O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!
Let them vanish like water that runs away;
when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.
Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!
(Psalm 58:6–9)
NO EFFECT. All of the images in verses 6-9 are cries for the failure of wickedness. The breaking of the lion’s teeth (cm. 57:4) and the shattering of arrows are requests that evil men’s iniquities will be ineffective. The three images of flowing water, a snail that seems to extinguish itself, and a miscarried child are pleas that wicked people’s lives would be of no achievement and futile. This is not a bloodthirsty desire but a promotion of righteousness and a plea for the abolition of evil. We must be as confident in God’s answer as David, that he will answer like a wind that blows out a fire before its heat reaches the pot.
Again, we pray such not just for those who could be injured but for the sake of the perpetrators too. In an essay in Chuck Colson’s book Who Speaks for God? he recalls an interview he watched with Albert Speer, the technological genius who kept the Nazi regime’s factories running during the Holocaust. Of the twenty-four criminals convicted at Nuremberg, Speer was the only one to admit his guilt. After spending twenty years in Spandau Prison, he wrote a book confessing his crimes to the world. In the interview, David Hartman queried him on why he said he could never be forgiven, or shouldn’t. He said he couldn’t because he would forever bear the burden of millions of people killed by Hitler. Colson wanted to write him and tell him about the forgiveness that can be found in Jesus Christ, but Speer died soon after the interview, before he could receive the letter.
We pray for people not to be harmed, but we also pray that human beings made in the image of God would not be dehumanized by their own evil deeds.
Prayer
Pray for a specific evil you see, asking God to eradicate evil’s effects and bring the perpetrators to repentance.
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