Context No. 3021 of 4322 · Psalms

Psalms 69:17-36: in context

17Don’t hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress. Answer me speedily! 18Draw near to my soul and redeem it. Ransom me because of my enemies. 19You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. 20Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none. 21They also gave me poison for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. 22Let their table before them become a snare. May it become a retribution and a trap. 23Let their eyes be darkened, so that they can’t see. Let their backs be continually bent. 24Pour out your indignation on them. Let the fierceness of your anger overtake them. 25Let their habitation be desolate. Let no one dwell in their tents. 26For they persecute him whom you have wounded. They tell of the sorrow of those whom you have hurt. 27Charge them with crime upon crime. Don’t let them come into your righteousness. 28Let them be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written with the righteous. 29But I am in pain and distress. Let your salvation, God, protect me. 30I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31It will please the LORD better than an ox, or a bull that has horns and hoofs. 32The humble have seen it, and are glad. You who seek after God, let your heart live. 33For the LORD hears the needy, and doesn’t despise his captive people. 34Let heaven and earth praise him; the seas, and everything that moves therein! 35For God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah. They shall settle there, and own it. 36The children also of his servants shall inherit it. Those who love his name shall dwell therein.

This is a psalm of deep suffering that the Gospels apply to Christ. Reproach has broken my heart, the psalmist says; I looked for pity and found none, for comforters and found none; they gave me poison for food and vinegar for my thirst. And it contains fierce cries against his persecutors, that their table become a snare, that they be blotted out of the book of life.

The psalm holds together raw suffering, a burning cry for justice, and, in the end, praise. The imprecations are hard, and we do not simply repeat them; but they are honest prayers, handing over to God the rage and the longing for justice that the sufferer feels, rather than taking revenge into his own hands. He gives his anger to God and leaves the judging to him. And notice where the psalm lands, not in bitterness but in praise, sure that the LORD hears the needy and does not despise his own. The vinegar and the broken heart the Gospels see fulfilled at the cross, in the greatest of all righteous sufferers.

When I am wronged, can I pour out even my anger honestly to God, leaving the judgment to him, and come, like this psalm, back to praise?

Sources

Psalm 69:20: "Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none."
Psalm 69:21: "They also gave me poison for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink."
Psalm 69:33: "For the LORD hears the needy, and doesn't despise his captive people."