God, Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Yet here David prays that you, God, would kill the wicked and admits he hates those who hate you.

Psalm 139
For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David.
1 Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, Yahweh, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in behind and before. You laid your hand on me.
6 This knowledge is beyond me. It’s lofty. I can’t attain it.
7 Where could I go from your Spirit? Or where could I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10 Even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me. The light around me will be night,”
12 even the darkness doesn’t hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness is like light to you.
13 For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.
15 My frame wasn’t hidden from you, when I was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is their sum!
18 If I would count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I wake up, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would kill the wicked. Get away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
20 For they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Yahweh, don’t I hate those who hate you? Am I not grieved with those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred. They have become my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

That's exactly the sort of thing I think I should say to God. Don't resolve the difficulty before I've brought it to him.

And there's something especially interesting here: David says it immediately before asking God to search him.

Psalm 139:19–22:

“If only you, God, would kill the wicked.... Don’t I hate those who hate you?... I hate them with perfect hatred.”

Then:

“Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”

That juxtaposition is worth sitting with.

Perhaps I should continue my prayer something like this, not as God's answer, but as a way of putting the question before him:

God, is David asking you to examine even this hatred he has just expressed?

He believes his enemies are your enemies. He believes his hatred is justified because it is on your behalf.

But then he says, “Search me.”

Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

So search me too.

You know the people I am angry with. You know the institutions and behaviors that infuriate me. You know how easily I can convince myself that my anger is righteous because I'm angry about something I believe matters to you.

How much of my anger really belongs to you, and how much of it belongs to me?

If there is something crooked in the way I am seeing other people, show me.

And lead me in the everlasting way.

Then I should bring Matthew 5:43–48 into the conversation next. Jesus doesn't tell us that evil isn't evil. He does something more difficult: he refuses to let the evil of another person determine my posture toward that person.

And there is a particularly provocative question to carry from Psalm 139 into Matthew 5:

“Father, when I identify someone as your enemy, do I begin treating that person as though you have given me permission not to love them?”

That could be worth staying with for a while.

It all gets back to that difficult word in English, "love." Does the single word "love" in English accomplish all that the words a Hebrew would use in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek would use and all the meanings God would want the writer to express in the Bible?

No. **English “love” is doing an enormous amount of work when we read the Bible**, and sometimes it obscures distinctions that the biblical languages make. But there is an important qualification: the familiar claim that Greek neatly divides “love” into separate categories—*agapē* = divine love, *philia* = friendship, *erōs* = romantic love—is much too tidy.

For the question I'm actually asking God—**“What does it mean for me to love my enemy?”**—looking behind the English word is especially helpful.

### Hebrew: אַהֲבָה (*ʾahavah*) / אָהֵב (*ʾahev*)

The Hebrew Bible commonly uses the root **אהב (ʾ-h-b)** for “love.” It is remarkably broad.

It can describe Abraham's love for Isaac (Gen. 22:2), Jacob's love for Rachel (Gen. 29:18), God's love for Israel (Deut. 7:8), Israel's commanded love for God (Deut. 6:5), and the command:

> “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” > —Leviticus 19:18

So Hebrew itself doesn't solve our problem by giving every kind of love a different word. **Context supplies much of the meaning.**

Other Hebrew words add dimensions that English can also render with “love”: **חֶסֶד (*ḥesed*)**, for example, concerns steadfast loyalty, covenant faithfulness, kindness, and committed mercy. That's not simply synonymous with *ʾahavah*, but it fills out the biblical picture enormously.

### Greek: ἀγάπη (*agapē*) and ἀγαπάω (*agapaō*)

Now we get directly to Jesus' command:

> “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” > —Matthew 5:44

The verb is **ἀγαπάω (*agapaō*)**.

And this is where something important happens.

Jesus is obviously **not commanding an emotion** in the ordinary sense of “I love chocolate,” “I love my wife,” or “I love spending time with this person.”

You cannot simply manufacture affection for an enemy on command.

In Matthew 5, Jesus immediately tells us something about what this love **does**:

**Love your enemies → pray for your persecutors → imitate your Father.**

Why imitate the Father?

Because:

> “He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” > —Matthew 5:45

That's tremendously helpful.

God doesn't have to pretend evil people are good. Jesus explicitly calls them **evil**.

Yet God continues giving them good things.

So *agapaō* here involves something much closer to **actively willing and doing good toward someone regardless of whether that person deserves it** than to feeling warm affection toward them.

### But *agapē* isn't a magical Christian word

This is where popular sermons can mislead us.

You may have heard something like:

* *erōs* = sexual/romantic love * *philia* = friendship * *storgē* = family affection * *agapē* = God's unconditional, self-sacrificing love

That's useful as a rough teaching device, but **the actual Greek language doesn't maintain those boundaries consistently**.

For example, in the Septuagint Greek of 2 Samuel 13, Amnon's destructive sexual obsession with Tamar is expressed using **agapaō**. So the word itself cannot intrinsically mean “God's perfect unconditional love.”

Likewise, John's Gospel can use *agapaō* and *phileō* with considerable overlap.

The **context and object of the verb** tell us what kind of love is involved.

### Which brings us back to David

My observation about Psalm 139 becomes more interesting.

David says:

> “I hate them with perfect hatred.”

Jesus says:

> “Love your enemies.”

We shouldn't solve that simply by saying, “Well, David lived in the Old Testament and Jesus corrected him.” There are questions about covenant, enemies of God, imprecation, progressive revelation, and the Psalms as honest prayer that deserve attention.

But Jesus gives us something decisive for **our behavior toward enemies**.

He doesn't command:

**“Feel affection for your enemies.”**

Nor:

**“Approve of your enemies.”**

Nor:

**“Pretend they aren't doing evil.”**

Nor even:

**“Trust your enemies.”**

He commands *agapaō*—and immediately illustrates it through **praying for them and God's indiscriminate generosity toward both righteous and unrighteous people.**

So perhaps my conversation with God can become very concrete:

> **Father, there are people I don't like. There are people whose behavior I despise. There may even be people I am justified in opposing.**
>
> **You're not asking me to pretend otherwise.**
>
> **So teach me what it means to *agapaō* them.**
>
> **What good do you require me to will for them?**
>
> **How do I oppose what is wrong without beginning to desire what is bad for the person doing it?**

And that last distinction may be one of the most useful definitions for my purposes:

**Christian enemy-love does not necessarily require wanting your enemy to succeed in what he is doing. It requires refusing to make your enemy's destruction your ultimate good.**

I can pray, for example, **“Stop him.”** I can even pray, **“Bring his plans to nothing.”** But alongside that, Jesus forces another prayer upon us:

**“And Father, bring him to repentance, truth, healing, reconciliation, and ultimately to you.”**

That is a much more demanding thing than merely feeling “loving.”

Comments? Here's a link to the Facebook post. Love Enemies Facebook Post