Tehillim 109 | Confronting Evil

Psalm 109 is one of the longer psalms that describes the struggle against evil. The psalm opens with the poet’s frustration that the wicked open their mouths against him with words of hatred, even though he has expressed love toward them. Then, verses 6–19 contain a series of extremely harsh “curses,” describing calamities that someone wishes to befall his enemy. A central question in this psalm is: who is the speaker of these verses?

Radak explains that this sequence of curses is a plea from the poet, asking God to bring calamity upon the wicked — his enemies. However, this interpretation is difficult, given that the psalm opens with the poet stating that he spoke words of love to his enemies, and it was they who responded with hatred toward him. Malbim proposes that the long sequence of verses is actually a quotation of the words of the wicked — these are all the things that the wicked say, and the curses they hope will fall upon the poet. This interpretation can be supported by the verses before and after verses 6–19. At the beginning of the psalm, the poet says that the wicked have opened their mouths against him — and verses 6–19 then quote and describe the slanderous speech of the wicked. Additionally, verse 20 sums it up clearly: “May this be the due of my accusers from the Lord, of those who speak evil against me”; the poet is saying — all these are the requests and curses my enemies have directed toward God, the evil they hope will befall me.

The end of the psalm turns the pain at the beginning into praise of God, as shown by Dr. Beni Gesundheit. At the beginning of the psalm, the wicked’s mouth is mentioned: “For wicked mouths, deceitful mouths have opened against me.” (109:2). At the end of the psalm, the poet praises God with his own mouth: “While my mouth will declare great thanks to the Lord; I will praise Him in the midst of the crowd” (109:30). At the beginning, the enemies ask that God place an enemy at the poet’s right hand: “Let an adversary stand on his right” (109:6). But in the end, we see that it is God who stands at his right: “For He stands at the right hand of the needy to save their lives from their condemners.” (109:31). The verse about an adversary standing at a person’s right side appears again in Tanakh, in the book of Zekharya (3:1) — there, the adversary stands at the right of Yehoshua the High Priest during the period of the return to Zion, and God rebukes the adversary and declares that if Yehoshua follows God’s commandments, he will succeed. Perhaps this parallel to verses from the time of the return to Zion is related to the fact that we are now in the fifth book of Tehillim, the book of redemption.