Deacon Leah Sandwell-Weiss
You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness *
against the godly all day long?
You plot ruin;
your tongue is like a sharpened razor, *
O worker of deception.
You love evil more than good *
and lying more than speaking the truth.
You love all words that hurt, *
O you deceitful tongue.
Dear friends,
These are the opening four verses of Psalm 52, one of the psalms for today’s Morning Prayer. It contains very strong language about someone, but with no specificity as to who. That’s the way the Psalms work. They often appear very personal, but don’t leave many clues as to the specific situation they are addressing.
Maybe that’s one reason Psalms seem so universal. Without specifics, we could apply many of them to many situations we still encounter today. Perhaps you thought these verses referred to someone specific. But they were written as long as 2500 years ago, in a very different culture and language.
The next three verses show the Psalmist praying that God would destroy this evil person; yet also shows how good people laugh at him:
Oh, that God would demolish you utterly, *
topple you, and snatch you from your dwelling,
and root you out of the land of the living!
The righteous shall see and tremble, *
and they shall laugh at him, saying,
“This is the one who did not take God for a refuge, *
but trusted in great wealth
and relied upon wickedness.”
The Psalmist then declares his trust in God’s mercy and concludes by thanking and praising God.
But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; *
I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
I will give you thanks for what you have done *
and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.
Praying the Psalms gives us freedom to take our anger and grief, frustrations and hopelessness to God. As Professor Ellen Davis has explained: “the psalms free us to be honest with God.” Their language “may provide us with the emergency language we need to deal with fear and loss.”[*]
This is something we may all need in these times. I know I do.
—Deacon Leah
[*] Ellen F. Davis, Opening Israel’s Scriptures, p.325 (Kindle Ed. 2019).