When Saddam Hussein was driven from power, the people of Iraq danced in the streets. They tore down his statues. They celebrated the end of his tyranny.
Having grown up in a country with strong checks and balances on our political leaders, I haven’t dealt with unfettered evil like other people have. Not being African-American growing up under Jim Crow laws and cross burnings that were ignored if not sanctioned by local authorities, I haven’t experienced hostility by our elected officials. But I know these things have happened and that even worse has been status quo throughout human history.
I’m not so sure if it’s power that corrupts people or if it’s that power draws corrupt people. But the people sitting in the seats of power over towns and countries, over businesses and banks, over sports teams and religious organizations are well-known for their corruption.
Perhaps power and corruption are like the chicken and the egg; it doesn’t matter which comes first, but they sure do lead from one to the other.
Psalm 58 prays and even sings in the context of evil rulers and leaders. They are so twisted, it seems as if they were born to spread injustice. So, David wrote something of a protest song about them.
Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies (Ps. 58:1-3).
The psalm is filled with pained frustration at how bad things are. In fact, it is so anguished by what’s going on that it piles up images which are so tortured, they’re painful to read.
Bad leaders are cobras. Venom drips deadliness from their fangs.
Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears,
that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however skillful the enchanter may be (Ps 58:4-5).
As a kid, I had a bizarre fear of cobras, even though living in Los Angeles kept me far from them. They haunted my dreams and were the monsters beneath my bed. I’d leap from my bed if I had to get up during the night, making sure they didn’t snap shut their fangs on my heels. They were the ultimate in fear for me. (Even including an image of a cobra with this post was an ordeal.)
But these Psalm 58 cobras are even worse. Their ears are deaf. They can’t be charmed. As leaders, they don’t hear the cries of those who have a demand for justice from them. And they don’t hear God, listening to themselves instead of to the Scriptures.
Bad leaders are lions. Their teeth rip apart the helpless. And God is called on to break those teeth, tearing out their fangs and leaving them toothless and harmless for a change.
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions! (Ps. 58:6)
Bad leaders are spilled water. They get soaked up into the ground. They lack any real substance. They seem significant for a bit, but they disappear in moments.
Let them vanish like water that flows away (Ps. 58:7a).
Bad leaders are bad bows. Their arrows threaten to pierce and kill, but they have no real strength and their threats fall to the earth before hitting their targets.
When they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short (Ps. 58:7b).
Bad leaders are slugs in the sun. They turn to slime right before our very eyes. The only real mark they leave behind is a smudge on the asphalt.
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along (Ps. 58:8a).
Bad leaders are miscarried babies. They made a bump but never saw the sun. Their plans may have seemed big, but they never amounted to anything.
May they be like … a stillborn child that never sees the sun (Ps. 58:8).
Bad leaders are cold pots. They are removed from the stove immediately after being put on the gas flames. They never heat up. Their contents are tossed aside before being sampled. They fill no one’s stomach, give no one strength.
Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns —
whether they be green or dry — the wicked will be swept away (Ps. 58:9).
And then to top off all of these images, David leaves us with the most horrible one of all.
Bad leaders are dead meat. Our shoes will be soaked in their red blood as we walk through the field of their dead bodies, slain by God, as we sing this song over them: “The righteous get rewards. Yes! There is a God who judges the earth.”
The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Then people will say,
“Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth” (Ps. 58:10-11).
There always have been and always will be bad leaders. Most will be mildly bad. Some will be horrific.
Psalm 58 gives us a pile of metaphors to express disgust with these foul leaders and we are free to improvise and add to the list.
What I find interesting about this psalm, which is referred to in its superscript as a song of David, is that it doesn’t refer to the bad leaders by name. And never does David slander King Saul in 1 and 2 Samuel. His angry words tend to land on Saul’s advisors, whom he credited with turning Saul against him. But even they aren’t named in Psalm 58.
David exercises both freedom and restraint.
David feels free to spew his frustration at bad leadership, but he doesn’t let his words get out of control. He’s not taking to Twitter to troll this politician or that church leader by name.
There’s much in common here with generalized Facebook rants and with protest songs. And each of those has their place. But where it ends up is in prayer, for the last thing Psalm 58 does is remind us that there is a God who judges the earth. There is a Good Leader to whom all of these bad leaders will be called to account.
And on its way to that conclusion, the psalm is continually reminding its writer that these bad leaders are ultimately impotent and transient. Prayer has a way of changing us and our perspectives even as we’re praying. And we see that here.
And hopefully, it helps us in our praying, too, as we voice our frustrations to God about the bad leaders we ourselves face.
Bad leaders don’t just do their devilish deeds, they poison our hearts as anger wells up inside us.
Praying with Psalm 58 draws the poison from us as we lay our anger before God, the true and just Judge.