Don’t Avoid Imprecatory Psalms: How to Preach the Cursing Prayers

Many pastors quietly avoid the imprecatory psalms. It’s understandable. We often don’t know what to do with them. Maybe we’ve even seen them weaponized.

But our avoidance is problematic. Paul’s charge is unambiguous: “Preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2)—all of it, since “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim 3:16–17; emphasis added). This includes the Psalms, even the imprecatory psalms.

So how do we preach without dodging the imprecatory psalms or weaponizing them?

What are imprecatory psalms?

Imprecatory psalms (from the Latin imprecatio) are those psalms that ask God to judge the wicked and vindicate his people.¹

Better yet, we should speak of imprecations in the Psalms instead of “imprecatory psalms,” since imprecations are really one aspect within a broader psalm. Strictly speaking, we’re often dealing with imprecations within laments.

Filter the psalms by type using Logos’s Psalms Explorer to locate imprecatory psalms. Start your free trial.

Should we really pray and preach the imprecatory psalms?

We need not read the Psalms for long before we encounter an imprecation.

• Psalm 1 describes the contrast between the “blessed” and the “wicked” (Ps 1:1).
• Psalm 2 quotes the Lord saying, “You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps 2:9).
• In Psalm 3, David prays, “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked” (Ps 3:7; emphasis mine).

What did Jesus and the apostles do with the imprecatory psalms? They kept them. They didn’t try to hide them or edit them from Israel’s prayer book.

Neither should we.

The New Testament assumes the Psalms are still the church’s Scripture and a fitting vocabulary for the people of God. The New Testament quotes Old Testament imprecations (e.g., Acts 1:20; cf. Pss 69:25; 109:8) and includes its own imprecatory prayers, such as the martyrs’ cry for justice in Revelation 6:10. Jesus himself used imprecations against the religious establishment of the scribes and Pharisees, pronouncing “woe” upon them (Matt 23). Even his actions were based on imprecatory psalms. For example, after cleansing the temple, John tells us that Christ’s “disciples remembered that it was written: ‘zeal for your house has consumed me’” (John 2:17; cf. Ps 69:9). The original line comes in the context of imprecations: “Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them” (Ps 69:24).

Imprecations in the Psalms are not an embarrassment to be managed. They are part of the Scriptures that “bear witness” to “the things concerning” Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:27; 24:44). If these prayers make us uncomfortable, that discomfort is no reason to avoid or edit them—it’s a reason to learn how to preach them. As Elizabeth Achtemeier said, “If we have some problem with a passage in the Old Testament, it is not the Bible’s problem. It is ours.”² The question is not whether Christians may pray for God’s justice, but how.

Are imprecatory psalms compatible with loving our enemies?

But are the imprecatory psalms compatible with Jesus’s teaching to love our enemies (Matt 5:44; cf. Lev 19:18)?

Some, such as C. S. Lewis, have argued that imprecatory psalms should not be used by Christians. Lewis called them “terrible,” “contemptible,” and full of “vindictive hatred” that is “festering, gloating, undisguised.”³

Love of enemies and prayer for judgment aren’t incompatible if that judgment is entrusted to God rather than seized by us.

Yet, as we’ll see, love of enemies and prayer for judgment aren’t incompatible if that judgment is entrusted to God rather than seized by us. Christians refuse personal vengeance (Rom 12:19) while still pleading for God to act justly. This appeal is further shaped by the cross (where mercy is offered) and a view to the final judgment (where evil is answered).

It’s not “sub-Christian” to pray imprecations. It’s possible to love our enemies while also praying for justice.

Why did God give imprecatory psalms?

To aid us as we preach these psalms, allow me to survey some overarching theological reasons why God gave them to us.

1. They hand vengeance to God

Importantly, the psalm’s imprecations are not sinners’ plans to take justice into their own hands. Rather, they are prayers that enable sufferers to hand vengeance over to our just and righteous God.

