This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 6: The Book of Life: Psalm 69:28.

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Let them be erased from the book of life and not be recorded with the righteous (Ps. 69:28).

Psalm 69:28 is the first reference to the book of life by name in Scripture. It shares some themes with “the book you have written” and “my book” in Exodus 32:32-33. For example, in both passages, there is the threat of people being erased from the book. Yet, the messianic context of Psalm 69 offers insights into righteous suffering, divine justice, and a passionate defense of God’s reputation.

When it comes to Psalm 69, British evangelist and author G. Campbell Morgan once commented, “Perhaps in no psalm in the whole psalter is the sense of sorrow profounder or more intense than in this. The soul of the singer pours itself out in unrestrained abandonment to the overwhelming and terrible grief which consumes it.”

The psalm’s author, David, mingles the language of prayer and complaint in this song of lament. His suffering for the cause of Yahweh has made him an object of scorn. So, he petitions the Lord for relief. We may briefly outline the psalm in this way:

Verses 1-3 – David is up to his neck in the waters of adversity.

Verses 4-5 – His enemies falsely accuse him – and the Lord knows it.

Verses 6-12 – David is suffering because of his zeal for God, and he petitions the Lord to rescue him from shame.

Verses 13-21 – He pleads for deliverance, certain that God knows his affliction and the enemies causing it. 

Verses 22-28 – He pronounces a curse on his enemies, asking God to destroy them. This includes erasing their names from the book of life.

Verses 29-33 – David praises the Lord for hearing the cries of needy people like himself.

Verses 34-36 – Finally, the author exults in God’s salvation, exhorting the whole creation to praise the Lord.

New Testament writers refer to this psalm numerous times and regard it as prophetical of the person and work of Christ. Although David acknowledges himself as a sinner (v. 5), his depiction of suffering despite his innocence prefigures Jesus, the Suffering Servant (see Isa. 53). Further, David’s descriptions of personal anguish – insult, alienation, weariness from crying, etc. – foreshadow the rejection of Jesus during his earthly ministry. 

Even so, there’s a contrast between David, as a type of Messiah, and Jesus, as the antitype or fulfillment of messianic prophecies. While the psalmist appeals for misfortune against his enemies (vv. 22-28), Jesus prays for his tormentors: “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). 

Both David and Jesus are zealous for God’s name to be exalted. Further, they entrust their lives to the righteous care of the Father.

Let them be erased

The focal point of our study of this psalm is verse 28, in which David says of his enemies: “Let them be erased from the book of life and not be recorded with the righteous.”

Up to this point, the psalm builds momentum in its foreshadowing of the Suffering Servant. We might expect, beginning in verse 28, to hear David plead for his persecutors’ forgiveness, since they operate in spiritual darkness and lack divine illumination. Instead, David cries out for vengeance. 

This isn’t wrong. David, like many Old Testament figures, responds with anger to human wickedness, especially that which strikes at the face of God and tugs at the beards of his faithful servants. God is holy; we’re not. God lays down his perfect standards; we willfully violate them. God’s wrath is poured out on those who refuse to turn from their evil ways.

James Smith notes that Psalm 69:22-28 lists ten plagues that befall those who persecute David, God’s people, and, ultimately, the Messiah:

• God curses their creature comforts in this life.
• All things work for their woe and torment.
• They shall not perceive the true intent of God’s work.
• They find no peace.
• God’s wrath is poured out on them.
• God’s curse is on their homes  and prosperity.
• The wicked plunge more deeply into sin.
• They become hardened in sin beyond redemption.
• They meet an untimely death.
• They are not numbered with the righteous.

Psalm 69 is an imprecatory psalm. That is, it invokes misfortune on someone. The author calls down calamity, destruction, and God’s anger and judgment on his enemies. There are more than a dozen major imprecatory psalms. And it’s important to understand that these psalms are not written out of spite, nor do they spring from a selfish desire for personal vengeance. Rather, these psalms are prayers that communicate the authors’ earnest desire for God’s justice, sovereignty, and protection. They are prayers that express a godly jealously for Yahweh’s reputation. 

But here’s where Psalm 69 offers a glimpse of messianic hope. David’s zeal for justice fans the flames of his imprecatory prayer – a prayer for justice now. But when Messiah arrives centuries later, he elevates divine integrity with the sacrifice of his sinless life, thus satisfying the Father’s justice and extending to us his mercy. Rather than bringing the divine hammer of justice down on the wicked, Jesus takes upon himself the curse we rightly deserve and washes it clean with his own blood. 

What of those who reject divine grace and embrace malicious persecution of the righteous? David expresses a strong desire for the wicked to be repaid in kind for their persecution of the Lord’s servant. “Charge them with crime on top of crime; do not let them share in your righteousness,” he writes. “Let them be erased from the book of life and not be recorded with the righteous” (vv. 27-28). 

The book of life in this passage draws parallels to “the book you have written” (Exod. 32:32). There’s a request for physical death to overcome God’s enemies. But there’s more. David asks God to find the wicked guilty and deny them a share of God’s righteousness. He wants no record of their names in the book of the redeemed. 

In verses 19-21, David offers a summary of what he’s suffered:

You know the insults I endure – my shame and disgrace. You are aware of all my adversaries. Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I waited for sympathy, but there was none; for comforters, but found no one. Instead, they gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Then, we see the punishment the wicked deserve:

Let their table set before them be a snare, and let it be a trap for their allies. Let their eyes grow too dim to see, and let their hips continually quake. Pour out your rage on them, and let your burning anger overtake them. Make their fortification desolate; may no one live in their tents. For they persecute the one you struck and talk about the pain of those you wounded. Charge them with crime on top of crime; do not let them share in your righteousness (vv. 22-27).

