In some of the Psalms there are passages in which the worshipper asks God to curse or punish evil men. We have already seen such a passage in Jeremiah 12: 1-3 when the prophet asked God to 'drag these evil men away like sheep to be butchered'. We saw that there was a very sharp contrast here with what is taught by Jesus in the New Testament about loving our enemies, and we have to accept that the prophet did not understand that the love of God has no limitations. He had not been given the revelation of the fullness of God's love which we see in Jesus Christ. His understanding was limited by his circumstances.

We see this same limitation in certain Psalms, but it can help us to understand the attitude of the psalmist if we remember that the lack of any belief in a meaningful life after death in Israelite thought made the question of punishment for wickedness very acute. Unless the wicked man was seen to be punished in this life it appeared that evil had triumphed. God was asked by Jeremiah to punish the evil men who tried to kill God's prophet because these men were God's enemies who resisted God's righteousness and holiness. If evil men were not to triumph over good they had to be destroyed. No alternative seemed possible to Jeremiah or the psalmist who faced a similar dilemma. As Ezekiel understood it, God's honour had to be vindicated or cleared from any possible criticism. Evil therefore had to be destroyed in a way that was seen and understood by those who had suffered.

Psalm 137: 8-9 illustrates the problem we have just examined. The psalmist says: 'Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us, who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.' The psalmist expresses the agony of the Jewish father who had seen his children killed by the Babylonian soldiers when Jerusalem fell in 587 B.C. He calls on God to destroy those who were guilty of this terrible evil so that God's righteousness is vindicated and God's triumph over evil is seen.