Oh. These Sufferer’s Psalms.
David experienced trouble on all sides- from his enemies, his disloyal friends, and some family members including his own progeny.
Poor rich guy. They would really “like a lion tear [him] apart” but for the help of God.
And what seems puzzling to him, is the reason for their hot pursuit of him. Hear him:
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is any wrong in my hands 4 If I have repaid my ally with harm or plundered my foe without cause, 5 then let the enemy pursue and overtake me, trample my life to the ground, and lay my soul in the dust.
Poor rich guy!
Nobody seems immune from the troubles that enemies can set up against you. Only God can help in such situations.
Don’t judge the plea for God to ravage his enemies, or bring the wicked to an end, lightly. We know the expression, “Who feels it knows it.!
In Dominica we say, Cou bai paka fait mal, say kou wan jo ka fait mal. The one who hits never seems to hurt but the one who hits back always seems to deal the more painful blow. So, the sufferer asks for blows that the dealers can feel well. The rebound can’t be equal in magnitude the ones they dealt. That would not be justice. They must be hit harder. They must feel it. Only the one who feels it knows it.
In other words, it’s got to be more than ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But, as Martin Luther King observed, if we applied this rule, we’d inhabit a world full of one-eyed (or no-eyed) people. How much worse it would be if every hit-back was exponentially more offensive than the first hit!
Oh boy, violence, even in thought, is bound to lead us down a dead-beat track. God help us.
God help our enemies too, so that they don’t keep pursuing us and forcing us to ask for your help in destroying them.
There might just be none of us left to tell your story!