When the letters started circulating, my Dad didn’t know who was sending them. Their slander was anonymous, pot shots on his character taken by an unknown sniper. Eventually, he figured it out. But by then the damage was done.
The damage done wasn’t in the relationships between my Dad and those who received the letters. They saw the slander for what it was. The real damage done was between my Dad and the letter-sender, someone he’d called a friend for decades.
The betrayal of a friendship leaves deep scars in the soul.
This is why couples who end up divorcing, thinking it’ll be just fine afterward, are surprised by the hostility they usually end up with.
The deeper the relationship, the more bloody the betrayal.
Praying through and dealing with feelings of betrayal isn’t a quick and easy process. We need help. But in our culture of show-no-weakness individualism, we tend to stuff our feelings, trying to act as if we’re above it all.
This is where the Psalms come in. There is no stuffing of emotions in the Psalms. Everything is prayed, even if it’s ugly when it comes out.
Psalm 35 is our hurt, angry, awkward, and ultimately worshipful psalm dealing with betrayal. Not all of the psalm is what we think of as prayer, but it starts out praying furiously.
Contend, LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me.
Take up shield and armor;
arise and come to my aid.
Brandish spear and javelin
against those who pursue me.
Say to me,
“I am your salvation” (Ps. 35:1-3).
Weapons are brandished. David, our psalmist, wants to go to war.
We’ll get courtroom and hunting language in later waves of emotion, but in this first wave, David goes full-on military.
“I am your salvation” is something like “I’ve got your back.” He wants to know that God is on his side, not that of his betrayer.
And this is a perfectly good and honest place to start. There’s no holding back in prayer here. Regardless of what God eventually does and regardless of what is actually prayed, at least David is praying. If we feel we ought to sanitize our prayers, we can end up either not praying or lying to God about what we want, neither of which is soul-healing.
This isn’t where we want to end up. But for soul-health, we can’t fake our way to peace. There are no shortcuts through the pain. We need to pray it all.
May those who seek my life
be disgraced and put to shame;
may those who plot my ruin
be turned back in dismay.
May they be like chaff before the wind,
with the angel of the LORD driving them away;
may their path be dark and slippery,
with the angel of the LORD pursuing them (Ps. 35:4-6).
The angel of the LORD is the physical presence of the invisible God, whose only appearances in the Psalms are here in Psalm 35 and in Psalm 34 just before it. What David wants here is for God to show up physically to chase down the betrayer.
As terrifying as that sounds (and if you think about it, it is terrifying), the language is toned down a little from the initial war cry. Death isn’t sought here. Disgrace and shame are the goals. That dark and slippery path sounds like a fear-filled future as well. So, even though David isn’t calling on God to slay the betrayer and his supporters, he’s wanting something that comes close to it.
I don’t like to think of myself as a vengeful person. But the truth is that there are people who have done me wrong who I want to suffer for it. And until I’m willing to pray my revenge, I will hold on to it. But if I do pray it, revenge moves out of my hands and into God’s hands, which is where vengeance ought to be.
St. Paul puts it this way:
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord (Rom. 12:19).
And so the process continues. It’s not all happening in a single prayer. Regardless of how the psalm was composed, I see what’s included in it as unfolding over weeks and months.
Since they hid their net for me without cause
and without cause dug a pit for me,
may ruin overtake them by surprise —
may the net they hid entangle them,
may they fall into the pit, to their ruin (Ps. 35:7-8).
The imagery has shifted from warriors to huntsmen. Over time and continued praying, the edge is slowly (very slowly!) wearing off of the pain and the desire for payback.
And so we come to the second prayer of the psalm.
Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD
and delight in his salvation.
My whole being will exclaim,
“Who is like you, LORD?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
the poor and needy from those who rob them” (Ps. 35:9-10).
David is saying, if God takes care of the poor and needy, he should be taking care of me right now. And confident that he will, I am already looking forward to rejoicing and delighting in the salvation he will bring.
We are all theologians. And pain causes us to express some of our hidden beliefs in God, things we might not articulate in more comfortable times.
Our prayed theology may or may not be true of God, but it’s so important to pay attention to it. For these uncovered beliefs have been steering our faith and our lives without our knowing it. But now in the pain, they are exposed and can finally be evaluated.
Ruthless witnesses come forward;
they question me on things I know nothing about.
They repay me evil for good
and leave me like one bereaved.
Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth
and humbled myself with fasting.
When my prayers returned to me unanswered,
I went about mourning
as though for my friend or brother.
I bowed my head in grief
as though weeping for my mother (Ps. 35:11-15).
It took awhile, but we’re finally at the heart of the matter: I was such a good friend to him, spending myself emotionally for him as if I were weeping in the deep grief of having a brother or mother die. But he left me bereft.
Years ago, I received news of a man’s daughter being terribly injured in an accident and immediately jumped in my car, driving more than an hour to the hospital. Her condition was grave, so I made the trip daily for two weeks, at which time she stabilized and pulled out of harm.
