On the Death of Enemies

Some Reflections

Photo by Chris Slupski on Unsplash

The Death of the Wicked

Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel (Ezekiel 33:11 NRSVUE)?

When I was still an evangelical undergraduate, I had the opportunity to go on several weeks-long mission trips overseas. On one of these mission trips I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine about heaven and hell. I am not sure how the conversation came up (it would not surprise me if I had expressed difficulty in accepting the idea of eternal conscious torment, and that had opened the door to a discussion), but what he said then has been imprinted on my brain ever since. He told me, with an eerie calm and half-smile, that “at the final judgement, I believe I will be just as happy when God tosses people into hell as God will be himself.” I was speechless.

I could not help but think at the time, and cannot help but think now, that this is simply not the God I know, worship, and love. The God I know does not rejoice in the death (or endless torture) of the wicked, but desires their repentance and life. The God I know “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4 NRSVUE). The God I know, like the father in Jesus’ parable of the two lost sons, continually scans the horizon looking for his wayward child, waiting for them to return so that he can embrace them, kiss them, and throw a party (see Matthew 21:28-32).

This is truly a God who “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4), who wants hell to be empty.

Of course, this is not to say that that there is no such thing as a wicked person. Certainly, people have perpetuated unspeakably horrible things, said ugly, dehumanizing things about their siblings, and blasphemed a holy God. Although made in the image of God and so given an infinite dignity, some people have acted in ways decidedly contrary to that divine gift. The reason that vision of God gleefully tossing image bearers into hell so disturbs me is not because I think that no one does evil things, but because I know God to be infinitely more merciful and gracious than any human will ever be.

The Identity of the Wicked

“The wicked” is a comforting category to wield, but not a comfortable category with which to wrestle. As long as we are convinced that we ourselves are not wicked, there is a real catharsis in pointing out the wickedness of others. We sometimes experience pleasure in believing that others are wicked and we are not—and this pleasure can be so distorted that we tend to ignore the evidence of our immorality, the immorality of people on “our team,” and any moral goodness of our enemies.

Again, wicked people exist—but the more exceptional the wickedness, the easier it is to accurately recognize them. It is a bell curve; most people are neither exceptionally righteous nor exceptionally wicked, and all of us have moments of righteousness or wickedness. There is real wisdom in the simple acknowledgement of sin and humble plea for mercy in the Jesus Prayer, the prayer that holds a special place in the traditions of the churches of the East: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

All this to say, we should exercise caution when deploying the category of “the wicked,” and we should strive to cultivate the humility to acknowledge wickedness and righteousness when we find them in unexpected places.

How Do We Pray the Imprecatory Psalms?

The Book of Psalms is the prayer book of the people of God, and so even the imprecatory Psalms (a group of Psalms that involve sometimes curses on enemies) were given by God to his people to pray. Imprecatory Psalms are attempts to make sense of the violence (war, persecution, exile) experienced by their authors at the hands of their enemies, and desperate cries to God for justice and for vengeance. They are, at times, shockingly bloodthirsty. It would be helpful to consider some of the most brutal examples. Here is one on the righteous splashing around in the blood of enemies:

Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.
Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!
The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done;
they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
(Psalm 58:8-10 NRSVUE)

And here is one on gleefully murdering the children of enemies:

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
(Psalm 137:7-9 NRSVUE)

For the conscientious faithful reader, the horrific imagery in these Psalms present a real problem. How should we go about praying these incredibly violent prayers? I think there are at least a couple things to keep in mind.

First, the imprecatory Psalms do not necessarily increase desire for violent retribution in the one who prays them. In fact, ideally, the result should be exactly the opposite: by praying through these violent fantasies, the one who prays is able to release their grip on desires for vengeance (or be released from their desires for vengeance) and hand them over to God, in trust that God will accomplish justice. Admittedly, this is not a logical necessity. The imprecatory Psalms are dangerous, and those who pray them can certainly do so in a way that makes them more intent on violence, not less. But there is a way to pray them so that we lay our weapons down and recognize that vengeance belongs only to God (see Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:19).

Second, imprecatory Psalms can also be prayed in a metaphorical way, as prayers to aid us in our war against temptation, “the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:2), the “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). The enemies mentioned in the imprecatory Psalms can be understood as the spiritual enemies, rather than the enemies of flesh and blood that so often bedevil us. The images used to describe the destruction of the wicked can become vivid metaphors for overcoming temptation, spiritual struggle. This simultaneously keeps us from focusing our rage on human beings and lends energy to our struggle for holiness.

I cannot help but think that the purpose of the gift of the imprecatory Psalms is not to teach us that wishing destruction for our enemies is good (after all, if God does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, we should strive to imitate him). Rather, they teach us that we should bring our darkest and most violent desires to God rather than seek to carry them out ourselves, and that we should struggle valiantly against temptations and forces of spiritual darkness.

Jesus Prays for Forgiveness of His Enemies

No Christian consideration of the death of the wicked could be complete without a reflection on how Jesus treated his own enemies.

It is striking that the only Psalm Jesus quotes while hanging on the cross is not an imprecatory Psalm, but a Psalm of lament: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46, Psalm 22:1)? Having been betrayed by a dear friend, abandoned by others, unjustly condemned to death, beaten and humiliated—in his final moments, Jesus does not curse. Instead, he cries out in agony to God, quoting the beginning of a Psalm that ends in the assurance of deliverance, of a future in which the whole earth worships the God who reigns over it. God gave his people imprecatory Psalms to pray, but God on the cross does not pray them.

Jesus later prays something almost directly opposed to imprecation: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:43). This is the ultimate proof that he practiced what he preached when he taught the masses who followed him to “love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28, see also Matthew 5:44). In the middle of a torturous death, Jesus asks God to forgive the very people who helped to put him on the cross. Rather than cursing his enemies, Jesus prays for their forgiveness. We who seek to become like Christ are forced to reckon with the calling to do as he did.