Rediscovering the Imprecatory Psalms: A Thomistic Approach

WHILE DEBATING the structure of the new Liturgy of the Hours, some members of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy (Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia) drew attention to certain so-called imprecatory psalms¹ that contained material they deemed problematic for the modern person of prayer, describing the passages as “offensive to modern sensibilities”² and arguing that the “spiritual discomfort caused by expressions of anger and revenge . . . is felt especially by the younger people and by those who say the Office in the vernacular.”³ After a great deal of debate about whether these concerns justified the removal of certain psalms from the Liturgy of the Hours,⁴ Pope Paul VI decreed that “a selection be made of psalms better suited to Christian prayer and that the imprecatory and historical psalms be omitted,” without further specification.⁵ To this end, 120 verses were omitted from the Liturgy of the Hours text,⁶ comprising three whole psalms and additional verses from nineteen others.⁷ In explaining the decision, the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours makes the following statement:

Three psalms (58[57], 83[82], and 109[108]) have been omitted from the Psalter cycle because of their curses; in the same way, some verses have been omitted from certain psalms, as noted at the head of each. The reason for the omission is a certain psychological difficulty, even though the psalms of imprecation are in fact used as prayer in the New Testament, for example, Rv 6:10, and in no sense to encourage the use of curses.⁸

The concern about the suitability of certain strident verses from the Psalter for contemporary prayer noted in this passage is not limited to texts for Roman Catholic worship; the current editions of the United Methodist Hymnal, the Revised Common Lectionary, and the Episcopal Sunday Lectionary have also omitted certain of the imprecatory psalms and edited out a number of verses in others.⁹ A question naturally emerges from this common concern about imprecation in public prayer: Does the “psychological difficulty” raised by certain passages of the Psalter mean that Christians cannot or may not any longer pray the psalms of imprecation publically?

This question, pressing as it may be for compilers of liturgical books and those who recite the Psalter as part of their daily lives of prayer, has been surprisingly neglected in the scholarly realm. A handful of articles throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has addressed different aspects of imprecation in the Scriptures,¹⁰ and three short monographs have attempted to provide a theological interpretation of the imprecatory psalms, with an eye to their use in preaching.¹¹ Moreover, in response to Pope Benedict’s discussion of the “dark” passages of the Bible in Verbum Domini,¹² another recent book has attempted to provide a hermeneutic for Scripture’s most difficult passages, although without particularly focusing on the Psalter or imprecation.¹³ Although often limited in its scope, this body of scholarship has provided many fruitful insights into the historical-critical context and contemporary relevance of the psalms; a notable lacuna, however, is a treatment of major figures from the Christian theological tradition who have engaged seriously with the issue of imprecation.

To begin to address this lacuna, this article will examine Thomas Aquinas’s use of the imprecatory psalms and verses that have been omitted from the contemporary Liturgy of the Hours, as a way to understand the place of imprecation in prayer in the concrete practices of the Church today. I argue that Thomas’s multi-layered, literal hermeneutic of imprecation in the Scriptures provides a theological and practical foundation for a much-needed reappropriation of the imprecatory psalms in the public liturgy of the Church. To see why this is so, I will first elaborate the status quaestionis in contemporary scholarship, then I will trace Thomas’s theology of imprecation through his commentary on relevant psalms, and lastly I will address the relevance of Thomas’s theory for the present day.

I. Imprecation...