When Scripture Gets Hard

By Dean Collins

I have a confession. I sometimes skim, and even skip or avoid, certain passages of scripture in my annual read-through-the-Bible plan. I am not necessarily recommending my decision, but I hope my confession helps you more than hurts your confidence and commitment to reading scripture. If it makes you feel any better, I know quite a few Bible scholars who do the same thing when they read scripture, especially when they are reading devotionally.

I suspect that many of us share common reasons for skimming certain texts. Some passages are genealogies. Some are details for specific events, like building the tabernacle or temple. Some are lists of names associated with tribes or kingdoms. And while all these details help frame our historical understanding of our ancestors of faith, they don’t seem to help us much with living our best life in the moment or give us much relief in times of trouble.

I am grateful for all those diligent scholars of the original languages of scripture. And I am grateful for detailed historians who mind the genealogies, the dates, and all the lists that help us see connections and gain understanding of things we would otherwise miss. Such wonderful research can inform our theology and even deepen our faith. But neither you nor I need to get in those scholarly weeds when we are seeking to know God through daily scripture and prayer.

While skipping or skimming some of these lists may help us keep reading scripture consistently, we should be careful that we don’t just skip passages we don’t understand or want to avoid because they are hard or possibly even convicting. As I wrap up a few days of writing on Psalm 139, I realized that I wanted to skip verses 19 to 22 and wrap up with verses 23 and 24. When you read them, you probably understand why I would do that.

Verses 19-22:

“Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.”

 These verses are what scholars call “imprecatory psalms,” meaning that they are psalms that call down judgment or vengeance and even curses on God’s enemies. Webster defines imprecation as a curse. I suspect that, being a decent human being, you don’t go around every day calling down curses on the people you disagree with or who have done something awful to you. Sadly, we do seem to be living in a moment where our social media behaviors sometimes are fairly imprecatory. Honestly, we probably ought to be uncomfortable with that behavior. 

Maybe our discomfort with agreeing with David and saying, “I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies,” is that we hear the words of Jesus that tell us to love our enemies. In fact, Jesus said we should do good to our enemies:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.”

I think the key to reconciling these passages and overcoming our hesitation with imprecatory psalms may be that we remember that scripture is clear that in the end judgment is coming for all. There are numerous passages in the Old and New Testaments that teach us that though we receive God’s grace and mercy because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, that does not negate God’s justice. 

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are ultimately praying the same thing that David is praying in his imprecatory psalms. We are aligning with God and asking that he handle all things in his way and at his time. And just like God, we can hate the injustices and still pray for those who perform the injustices to repent and surrender their lives to Jesus who died for their sins.

 Father, today we align ourselves with you. We pray for those who have hurt us and for those whose decisions have brought us great pain and difficulty. We pray for those who do evil around the world. We pray that they would hear and believe the gospel and turn from their sins. Father, we realize that too many times we have allowed hatred and anger to fill our hearts and minds as we consider others. Forgive us. We ask that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and that your kingdom would come even today and renew the earth completely. May our lives reflect your love and mercy as we deal with others. We place all judgment in your hands. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Your Time with God’s Word
Psalm 139:19-24; Luke 6:27-29; 1 Peter 4:5; Revelation 20:11-15 ESV

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