PSALM 109
BEING A CRY FOR VENGEANCE IN THE BRITISH-OCCUPIED NORTH OF IRELAND
AS A TYPE OF THE RACIST SETTLER STATE
To the chief musician; a psalm of David.
1 O God of my praise, do not be still!
2 Because the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have been opened against
me; they have spoken against me with lying tongues.
3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and they fight against me without cause.
4 In payment for my love they have become my adversaries, and even because I am devoted
to prayer!
5 And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred instead of my love.
6 Give the Evil One authority over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand!
7 When he is judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer be counted as sin.
8 May his days be few; may someone else take whatever is in his charge.
9 Let his children be orphans, and his wife a widow!
10 Let his children wander around and beg, and seek for help far from their ruined habitations.
11 May a creditor seize all that he has, and may strangers take as plunder what he has wearied
himself for.
12 May no one extend kindness to him, and may no one show favor to his orphans.
13 May his posterity be cut off; may their name be blotted out in the following generation!
14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and let the sin of his mother not
be blotted out.
15 May they be continually before the LORD, and may their memory be cut off from the earth --
16 Because he did not care to remember the kindnesses that had been performed for him, but
instead pursued after an afflicted and destitute and brokenhearted man, intending to kill him.
17 As he loved cursing, may the curse come on him; as he found no pleasure in blessing, so may
blessing be far from him!
18 As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, so let it enter inside him like water, and
like oil into his very bones.
19 May it be for him like a garment that he wears, and like a sash bound about him continually.
20 This shall be the reward of my adversaries from the LORD, and of those who speak evil against
my soul!
21 But may You deal well with me for the sake of Your Name, O GOD the Lord! Because Your
kindness is good, O deliver me!
22 For I am afflicted and destitute, and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I have been forced to move on and on like a shadow when it lengthens; I have been driven
out like a locust.
24 My knees fail from hunger, and my flesh has lost all plumpness.
25 And I have become an object of scorn to them; whenever they see me, they loll their heads
around.
26 Help me, O LORD my God; save me according to Your kindness --
27 And let them know that this is Your hand; that You, O LORD, have done this!
28 Let them curse, if only You bless; they have risen up against me, but they shall be put to shame,
and then shall Your servant rejoice!
29 My adversaries shall be clothed in disgrace, and shall garb themselves in their shame as in a
mantle.
30 I will exceedingly praise the LORD with my mouth and will extol Him in the midst of multitudes --
31 For He shall stand at the right hand of the destitute, to save him from those who would condemn
his soul.
The curses called down by the prophet cannot be viewed as entirely punitive, for notice the correspondence between them and the crimes that have actually been committed in Ireland during the course of these past eight hundred years. Ireland is made the representative type of the racist settler state — one of the institutional forms existing within the universal Babylon and which has subsequently been imposed on, among those of yet other lands, the original and rightful inhabitants of Southern Africa and Palestine as well — because it was the training ground of West European racism which was first instituted there eight centuries ago, and which has been the torment of its people from that distant age down to this very day and hour. And the Scripture says of a case not nearly so extreme, “Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this.” And again, “I called on Your Name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon. You have heard my voice; do not hide Your ear from my breathing, from my cry” (Lamentations 2:20; 3:55-56). And yet again, “If anyone has an ear, let him listen to this: Whoever exiles others must be himself exiled; whoever kills by the sword must be himself killed by the sword. Here is the root of both the perseverance and the Faith of the saints” (Revelation 13:9-10). “Render to them a recompense, O LORD, according to the work of their hands. Give them sorrow of heart; Your curse to them! Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD!” (Lamentations 3:64-66).
Surely the world has not yet forgotten this incomparable haw-haw, rigid with conceit, filled with grave and noble-sounding phrases, who strewed famine, pestilence, and slaughter with both hands and never flagging zest upon every continent of the earth and among the islands of the sea. And what is this that we hear of England, that her professedly atheist and agnostic elements are now virtually coextensive with her total population? But has she not become in all respects the quintessence of impotence and decay? The Scotch and the Welsh too begin to bestir themselves from under the mighty weight of the dead hand of England, for they too have been her playthings time out of mind, and they too have seen her harried out of every corner of the world as a thing defiled and pernicious — her navy gone, her commerce broken, her industry languishing beyond all hope of revival — and they too remember the ancient and better days. “One who though having been often reproved still hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without cure” (Proverbs 29:1).
And we know that the will of the mass of the poor people of any society is a reflection of the mind of the Holy Spirit which is in them and operates through them; and that the Irish Republican Army, as the expression in arms of the will of the whole of the lower class of Ireland, both North and South, children of the Kingdom, receiving, as is known to all the world, the most fervent imaginable support from that quarter, must therefore be viewed as inherently incapable of error, both in the main thrust of its policy, and in its choice of specific techniques for the liberation of the poor people of that land.
And those say, and let us say:
Return, O LORD; how long? And have compassion on Your servants.
Satisfy us as in the dawn-age with Your mercy, that we might sing and rejoice all our days.
Cause us to rejoice according to the days in which You have afflicted us, and the years in which
we have seen evil.
— Psalm 90:13-15
— Barry I. Hyman
CHRISTIAN REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD