Can I Pray Imprecatory Psalms Over the Taliban?

Imprecate

/ verb / to invoke or call down judgment, calamity or curses upon one's enemies or those perceived as the enemies of God.

With the rest of the world, my recent days have vacillated between normal summer activities - the art show at OSE, painting my house, a birthday party for Max, etc. and a gravitational pull back into world news. I watched with horror and helplessness as the Taliban effortlessly took back Kabul, and almost overnight, two decades of progress eroded and violence and terror took power. I’m not a geopolitical expert by any stretch of the imagination, neither is dissecting the pros and cons of leaving Afghanistan the purpose of this blog. Rather, as I consider the dread of the Taliban and the shockingly sudden plight of the Afghan people - particularly women and girls - I want to ask the question: can I pray imprecatory psalms over the Taliban?

I’m angry. I’m horrified. I’m terrified. And I want God to act. Now.

The collection of psalms we have in our Bible represent different types of psalms: songs of worship, songs of remembrance, songs of repentance, songs of supplication, and songs of judgement. Are they all for us to pray and sing and bring before God as the people of the ancient near east did?

“God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.” (Psalm 7:11)

That hit me like a ton of bricks. I read it again. “…a God who feels indignation every day.”

That anger, that grieving rage I feel every time I am pulled back into the news of Afghanistan… I’ve felt it before. I remember feeling it in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. I remember feeling it when missionaries of our church reported on the increasing oppression and persecution of Christians in China. We have all witnessed great injustice in the world around us. It is right and good that we react to injustice, oppression, and violence with indignation.

To be sure, not every time I’ve felt that grieving rage has been right and good. I’ve felt it when my kids don’t cooperate with me, or when Jonny and I fight. I’m no standard of righteous indignation. But one thing is sure: when I do feel righteous indignation - which, for purposes here I’ll define as anger over evil acts against God’s character, God’s kingdom, or God’s image bearers - it has been fleeting. I feel it in the moment, and it moves me to give or to serve or to pray, but it gradually fades.

David says that God is a God who feels indignation every day.

God sees the Taliban when they take little girls from their families by force, and he feels indignation. 

God sees the Taliban when they steal the childhood of young boys, indoctrinating them with a twisted and evil hatred, and he feels indignation. 

God sees the terror that these forces of evil bring on the Afghan people, and he feels indignation. 

God sees the murder of those who refuse to deny their Savior, and he feels indignation. 

God sees the corruption and the money changing hands instead of protecting the vulnerable, and he feels indignation. 

God sees the Taliban and their distortion of marriage, men subjugating and violently abusing women who dare to defy them, and he feels indignation.

Every. Day.

This is crucial, for while my indignation wanes along with other fickle feelings, his indignation remains. He is not distant from our world and its troubles; he is present. This is why the psalmist, in his pleas for God’s judgement to fall on his enemies, always has hope.

From Psalm 55: “Destroy, O Lord, divide their tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it; ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace.” (v 9-11)

“Let death steal over them; let them go down to Sheol alive; for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. But I call to God, and the LORD will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.” (v 15-17)

“But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction; men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.” (v 23)

You can open to almost any page in the psalms and find verses like these. And, in response to my question above I say, yes. Pray them over the Taliban. 

As I consider praying these particular passages of scripture, here are some  of my thoughts:

• Pray them slowly, soberly. I am reluctant to suggest that we pray these scriptures over specific people at all, and certainly not people we feel have wronged us personally. These are not my personal vendetta prayers. These are weighty prayers for God’s righteous judgement to fall on the wicked. And I feel an incredible tension between praying prayers of judgement and the life and teaching of my Savior who said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.’” God can handle that tension I feel, so I bring that to him as well. Both are God-honoring prayers because God is a God of judgement who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished (Ex 34 v 7) and he is a God of salvation; he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but calls them to turn and live (Ez 33 v 11). And I am deeply sobered by this thought: while I hear stories of kidnappings, torture, or murder, and my first impulse is to cry out in desperate impatience for God to judge the wicked with the violence they bring on others, there may well be brothers and sisters right now, face to face with the enemy, who, in the example and the love and endurance and faith of Stephen, are praying forgiveness over their enemies even as they come to kill. As I consider the implications of such prayer, I tremble and ache with a mixture of terror and sadness and hope. Holy Spirit, keep them, and ready a white robe for them as they join the throne room of heaven to rest.
  

