Vengeance Is Yours Says King David

As you read through the Psalms, you encounter a lot of prayers about enemies.  We have two today.  In Psalm 18, David celebrates his victory over his enemies, particularly King Saul.  In Psalm 17, David prays for deliverance from his enemies, asking that God would save him from those who would harm him.  Of the two types of prayers, the one in Psalm 17 is probably the most common.  Again and again, David prays that his enemies would be defeated.  Typically, David doesn't pray for just a simple victory.  He prays that his enemies would be humiliated and would experience pain in great quantities.  Psalm 17 may not be the best example of that type of prayer.  (David is unusually restrained in this Psalm).  But if you have read the Psalms you know the types of prayers that I mean.

Those prayers offend our moral sensibilities.  We wonder how David could pray like that.  Aren't we supposed to pray for salvation for our enemies?  Aren't we supposed to forgive our enemies like Jesus did because they don't know what they are doing?  I don't know that David's prayers are a model for us to pray like say the Lord's prayer.  Our prayers might sound much different than his.  But we should not miss that prayers like Psalm 17 are indeed prayers that model mercy and forgiveness.

I know.  You want to read that last sentence again.  Don't bother.  You read it right.  David's prayers are really prayers that demonstrate mercy and forgiveness.  In David's time, when you rebelled against the king or became the king's enemy, the king didn't typically bother to pray that you would be stricken.  The king just struck you himself.  He was the one who took all your property, cast your wife on the street, and made your children orphans.  He didn't pray for a deity to do it to you.  He did it himself.  Among kings, David stands out as different.  Some might even mistake David's unwillingness to act as a sign of his weakness.  But David was not weak.  He was compassionate. H e was just.  He knew that God was far better at handling these matters than he was.  He trusted God to judge justly and knew that he did not have to take matters into his own hand.

The prayers of David demonstrate that he believed the truth of the Biblical saying: "'Vengeance is mine,' says the Lord."  David did not feel a compulsion to take matters into his own hands when he was wronged.  Instead, he left it to the Lord.  Perhaps that is why the Lord said that David was a man after his own heart.