Vengeance is Mine

Holding the Tension between God's Wrath and Mercy

“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath,
for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Romans 12:19

Last week, my small group read and meditated upon Psalm 55—a psalm of lament. David began by expressing fear for his life and ended with declarations of trust in the Lord; but in the middle, David gave voice to his fury:

“Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave, for evil finds lodging among them.” (Ps 55:15)

And this week, we’re reading Psalm 137. Have you read it? It was a new one for me, and perhaps the saddest psalm I have yet to read. It is one of the imprecatory psalms—a category of psalms that call down judgments, curses, or calamities upon the enemies of the psalmist. If I thought Psalm 55:15 made me feel uncomfortable, it was nothing compared to the startling finish to Psalm 137!

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—
he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

Whoa.

Maybe it’s just my female sensitivities. Or because I’m a mother. Or because I’m a gentle, peaceable person. But reading this every day the past week has been hard! How do we, as Christians—the recipients of God’s lavish merciful grace—come to terms with such scripture? Should we just cast the imprecatory psalms aside and say “Well, that’s the Old Testament God…I love the New Testament God.”?

I know some Christians who think this way. But I encourage them how I will encourage you. Don’t do that. Our Lord is the same today as He was yesterday as He will be forever. There is not a God of the Old Testament who was angry and full of wrath and a different God of the New Testament who is merciful and full of love.

It’s the same God.

Our Lord is loving and merciful. And He is just and wrathful.

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Maybe verses like Psalm 55:15 and Psalm 137:9 make me feel uncomfortable because they stir something in me that I’ve worked to quiet since becoming a Christian—the desire to repay evil with evil. Admittedly, I haven’t really sat with God’s justice and wrathfulness very much before now. Maybe because they bring up such ugly feelings of guilt. I know full well that I deserve God’s justice and wrath and have often asked “Why me, God?” when I reflect on the gift of my salvation. In light of that, how then should we respond to the pervasive evil and injustice we see in the world around us? When young women are stabbed to death on a train and young fathers are murdered in front of their children?

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Let’s start with some context. When I read psalms like 137, context always helps.
It’s believed that this psalm was written in the midst of Israel’s 70-year exile in Babylon. Ezekiel 30:11 describes the Babylonians to be “the most ruthless of nations” and Isaiah 14:4 describes its king as an oppressive tyrant. It is likely the psalmist witnessed the cruel and heartless murder of Israelite babies during the fall of Jerusalem the same way he describes it in verse nine and was calling upon God’s justice to avenge them. He wants justice for those babies. “An eye for an eye” as described in Exodus 21.¹

And let’s be honest. I think it’s a natural inclination of our fallen hearts to want to see the one who hurt receive the same hurt in return. What parent hasn’t broken up a fight between siblings who continued “dishing out” what the other gave?

But here’s where Scripture helps us see and respond to injustice differently. The thing that stands out to me in both Psalms 55:15 and 137:9, is that the wronged leave vengeance to God. Neither psalmist pens his plan to exact revenge himself—though it may have been a temptation. They have experienced cruel injustice; they feel furious about it; and they take it to God. They take the reality of their fallen, wicked world and bring it before the reality of their perfect and just God.

And this is what we’re called to do as well. Ephesians 4:26 says “in your anger, do not sin.” Don’t deny your anger toward injustice and evil. God’s creation is always under attack, but don’t grow indifferent to it. Don’t allow apathy to take root in place of repressed anger. Own it, and take it to the One whose very character is holy and righteous.

And the author of Psalm 137 is angry. ‘Remember what they did to us, Lord!’ The Edomites (the cousins of the Israelites) cheered for and encouraged the Babylonian decimation of Jerusalem. The barbaric Babylonians ripped babies from their mothers’ arms and dashed them against rocks. Heinous evil. Images no doubt seared into the traumatized psalmist’s memory.
Tim Keller explained in a sermon on Psalm 137 that when God says “I will remember” He means ‘I’m going to act on my promises.’ The psalmist is calling on God to remember and act on His promises of vengeance.²

God’s sovereignty and authority in all matters of justice free us from the poison of bitterness and personal retribution. In Romans 12, Paul lays out, quite beautifully, our charge as God’s children. To make us clear on what our duty includes and what it does not:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer…

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn…

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
(vv 9-10, 12, 14-15, 17-21)

Talk about counter-cultural! We have been called out of the usual tit for tat response to evil we see the world engage in. Read Romans 12:9 again—hate what God hates and love what God loves. But recognize that we are not called to act on our anger in a vengeful way. Paul tells us to leave room for God’s wrath. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” (Deut 32:35) God does not (and cannot) ignore evil forever. He is longsuffering, but He is also holy and just. He cares very much about justice.

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Every time I read this psalm, my heart brings me back to the Gospel.

We have the privilege of reading the Psalms on this side of the cross. We know how it all ends. And we know more fully what the psalmists only knew in part. We know Jesus.
I remember what Paul said in Romans 1—that “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth” and how through His great sacrifice, Jesus absorbed that wrath against our sin and satisfied it in full.

Scripture teaches us to hate what God hates and to love what God loves. And to also love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.

It is not a contradiction.

It is a call to remember who we were before Jesus delivered us from darkness. And to remember how He forgave us “while we were His enemies” (Rom 5:10). “There but for the grace of God go I.”
I was once at war with God. I was once His enemy.
But through his profound grace and mercy, He forgave me and adopted me as His child.

How do we respond to the evil in this world? We can pray.
We can pray for God’s justice, while we pray for His mercy.

Sin will be punished—either on the cross or in hell. So, we pray for our enemies—the ones who persecute us—the ones who hate God. We pray that God in his infinite mercy would remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh—like He did for you and for me. And in humility, we trust that in every decision “all of His ways are right and just.”

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”
Deuteronomy 32:4

1. “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” Exodus 21:23-25

2. “Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.” Isaiah 13:16
(See Isaiah 13:6-22 to read full description of the day of the Lord’s judgment upon Babylon)

The entire prophetic book of Obadiah describes the Edomites’ future ruin. “The house of Esau will be stubble, and they will set it on fire and consume it. There will be no survivors” (Obadiah 1:18)