PSALM 139 IS one of the most beloved psalms for a reason. It portrays the deeply intimate relationship between the psalmist and God. Omnipotence and omniscience are heady, abstract terms, pointing to realities that are beyond our ability to fully comprehend. But to the psalmist, these realities about the nature of God are sources of wonder. How is it possible that you could know me so well? the psalmist seems to say. You are in heaven but know everything I do and think on earth, everywhere I go. You even knew me before I was born, and see all my days. All of this is beyond me. It’s just too marvelous for words!

The heading of the psalm, as translated in the New International Version, identifies it as a psalm of David, written for “the director of music.” Indeed, it’s easy to imagine it as a choral piece, with the congregation raising their hands in praise, swaying to the music, and having a warm and fuzzy Kumbaya moment together.

And then, suddenly, the music becomes discordant, as the choir turns from praise to cursing:

If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies. (Ps 139:19-22)

Where did that come from? As curses go in the psalms, this isn’t the worst. Just two psalms before, in Psalm 137, the poet’s words of hatred toward the Edomites and Babylonians are embarrassingly vengeful to modern ears. And in the psalm that follows this one, another David psalm, we get something similar. The psalmist pleads for God’s protection against those who are speaking treasonously and violently against him, and prays that justice would be done, that the violence of the wicked would bounce back at them:

Those who surround me proudly rear their heads;
    may the mischief of their lips engulf them.
May burning coals fall on them;
    may they be thrown into the fire,
    into miry pits, never to rise.
May slanderers not be established in the land;
    may disaster hunt down the violent. (Ps 140:9-11)

These words, at least, are consistent with the rest of the psalm. But the cursing in Psalm 139 seems to come out of nowhere. Indeed, if those four verses were eliminated, the psalm would be a coherent poem of wonder and praise. And of course, as you yourself may have experienced, the psalm is often sung or preached as if those verses didn’t exist. They’re just not…well, nice. And Christians are supposed to be nice, right?

So what do we do with these words of utter hatred?

As I’ll suggest in the next post, we need to read them together with the final two verses of the psalm. For now, though, let me try to sketch a bit of the background context.

First, the psalmists lived in a world that in many ways was very different from our own, at least for those of us who live in relative peace and prosperity. Theirs was a culture of honor and shame in which different nations worshiped different gods, and war between nations was an everpresent possibility. When the psalmists wrote in terms of us versus them, they weren’t just rooting for their favorite sports team. There was a sharp line to be drawn between nations, because there was a sharp line between the one true God and mere idols.

Second, we shouldn’t read “hate” as merely a word for strong and violent emotion. After all, we don’t always use it that way even in English. We “hate” it when the traffic is too heavy on the freeway or the server at the restaurant takes too long to bring us our food. We say, “Don’t you just hate that?” not because we have an urge to spew venom, but to bond with someone else over our common dislike of being annoyed or inconvenienced in some way.

Thus, whether in English or in Hebrew, the word “hate” begins by drawing a distinction between things that are valued as positive on one side and negative on the other, whatever the intensity of the associated emotion might be. “Hate” is the flip side of “love”; loving one thing implies hating something else.

In the same way, the poet’s hateful cursing is the flip side of devotion to God. The people being cursed, after all, are portrayed as bloodthirsty blasphemers whose very lives are lived in rebellion against God. Thus, the cursing isn’t a matter of the psalmist losing control over some personal insult. Rather, the poet is so enraptured by the character of God that everyone and everything that stands in opposition to God is viewed through the lens of disgust. “I hate them,” in a sense, should probably be read as, “They disgust me.”

That’s still not a very nice thing to say. But think of it this way: however “nice” we think we’re supposed to be, our love of God should be mirrored by our hatred of sin. I know, I know — that’s a dangerous thing to say, especially in a divisive and polarized world in which we make war on one another under the slightest of pretenses. But that’s why the curse isn’t the last word in the psalm, as we’ll explore next.