Less than two months later, that father was advocating for the church I was pastoring to cut my salary.
I was living Psalm 35.
He and I have since reconciled, but it didn’t happen over night. He knew he was betraying the love I had actively shown his family as he stood before the congregation and spoke against me. He admitted as much. But just like the man who wrote the anonymous letters against my Dad, this man felt betrayed by the direction I was leading the congregation. This is not the place to argue the merits of our two different opinions, but the truth is that there were two opinions to be had and we each felt betrayed by the other.
In David’s case in Psalm 35, he’s probably referring not to King Saul himself as the betrayer, but to one of Saul’s advisors who went from being a friend of David’s to being someone who advised Saul to pursue and kill David. (And, yes, there were very valid reasons why Saul would be justified in doing so. Among them are the fact that David was a renegade general who had created his own militia and had effectively taken over part of the country, ruling it like a mafia boss who required people to pay for his protection.)
There are two sides to the events leading up to our betrayals. Eventually, we need to see the other side in order to be reconciled. But at this point, we’re still praying our own side.
But when I stumbled, they gathered in glee;
assailants gathered against me without my knowledge.
They slandered me without ceasing.
Like the ungodly they maliciously mocked;
they gnashed their teeth at me (Ps. 35:15-16).
He’s been ambushed by bloodthirsty hunters who have more in common with wild beasts than with humans. The imagery of David’s feelings about his foes is vivid.
It may not feel right, but the more vivid we are in the praying of our betrayals, the more fully we let them go.
This leads to a third round of praying.
How long, LORD, will you look on?
Rescue me from their ravages,
my precious life from these lions.
I will give you thanks in the great assembly;
among the throngs I will praise you.
Do not let those gloat over me
who are my enemies without cause;
do not let those who hate me without reason
maliciously wink the eye.
They do not speak peaceably,
but devise false accusations
against those who live quietly in the land.
They sneer at me and say, “Aha! Aha!
With our own eyes we have seen it” (Ps. 35:17-21).
Pain slows time down to a crawl.
Slow-paced pain make it a common prayer among the psalmists to ask God the “How long?” question. It appears in Psalms 4, 6, 13, 35, 62, 74, 79, 80, 82, 89, 90, 94, and 119. As a friend of mine likes to say, “I don’t like pain. It hurts too much.” We just want it to stop. Now.
And one thing that makes pain even worse is when certain people gloat about it. It’s amazing the fits one of my kids will suffer if another one smirks or chuckles at just the wrong time.
A condescending sniff is a twist of the knife in the gut. If you won’t destroy my enemies, Lord, at least keep them from gloating over me. I can handle a lot, but not that.
LORD, you have seen this; do not be silent.
Do not be far from me, LORD.
Awake, and rise to my defense!
Contend for me, my God and LORD.
Vindicate me in your righteousness, LORD my God;
do not let them gloat over me.
Do not let them think, “Aha, just what we wanted!”
or say, “We have swallowed him up” (Ps. 35:22-25)
The language shifted first from the battlefield to the hunting ground and now has shifted again to the courtroom. And David prays for vindication.
This praying drifts into daydreaming about it.
May all who gloat over my distress
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who exalt themselves over me
be clothed with shame and disgrace.
May those who delight in my vindication
shout for joy and gladness;
may they always say, “The LORD be exalted,
who delights in the well-being of his servant” (Ps. 35:26-27).
If you’ve paid close attention, you’ll have noticed that the psalm shifts between prayers and daydreams. There are words addressed to God and words addressed to no one at all: they’re just thoughts that arise from David’s feelings.
This alternation between words directed to God and related thoughts that aren’t directed specifically toward God ought to expand our definition of prayer and its role in soul-shaping. While we do want prayers that are direct speech with God, the Psalms value our meditations in God’s presence as well.
I can get down on myself for “not praying” when my prayer time floats from speaking directly to God to wandering thoughts that began from those direct words. It’s amazing how easily my thoughts can plummet from impassioned prayers for my children to remembering I need to change the oil in the Subaru. But there’s a breadth to the soul-work God is doing that includes remembering to change the oil.
Done in the presence of God, there’s much more to our praying than what we think there is.
And here David’s prayer for vindication morphs into thoughts of worship, where those who haven’t betrayed him are drawn into praise because of that eventual vindication.
And then he himself begins to sing.
My tongue will proclaim your righteousness,
your praises all day long (Ps. 35:28).
It’s a beautiful thing that has taken place over these 28 verses. It may have taken 28 days or 28 months, but David went from calling on God to take up a spear and chase down his betrayer to praising God all day long because of his righteousness and justice in taking care of him.
We only get verse 28 if we’ve suffered and cursed and prayed and day-dreamed through verses 1-27.
We heal from out physical wounds much more quickly than we do from the betrayals we suffer. But those scars can heal, too.
I didn’t think I ever would, but the man who stood up and called for the congregation to nix me is someone I say is my brother. But believe me, it took some Psalm 35-like praying to get there.