• Pray for God’s glory. Every time we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we are praying for his judgement to fall once and for all on the wicked. Because Jesus returns with a sword of judgement, this is a somber prayer that is motivated, yes, by a desire for wickedness and evil to be dealt a final death-blow, but also, and more importantly, so that Jesus will be fully revealed in glory and power for all to see. May this be our preeminent aim as we pray: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” May the name of Jesus be magnified in our world, to the glory of God the Father, now and forever. Amen.
  

• Pray for judgment on the work of the enemy of God. Often the psalmist prays down judgement on those who devise evil against him personally. They are his adversaries, his pursuers, those who rejoice at his defeat. Yet, as we have seen, these are not vendetta prayers. He (most often, David) is the righteous, and he is contrasted against the unjust and wicked. David is the Lord’s anointed king of Israel, and he is the purpose and plan of God to redeem the world (not David himself, but through his descendant, Jesus). Therefore, an assault on David is the work of the enemy of God seeking to thwart the purpose of God through David.

  In all our desperation, for our brothers and sisters in Christ and for all the people of Afghanistan, we pray for the work of the enemy to be thwarted - that it would backfire. And rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, these people would fall under the protection of our great and merciful God. “When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall.” (Psalm 27 v 2) God, protect the poor and oppressed from the work of evil men. Devastate the plans of those who seek the lives of the innocent and let their own wickedness turn on them. May your kingdom purposes in our world triumph over the evil of the enemy today.
  

• Pray also for salvation for the many. We stand in a place in history that the psalmist did not: we live by faith in light of all that Jesus taught and in the victory of what he accomplished in his death, resurrection, and ascension. So we pray both: for Jesus to continually plague the wicked with their own wickedness (“For without cause they hid their net; without cause they dug a pit designed to kill. Let destruction come upon them when they do not know it! And let the net that they hid ensnare them; let them fall into it - to their destruction!” -my paraphrase of Psalm 35 v 7,8). And we also pray for the salvation of the enemies of God, for we too were once enemies, and we have been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. We pray:

  “May God be gracious to us and bless us

      and make his face to shine upon us, 

  that your way may be known on earth,

      your saving power among all nations.

  Let the peoples praise you, O God;

      let all the peoples praise you!

  Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,

      for you judge the peoples with equity

      and guide the nations upon earth. 

  Let the peoples praise you, O God;

      let all the peoples praise you!

  The earth has yielded its increase;

      God, our God, shall bless us.

  God shall bless us;

      let all the ends of the earth fear him!”

  (Psalm 67)

  
  All salvation is a miraculous conversion from enemy to son or daughter. God, draw many sons and daughters to yourself. From the ends of the earth, bring your enemies to repentance in the name of Jesus.
  

• Lastly, we pray for our own endurance in prayer. I am quick to forget, in my comfort, the struggles and terrors of our world. They seem so distant on a normal Wednesday in Oregon. And when the news cycle shifts, the plight of others is invisible to me and my concern for others fades. So I pray to endure in prayer, even when it isn’t in the news or being shared about by visiting missionaries. God, help me remember to pray. Make me uncomfortable in my comfort until I remember to bring this broken world before you.

The psalmist’s prayers for judgement on the enemies of God, his prayers for salvation for the nations, his prayers of repentance, his prayers of hope… they all find their answer and their victory in Jesus. Mine do too. With definite finality, Jesus has been and will be victorious.

Thank you, God, for jarring me out of prayerlessness, and so let me continually remember to cry out with the psalmist, or the prophets, or the martyrs, or my brothers and sisters, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.” (Hab 1 v 1-4). But in the same breath, Lord, let me remember and rejoice that you are saving, and you have always saved, and you will save. You are, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

What amazing, counterintuitive hope I have for our world because of who you are, Jesus. “Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his salvation. All my bones shall say,“O Lord, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?” (Psalm 35:9-10)

Photo by Rahman Gul / AP