Psalm 109:6-19
New Catholic Bible
6 [a]They say:[b]
“Choose a wicked man to oppose him,
an accuser to stand on his right.
7 At his judgment, let him be found guilty,
with even his prayers deemed sinful.[c]
8 “May his remaining days be few,
with someone else appointed to take his office.[d]
9 May his children become fatherless
and his wife become widowed.
10 “May his children be vagrants and beggars,
driven from the ruins they use for shelter.
11 May the creditor seize all he has,
and strangers abscond with his life savings.
12 [e]“May no one extend mercy to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
13 May his posterity be doomed to extinction
and his name be blotted out within a generation.
14 “May the iniquity of his ancestors be remembered by the Lord,
and the sin of his mother never be wiped out.
15 May their guilt be continually before the Lord,
and may he banish all remembrance of them from the earth.
16 [f]“For he never thought of showing mercy;
rather, he hounded to death
the poor and the needy and the brokenhearted.
17 He loved to level curses[g] at others;
may they recoil on him.
He took no pleasure in blessing;
may no blessing be his.
18 [h]“He clothed himself with cursing as his garment;
it seeped into his body like water
and into his bones like oil.
19 May it be like the robe that envelops him,
like the belt that encircles him every day.”
Footnotes
- Psalm 109:6 Pitiless are the words of those who curse the innocent psalmist; he has taken them to heart and remembered every one. See note on Ps 5:11 concerning redress for wrongs.
- Psalm 109:6 They say: these words are lacking in the Hebrew, but they are called for by the context. Wicked man: or “the evil one.” Accuser: i.e., a “satan” (see Job 1:6), a name later given to the devil (see 1 Chr 21:1). He stood as an advocate (Ps 109:31) at the right of the accused (see Zec 3:1).
- Psalm 109:7 With even his prayers deemed sinful: another possible translation is: “with even his pleas being in vain.”
- Psalm 109:8 With someone else appointed . . . office: applied to Judas in Acts 1:20.
- Psalm 109:12 The Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel all give warnings of what the sins of ancestors can bring down upon the children (see Ex 20:5; 1 Sam 2:31ff; Lk 19:41ff). Name be blotted out: see note on Ps 69:29.
- Psalm 109:16 No other place expresses with such vivid intensity the terrible logic of judgment whereby what humans choose, they ultimately receive to the full.
- Psalm 109:17 Curses: see note on Ps 10:7.
- Psalm 109:18 These words, leveled at the psalmist by his enemies, claim that cursing was his clothing as well as his food and drink; he lived, so to speak, by cursing (see Prov 4:17). Cursing was intended to destroy a person, his position, his family, and the remembrance of his name.