As Paul said, citing Deuteronomy, “Repay no one evil for evil … never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Rom 12:17, 19; cf. Deut 32:35). As well, in heaven, the martyrs and saints cry out, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev 6:10).

2. They teach the church to long for the kingdom

Imprecations are prayers that enable God’s people to express longing for the full coming of the kingdom.

We live in a fallen, futile, and frustrated world (Gen 3:14–19; Rom 8:18–24). Imprecations recognize that the world as it was intended to be is not the world we live in.

They give us graphic expressions of the longing entailed in the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come.” That’s an implied imprecation. It’s a plea for the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth—that believers would reflect its character, sinners would be drawn into it, but also that its enemies would be opposed by its king.

Without these prayers of imprecation, we lose Scripture’s authorized language for justice, lament, and hope in a world that is not yet set right.

3. They form the whole person before God

The Psalms are a complete guide for spiritual life. Athanasius (AD 296–373) said, “I believe that the whole of human existence, both the dispositions of the soul and the movements of the thoughts, have been measured out and encompassed in those very words of the Psalter.”⁴ John Calvin called the Psalms “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul,” for, as he said, “there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”⁵

So the Psalms’s imprecations enable God’s people to exercise all of their affections, emotions, and passions in relating with God. If we didn’t have these example prayers that asked God to be active in justice, bringing his kingdom, our spirituality would reduce him to “a spectator uninterested in this world.”⁶ As Trevor Laurence writes, “The psalms of wrath are not merely a permissible but indeed a necessary element in the church’s communion with God, prayers that carry an irreplaceable capacity to shape the body of Christ for healing, virtue, and witness in a world gone wrong.”⁷

How should one preach imprecatory psalms?

With this said, how should one preach the imprecatory psalms responsibly, helping your congregation pray these difficult psalms without weaponizing them?

Let me offer some advice, using Psalm 137 as an example.

1. Name the offense

Start by telling the truth about the evil the psalm addresses. Don’t sanitize, sensationalize, or soften the text to make it “preachable.”

Psalm 137 locates the Lord’s people “by the waters of Babylon,” weeping in their exile (Ps 137:1–2). Jerusalem has fallen, and they’ve been carried off. Now, in cruel mockery of the very worship they destroyed, their captors demand, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” (Ps 137:3). Psalm 137’s imprecation is not a free-floating curse. This context helps us to hear it as a cry from the ashes.

Psalm 137 does not blush to name the Babylonians’ persecution as imperial oppression, humiliation, and desecration. This is not petty irritation or a gripe against one’s neighbor, but the voice of God’s people crushed by empire, cleaving to covenant identity, and calling for God’s justice and faithfulness. Preach this soberly. Let the text tell the truth about grief under tyranny.

2. Clarify the target

Psalm 137 is not a template for venting personal annoyances. It targets violent, covenant-destroying evil: Babylon’s brutality and the Edomites who complicitly cheered it on (Ps 137:7–8). This is the kind of wickedness that preys upon the weak and desecrates what is holy. It is satanic and sinful.

Make this concrete in the sermon. Tell your people what these texts are for: bringing real evil before the Judge of all the earth. Then make clear what these texts are not for: baptizing resentment, dehumanizing opponents, or settling private scores as “holy war.”

3. Distinguish prayer from retaliation

This brings us to the psalm’s most shocking statement: the call to repay Babylon by “dashing” its little ones “against the rock” (Ps 137:8–9).

Explain to your people what kind of speech this is. It is not a mandate or license for personal retaliation or vigilantism. It is lament. It is a prayer that hands the case to God: “Lord, you see what evil has done. Do not let it stand.”

Imprecatory psalms do not teach us how to hate. They teach us how to lament when evil feels unbeatable.

This distinction is vital: Vengeance belongs to God, not to the worshiper. If your people leave with a sense of license to fantasize about retaliation, you’ve mishandled the psalm. If they leave having been called to entrust justice to God—even while they feel morally outraged by the world—you’ve preached the text faithfully. Imprecatory psalms do not teach us how to hate. They teach us how to lament when evil feels unbeatable.

