On Cussing and the Psalms

When the psalmists experience extreme ​“wickedness” of any kind, they let loose a whole string of imprecations; or, more colloquially, they cuss. They enlist hyperbolic language in order to give expression to things that desecrate God’s good world — whether that involves violations of human dignity, violence against the vulnerable, oppression of the poor, or perversions of power.

We witness this kind of ​“cussing” language most vividly in Psalm 109. Here, for instance, is how Eugene Peterson renders the middle part of Psalm 109 in The Message:

Make orphans of his children,
dress his wife in widow’s black;
Turn his children into begging street urchins,
evicted from their homes — homeless.

May the bank foreclose and wipe him out,
and strangers, like vultures, pick him clean.
May there be no one around to help him out,
no one willing to give his orphans a break.

Chop down his family tree
so that nobody even remembers his name.

This is cursing language. It’s harsh and unnerving and, quite frankly, cruel. Make orphans of his children? Chop down his family tree? Let me suggest, however, a hypothesis that might make sense of this language. The hyperbolic, exaggerated and perhaps even obscene language that characterizes the curse psalms occupies the same basic territory as profane language. (This is something I explain at greater length in my book, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life.)

The term profane, from the Latin profanes (pro ​“before,” fanum ​“temple”), suggests the idea of being ​“outside the temple.” Profane space, then, is the opposite of sacred space. And profane language is language that corresponds to the world that lies outside the boundaries of the sacred. 

The function of profane language, moreover, is to facilitate expression of un-common, dis-ordered, un-desirable experiences. For example, when a carpenter hammers his thumb, he may scream a ​“curse” word, because his mishap doesn’t belong to the good order of carpentry.

Or when a tornado destroys an entire town, its people may resort to ​“expletives” to describe their God-awful experience of tragic loss. Or when the powerful prey yet again upon the vulnerable, we may find ourselves using ​“swear” words to express the unholy nature of this obscene treatment of the weak in our society. This, I believe, is partly what is at work in the cursing psalms.

Am I saying we should cuss with impunity? No. In humility, we should always handle ​“curse” language with holy care, as the psalmists model for us. We should also take seriously the advice that Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers to us in a sermon he preached on July 11, 1937, just a few months after the Gestapo shut down the underground Finkenwalde Seminary where he had taught and preached:

Only the person who is totally free of his own desire for revenge and free of hate and who is sure not to use his prayers to satisfy his own lust for revenge — only such a person can pray with a pure heart: ​“Shatter the fangs of the young lions, O Lord, break the teeth in their mouth.”

But neither am I saying that you’re crazy for thinking of a cuss word in the face of things like slander, murder, greed, lechery, cruelty or indifference to the plight of the poor — all things God-damnable. According to the psalmist, this is permissible speech (with all of the qualifiers in place, of course).

When it comes to the tragic and terrible things of our world, then, sometimes, for pretty good reasons, and within reason, you just gotta cuss.