Like other imprecatory psalms, this one rests on a principle set forth in Deuteronomy 19:19, that those who make false accusations be judicially recompensed in kind: “[Y]ou must do to him [the malicious witness] as he intended to do to his brother.”

As for feeding God’s people – and the future Messiah – gall and vinegar (a metaphor for poisonous spite), David asks the Lord to repay the wicked by making their table a snare (vv. 21-22). This may be a reference to the “table of the Lord” (Mal. 1:7, 12), on which the priests served sacrificial meats and engaged the people in fellowship. When Messiah finally appears, the religious leaders’ rejection of him as the Lamb of God, and their rejection of his sacrifice on the cross, make the religious rituals their table, not God’s – a stumbling block to salvation.

For causing bodily exhaustion, the wicked will feel their hips grow too weak to support their weight (vv. 3, 23). This may be a reference to the religious leaders’ seat of power – exhibited in the high priest, Sanhedrin, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and others who reject Jesus as Messiah and drive others away from the faith as well. Ultimately, God uses the Romans to grind that seat of power to rubble in the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Even before that, their own temple is left to them a desolate place as Jesus abandons it, never to return (Matt. 23:38). 

For looking on God’s people, and their Messiah, with haughty eyes, the psalmist asks God to make their eyesight suffer (vv. 19-20, 23). Surely, this is the case when Jesus arrives on the scene but is rejected because people love darkness rather than light (John 12:37, 40; 9:39; 3:19).

For the persecution inflicted on David and, later, on David’s Lord, the Messiah, and for boasting of their brutal activities, they will not share in the righteousness the sacrificed Son of God secures through his suffering (vv. 26-27). 

In all of this, it may seem David is venting his anger to God and asking to be personally vindicated. But this misses the point of imprecatory psalms. Note first that David acknowledges his sinfulness:

God, you know my foolishness, and my guilty acts are not hidden from you. Do not let those who put their hope in you be disgraced because of me, Lord GOD of Armies; do not let those who seek you be humiliated because of me, God of Israel (vv. 5-6).

David isn’t saying, “Yes, I’m a sinner, but my enemies are so much worse. Kill them!” Rather, he’s asking the Lord not to let his sin bring shame on God’s people or prove a hindrance to Israel’s national blessing. 

Next, notice that David isn’t telling God how to set things right. Rather, he’s placing vengeance in the only place it may rest responsibly: in the hands of Almighty God. It’s up to Yahweh to execute divine wrath. 

Further, observe that David is far more concerned with God’s reputation and the reputation of his people than he is with his own. In verse 9, he cries out, “because zeal for your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” In John’s Gospel, this verse is applied to Jesus as he cleanses the temple:  “And his disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17).

Before we rush to criticize a prayer like David’s or think ourselves worthy of launching our own imprecatory prayers, we must ask if our moral sense of outrage is sufficiently acute to make us sure of what would be right and what would be wrong to pray. While Christ, whom this psalm foreshadows, tenderly cries out for his tormentors’ forgiveness (“Father, forgive them ….” – Luke 23:34), he also boldly pronounces judgment on the wicked. 

Consider the series of woes Jesus pronounces against the hypocritical religious leaders of his day (Matt. 23:13-36). Or foretelling a day of judgment when Jesus says to the wicked, “Depart from me .…” (Matt. 25:41). Or the day Jesus tells false teachers who preached in his name that he never knew them (Matt. 7:21-23). Or the day when everyone flees the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. 6:15-17). Or the day when the book of life is opened, and untold numbers see their names are not written there, resulting in eternity in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-15). 

As J. Alec Motyer writes of final judgment, “[T]hat day there will be no prayer for forgiveness, only the logic of divine justice eternally applied. In a word, there is such a thing as pure anger and here [Ps. 69], in one who longed for justice, the OT reflects that aspect of Christ’s character.” 

Considering all this – Psalm 69 as both an imprecatory and messianic prayer – how should we view David’s plea that the Lord remove the names of the wicked from the book of life? 

To erase names from the book of life is not only to kill, but to exclude from the covenant community. For example, the unbelieving generation of Israelites that fell in the wilderness not only died physically; they failed to enter the Promised Land. 

This touches on the need to beware of the consequences of our choices. Those whose names are erased from the book of life do so by their own hand. That is, they wish to be excluded from fellowship with God. No one is blotted out without his or her consent. Remember what was said when there were cries for Jesus’s crucifixion: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt. 27:25).

Observations

So, what should we conclude about the book of life in David’s imprecatory and messianic psalm?

First, like “the book you have written” (Exod. 32:32-33), it’s a record of the living. David clearly asks for divine wrath to remove the unrepentant wicked from the earth; that is, to execute his enemies. He’s also asking them to be removed from the surviving community of God’s covenant people.

Second, it’s more than mere physical death the psalmist seeks. Because the wicked have rejected God’s grace and have persecuted God’s people, they are not worthy of everlasting life – a gift God readily supplies the supplicant sinner. Therefore, to be erased from the book of life means physical and spiritual death.

Third, the names of the wicked once were listed in the book of life, but their sinful rebellion has resulted in the removal of their names. While God keeps a record of the living and provides everlasting life through the Messiah prophesied in Psalm 69, he blots out names only when they have passed a point of no return – a point at which forgiveness, if offered, would be refused.

Fourth, there’s no mention of the wicked, once erased, being given an opportunity to have their names re-entered in the book of life. As the writer of Hebrews notes, “it is appointed for people to die once – and after this, judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

Next: All My Days Were Written: Psalm 139:16