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4. Preach in light of Christ

Psalm 137 must be read in the shadow of Christ’s cross and in the light of his coming judgment. Christ-centered preaching does not erase the horror. It reframes it.

To that end, read the imprecations in light of the following:

1. Christ is the righteous sufferer. Jesus knows exile-like grief, public mockery, and violent injustice. Psalm 137 gives language for those righteous by faith in him yet are crushed by the world and cannot “sing” on command. In him, the church can lament honestly without sinning in hatred.
2. Christ is the cursed one. The psalm’s demand for justice presses us toward the gospel. If God is truly just, none of us can stand on our own. Yet Christ bears the curse for repentant enemies—including us. That keeps the preacher from gloating and the congregation from self-righteous fury.
3. Christ is the coming Judge. The psalm’s longing for wrongs to be set right is ultimately eschatological. Christ will judge the nations and finally end the cycle of predation and tears. So, we can plead for justice now while refusing to become agents of vengeance ourselves.

This threefold frame is how you place justice, mercy, and hope in the same sermon without dodging Psalm 137’s edge or weaponizing it.

When we preach the imprecatory psalms, then, we are preaching about Jesus. How? Jesus is the embodiment of the imprecations. Christ is the righteous sufferer who can pray these words without sin, the Mediator who bears the curse his people deserve, and the coming Judge who will set all things right.

5. Explain what we learn from these psalms

In union with him, the church learns to pray for justice with humility, repentance, and hope—never with self-righteous rage.⁸

1. Rather than taking vengeance in our own hands, we pray that Christ as Judge will set all things right. We don’t pray against our private enemies for personal vengeance. We pray for divine justice.
2. Since what we preach about are descriptions of what truly awaits impenitent sinners, we tremble as we consider God’s judgments against sin.⁹
3. As we pray for God’s justice, we ask for both his mercy and judgment, either by rescuing the evildoer from sin through repentance or by stopping their schemes.
4. We learn to resist the temptations which habitually arise within our hearts in response to the prosperity of the wicked and the affliction of the godly.
5. We direct our prayers against Satan and the spiritual forces that war against us, all of which seek to desecrate our earthly temples by leading us to unfaithfulness.
6. We even pray these imprecations against our own sins, asking God to be ruthless in purging our hearts of all evil and temptation.
7. Finally, we look for God to be glorified and his church vindicated in his judgments against its enemies: the world, the flesh, and Satan.

Conclusion

Almost every psalm speaks of the spiritual warfare between the church and the world, the righteous and the unrighteous, and of all the sufferings the church goes through in this life.

Through the “vale of tears” (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 27) of this present life, may the rays of eternity’s light inspire us to believe in, pray for, and preach the ultimate triumph of God’s cause.

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Resources for further study

Related content

• Why Are There Lament Psalms at the End of the Psalter?
• How Should You Read the Psalms? By Singing Them
• The Psalms: Are They Maximally or Minimally Messianic?
• What You Might Be Missing about “Blessed Is the Man” in Psalms

1. See Trevor Laurence, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor, 2022).
2. Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching Hard Texts of the Old Testament (Hendrickson, 1998), xi.
3. C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (HarperCollins, 2002), 320.
4. Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, ed. Richard J. Payne, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist, 1980), 126.
5. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1, trans. James Anderson (Logos, 2010), xxxvi–xxxvii.
6. Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath, quoted in Gordon Wenham, The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms (Crossway, 2013), 140.
7. Laurence, Cursing with God, 4.
8. Here I draw upon some advice given by two old English writers: William Ames (1576–1633) and William Gurnall (1616–1679). William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1639), 4.19.8–10; William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (1865), 2:444–48.
9. Gordon Wenham put it well: “These psalms can serve to wake us up from our structural amnesia about God.” Wenham, Psalter Reclaimed, 141.