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Imprecation
Nine psalms · summaries & outlines

The Psalms of Imprecation

Nine psalms in which the enmity of the world against God and His anointed is carried up to the throne and left there. Each entry gives the psalm's occasion, a summary, and its movements with the stanzas nested beneath them, so that a household or a congregation can see the whole shape of what it is about to sing.

Verse references follow the NASB; metre and stanza divisions follow the Book of Psalms for Worship. The psalms are grouped by the occasion of the cry rather than by number — the four groups are not a ranking, and nothing here is singled out as too hard to sing.

I · The accused sufferer
False witness, hatred without cause, the tongue as a weapon
35
Plead my cause, O LORD
Three cycles of complaint, petition and vow, before the court of heaven.
28 verses · three cycles
→
69
The zeal of your house has consumed me
Deep mire for God’s sake; gall and vinegar; and Zion rebuilt.
36 verses · descent and ascent
→
109
Do not be silent, O God of my praise
The longest malediction in the Psalter, and Peter’s text concerning Judas.
31 verses · four movements
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II · Betrayal and the watching enemy
The friend at the table, the hunters round the house
55
It was not an enemy that reproached me
The treachery of a familiar friend, and a burden cast on the LORD.
23 verses · three movements
→
59
They go round about the city like dogs
Two strophes with a refrain: prowling by night, mercy in the morning.
17 verses · twin strophes
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III · Judges corrupt, nations confederate
Where the prayer is public, and against powers
58
Do you indeed speak righteousness?
Magistrates arraigned as deaf adders; sentence, then verdict.
11 verses · indictment, sentence, verdict
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83
Do not keep silent, O God
Ten nations in league, answered by old victories and a prayer that they seek His name.
18 verses · league, precedent, petition
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IV · Zion laid waste
The Church in ruins asks how long, and remembers
79
The nations have come into your inheritance
Temple defiled, Jerusalem in heaps: how long, and remember not.
13 verses · lament, petition, vow
→
137
By the rivers of Babylon
Harps on the willows, an oath to prefer Jerusalem, and Babylon’s sentence.
9 verses · exile, oath, sentence
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Handout for all nineA printable PDF — the groups, the psalms and their movements, set to fit two pages.

Stanza divisions provisional until conformed to the Book of Psalms for Worship.