Praise the Lord.
Sing to the Lord a new song,
his praise in the assembly of his faithful people. (Psalm 149:1)
Nice, isn’t it? It continues on for a while in the same vain:
Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor
and sing for joy on their beds. (v5)
Yes, singing for joy on my bed is one of my favorite pastimes!
Let’s continue our joyous singing, shall we?
May the praise of God be in their mouths (Yes!)
and a double-edged sword in their hands, (Wait, what?)
to inflict vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples, (Ouch)
to bind their kings with fetters,
their nobles with shackles of iron, (v6-8)
Okay, see what I mean? We are all just like happy little flowers in the field, lifting our eyes up to our Maker in pure joy, and then we suddenly whip out swords and we start abusing people and locking up kings! What just happened?
Happy Happy! Joy Joy! Kill Kill!
Are you like me, wondering just what exactly is going on here? Can you imagine singing this on Sunday morning, with your hands lifted high in praise?
God wants us to praise Him, and He has earned it. He blesses us in both big and small ways (you’re breathing now, right? Every breath is a blessing). But He also wants us to obey Him, whether we agree and understand or not.
God’s servants in the Old Testament were sometimes sent to purge a sinful and damaged world. When God told the people of Israel to kill all the inhabitants of a land, it was not because He is mean-spirited or twisted…it is because of His Love and Judgment. The lands He cleansed were filled with people that had turned from Him, had defiled themselves with foreign ‘gods’, who burned their children…
Who are we to say what He did was right or wrong, good or evil? Who’s to say that having them kill the men, women, and children wasn’t actually a good and righteous thing? If the men and women were thoroughly evil and refused to be saved, is it better to let the children be raised to commit these same heinous acts and hate our God, or to bring them to Him while they are still young and haven’t made a decision against Him that could condemn them for eternity?
What if letting them live would have defiled the Israelites and destroyed them, or turned them away from God (which they already had enough problems with)?
What if they were His creation, and His thoughts were so far above ours that we cannot even begin to fathom His logic and reasoning for these things, but He had proven Himself good and faithful? (And yeah, that’s exactly right.)
You see, the reason they ‘inflict vengeance on the nations’ is explained at the end of Psalm 149:
To carry out the sentence written against them (v9a)
The Holy and Righteous Judge has sentenced them, and His people are obediently carrying out the sentence to its fulfillment. Gruesome? Yes, I’m sure it was. Do you think they enjoyed it? I hope not. Was it the right thing to do? Of course, whether we understand it or not!
Regardless of how it makes us feel today, there was a time in the past when God directed His people to remove evil from the earth, and they praised Him for it. And in case you don’t remember, or haven’t read how it ends, there is a time when all faithful followers of Jesus will return with Him to once again purge the earth of all the inhabitants who war with Him. And we will praise Him for that, too! In the meantime, we are told to love and pray for our enemies.
So when Psalm 149 closes with:
May the praise of God be in their mouths
and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters,
their nobles with shackles of iron,
to carry out the sentence written against them--
this is the glory of all his faithful people.
Praise the Lord (v6-9)
We can say, “Yes Lord, Amen - your judgments are true and good!”