, most open to attack, does not stand in need of any apology.