WHETHER they are read devotionally or simply as literature, the Hebrew Psalms are generally regarded as a sublime example of religous poetry. There are 150 of them, and they run the gamut of human emotions, from grateful joy to loneliness and despair. Some express a sense of abandonment by God, others a feeling of happy reconciliation with the Creator and exultation over the beauty of nature. And as with almost every great, labyrinthine literary stucture, there are dark sections as well as passages full of light.
One of the darker-seeming bits is Psalm 109. The psalmist, reputed to be King David, calls for all manner of unpleasant things to befall his adversaries, and more generally the oppressors of the poor—but mainly his own enemies. One Biblical commentary calls it "the most violent of so-called cursing Psalms", and it is very rarely woven into religious services. But it does surface in American politics, and in other American arguments.
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