Biblion Bible Commentary
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Let Another Take His Office
Psalms 109:1-31
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. God of my praise, don’t remain silent, · WEB
The most sustained curse in Scripture, quoted by Peter about Judas, spoken by a man whose only reply to hatred was prayer.
God of my praise, don't remain silent Psalms 109:1.
The hardest psalm in the collection, and the case behind it is stated before the curses begin.
They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. In return for my love, they are my adversaries; but I am in prayer Psalms 109:3–4.
The last clause is four words in Hebrew and it is the psalm's own defense. I am prayer — his entire response to being surrounded has been to pray. And the grievance is repaid love: they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love Psalms 109:5.
What follows is fourteen verses of imprecation against one man, and there is no softening it. Let his days be few. Let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow Psalms 109:8–9. The curse extends to his family, his creditors, his memory, and his parents' record.
Three things have to be held together, and none of them dissolves the difficulty.
First, some readers take verses six to nineteen as a quotation — the curses his enemies have been pronouncing on him, which he then asks God to reverse in verse twenty. The Hebrew allows it and the abrupt switch to the singular him after five verses of plural they supports it. It cannot be proved.
Second, whatever the case, this is a prayer. He asks God to act, and lifts no hand himself. The man who wrote it is in the position of the powerless, and the alternative to handing the matter over is not forgiveness but taking his own revenge.
Third, Peter quotes verse eight when the apostles replace Judas Acts 1:20, which means the New Testament reads these words as prophetic of a specific betrayal. That does not license anyone to pray them at a neighbor.
Because he didn't remember to show kindness, but persecuted the poor and needy man, the broken in heart, to kill them Psalms 109:16.
The charge, given at the center of the curses. The man being cursed hunted people who were already broken.
He clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment. It came into his inward parts like water Psalms 109:18.
The psalm's account of how such a man ends: what he wore soaked into him.
But deal with me, Yahweh the Lord, for your name's sake... for I am poor and needy. My heart is wounded within me Psalms 109:21–22.
The turn, and the psalmist's self-description is the collection's standard one.
For he will stand at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul Psalms 109:31.
The last verse answers the sixth. There, an adversary was to stand at the wicked man's right hand; here God stands at the right hand of the needy — the position of the advocate, taken by the one who was asked to be the prosecutor.
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