The Blood of the Wicked – Psalm 58

It is easy in our modern world to recall rulers who embody evil and leave a path of destruction in their wakes.  Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Leopold II, Kim Il-Sung, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Josef Mengele, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Lenin, Osama Bin Laden, Emperor Hirohito, Bashar Hafez al-Assad.  You can look here and here to see how they make this list.  Do they deserve God’s judgment?  David believed so.

To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam of David.

Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly?  No, in your hearts you devise wrongs; your hands deal out violence on earth.

The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.  They have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops its ear, so that it does not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter.

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!

The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.  Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth.”  (Psalm 58 ESV)

The “gods” here refer to wicked human rulers who fail to decree what is right or judge uprightly, making violence the hallmark of their rule.  As such wicked people who refuse to be tamed or repent, justice demands that they be punished and destroyed.  Bathing our feet in their blood is the ancient near eastern way of saying we will rejoice in God’s just outpouring of judgment in the earth.  All mankind will because we cannot tolerate a world in which evil is not dealt with.