Psalm 139:19-22 – The Delicate and Difficult Subject of Hate

Here is my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹O God, if [only] You would kill the guilty ones, and, men of blood, turn aside from me, ²⁰who speak to You to plots. Your enemies lift up arrogance. ²¹[Do] not I hate ones intensely hating You, LORD? And I loathe ones rising up against You. ²²[With] consummate hatred I hate them. They become enemies to me.

Well now. Hate. As I have studied the Bible and thought over it, I would suggest this is one of the most delicate and difficult subjects to ponder. I personally don’t struggle with the idea of God’s hatred, although I would still consider it a delicate matter. In Psalms 11:5,6 we learn, “His soul hates the wicked and those who love violence. On the wicked He will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur; a scorching wind will be their lot.” When in Revelation 19:5 Jesus returns as King we read, “Coming out of His mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” One could immediately object, “But I thought ‘God so loved the world …!” In short, I have come to the conclusion that God can both love and hate at the same time. It is part of the infinite perfection of His being. On the one hand I can say I’m certainly glad He loves. He’d better or I am hopelessly doomed. On the other hand I can say I’m glad He hates. It is only fitting for a good king to hate anything or anyone that threatens or harms His people.

For me the problem is not reconciling love and hate in the heart of God, but rather reconciling it in the heart of me! I know people throw out the cliché, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” But I don’t think it is that simple. Read the passage again. David says, “… I loathe ones rising up against You. ²²[With] consummate hatred I hate them. They become enemies to me”. He does not say, I loathe their sins. He says, I loathe them. That is what I mean, I don’t think it’s as simple as the old cliché.

I would suggest this passage is calling us to rise to some higher level of maturity, some higher level of understanding, some more precise conformity to the image of God. He can both love and hate the person and in some way we may practice the same virtue, even though it be beyond our present comprehension.

On the other hand, here is a thought: David is the king over a theocracy. That is a very different place and situation than where we find ourselves. In a theocracy, everyone is expected to conform to righteousness, and David’s job as king is to enforce righteousness. The world outside Israel’s borders and where we find ourselves today was and is patently not a theocracy. We live in a world with essentially no standard of righteousness. We live in a Gentile world. And we are not kings and we have no charge nor authority to go around enforcing righteousness on the people around us. Perhaps we need to keep David’s context in mind as we ponder how to apply this passage in our own lives. I at least would suggest this would allow us to temper his words as we apply them to ourselves.

Here’s another thought: I have concluded that it is okay for me to hate a sinner in a sense. For instance, take a murderer or a child molester. I not only hate what they did but it is right and actually good for me to hate them, in the sense that I think they should be punished and punished to the full extent they deserve. At the same time I can love them in the sense that I know I too am a guilty sinner and grace is my (and their) only hope. It is not my place to punish them. I support my justice system as it inflicts the punishment while I can still pray for the man and his soul. I can hate them in a judicial sense but still love them as a person.

However, short of vicious crimes and cruelty, I feel I am still in the place of the old cliché, loving the sinner and hating the sin. I like what George Horne said, “We are neither to hate the men, on account of the vices they practice; nor to love the vices, for the sake of the men who practice them.”

What it all comes down to is how I think about people and how I treat them. I am not the government. I do not “bear the sword.” Apart from the appropriate exercise of authority, I don’t see how I can treat people with anything but love. It may have to be love in firmness, but it still has to be love. I can’t think of any situation where I could express the kind of sentiments David here expresses. Again, I can hate the sins, I can hate the people in the sense of their being the vessels of those sins, but as I express myself to them, I don’t see how I can ever lose my grasp of love, without losing God’s desire for me.

Hmmmm. Delicate and difficult. It still is. I’m not sure I’ve learned anything. But it is good to ponder over these things occasionally. Lord, help us get it right.