Prepare yourself to read the most disturbing of the psalms. Psalms like these are a good exercise in understanding the point of the psalms. If you find yourself objecting to the angry expressions in this psalm and wondering why this could be included in the same Bible that tells us to love our enemies, then you may have misunderstood the point of the psalms. The psalms are not all expressions of ideal states of being. Psalms like this are a process. In this case, the psalmist is expressing his anger before God. He had suffered injustices the like of which we could not imagine. It is natural to get angry. What matters is what we do with our anger. The idea of showing grace is not a New Testament invention; and the idea of venting anger like this is not an obsolete ‘Old Testament thing’. The only way to truly show grace is to work through our anger constructively and the only way to do that is to take our anger to God. The Bible tells us that we should not seek personal vengeance because, God says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” (Deuteronomy 32:35 cf. Romans 12:19). The psalmist is crying out here for God to bring about justice in the terms that God himself had promised it (cf. Deuteronomy 27:19). Yes, the psalm is disturbing; but injustice is disturbing, and the psalmist is laying his disturbed feelings before God in all their intensity. If you are angry then take your anger to God and let it out with all honesty. Only in this way can we ever move beyond anger to graciousness.
Are you angry about something? Bring that to God.
Read Psalm 109
