Reflections on the Psalms

Christians typically view God’s judgment with dread, connecting it with the Day of Judgment in which personal sins will be punished. By contrast, the Psalms express “universal rejoicing” at the prospect of God’s judgment. This is due to the different image of judgment it presents. Whereas Christians see themselves as the guilty party in a divine “criminal trial” and hope for acquittal or pardon, the Psalmists envisioned themselves as the innocent and oppressed party in a divine “civil trial,” looking for God to punish their oppressors. Judgment was thus seen as a vindication and triumph over those who had wronged them.

While Lewis finds the Christian view “more profound and safer for our souls” (12), he argues that the ancient Jewish view is useful and complementary to the Christian. By envisioning divine justice as a civil court case, it reminds us of the “very human standard” that we must meet in our dealings with others. Quarrels between people provide a clear example of how people often emotionally manipulate each other. The protests in the Psalms against those who oppress “the poor” also have application to the present day, particularly in the case of helpless people who are taken advantage of by authorities like tax collectors.

Although there are psalms in which the speaker is a sinful person seeking pardon from God, these are the exception, and the “justice” psalms easily lend themselves to the danger of self-righteousness. Lewis makes a distinction between being “in the right” in a particular issue and being generally “righteous.” Thus, the Psalmist asserting his own rightness in a particular case is not necessarily to be interpreted as self-righteousness. However, being in the right can easily slide into self-righteousness, and this “fatal confusion” is seen in many of the Psalms. Similar to this is the slide from the desire for justice into the desire for revenge. The “vindictive Psalms” are the subject of the next chapter.

Lewis cites a number of psalm passages that express a “vindictive hatred” that modern readers have found hard to understand. Lewis insists that readers must not 1) explain them away or 2) think that the spirit expressed must be “good and pious” because it is in the Bible. Lewis proposes two solutions. First, readers can use the vindictive psalms to reflect on similar feelings in their own hearts. Second, they can understand the vindictive psalms as a “reaction,” the “natural result of injuring a human being” (24). Lewis stresses that the hatred expressed in the psalms was the consequence of “cruelty and injustice,” and that readers must sympathize. In a more general sense, wrongdoing dehumanizes people.

Lewis balances this insight by insisting that the Psalmists’ reaction to injury, while “profoundly natural,” is still “profoundly wrong.” Here again, it is easy for Christian readers to find an excuse in the fact that the Psalmists were not Christian, but there are two reasons why this excuse doesn’t work. First, Judaism itself had a corrective for natural vindictiveness—one that is later reflected in the teaching of Jesus that forms the basis of Christianity. Second, if the Psalmists expressed vengeance because they were not Christians, it would be logical to assume that “pagan” authors would be even worse in this regard. But in fact, Lewis argues, “pagan” or pre-Christian authors are less “vindictive and vitriolic” than the Psalms.

Lewis’s solution to this problem involves the principle “the higher, the more in danger” (28). Because the ancient Jews took morality seriously, they were prone to react very strongly to evil with an attitude of indignation (see Terms). By contrast, those (like the Pagans) who are less morally aware will have a correspondingly light reaction to evil. Those who hold high moral ideals are prone to greater temptations and can fall into “a more terrible sin” (31). Such a sin consists of thinking that one’s “own worst passions are holy” (31) and thus to “spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal” (32). This leads Lewis to conclude that “Of all bad men[,] religious bad men are the worst” (32). At the same time, the “cursing” psalms have value in that they remind readers of God’s “implacable” hatred for sin, though not for the sinner. In this way, the “Divine voice,” though distorted, can still be heard in these psalms.

The ancient Jews believed that the dead entered a shadowy netherworld known as Sheol, and this belief is reflected in many of the Psalms. The belief about the future life was evolving in the time of Jesus, when the Sadducees held the doctrine of Sheol while the Pharisees espoused a positive afterlife.

Lewis speculates as to why God refrained from revealing the existence of an afterlife to the Jews for a long time: it was to train them to love God for his own sake rather than for a reward, as was more prevalent in pagan religions. In fact, though a hope for earthly peace and plenty (both for the individual and for the nation and one’s descendants) was a part of ancient Judaism, the religion was rooted in a more spiritual hope that sustained it through great trials.