Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/569



"Set thou a wicked man over him, and let the accuser stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be found guilty, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg, and seek food far from their desolate places. Let the creditor catch all that he hath, and strangers rob the fruit of his industry. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, and let none be merciful to his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the following generation let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, and let him cut off the memory of them from the earth" (Psalms cix. 1-15).

In the following verse the enemy is declared to have persecuted the poor and needy, and this is put forward as the excuse for imprecations evidently inspired by personal ill-will. In another of these Psalms, Jehovah is entreated to persecute the enemies of Israel with storm and tempest, as fires burn up woods and flames set mountains on fire (Psalms lxxxiii. 14, 15). Elsewhere the king is said to trust in the Lord, and he therefore hopes that the Lord will find out his enemies, and will make them as a fiery oven in the time of his anger; that the fire will devour them; and that he will destroy their fruit from the earth and their seed from among the children of men (Ps. xxi. 8-10).

Parallels to these Psalms of cursing may be met with in the Veda, just as the Psalms in general are more nearly paralleled by the Vedic hymns than by those of any other sacred book. One poet writes as follows:—

"Blinded shall ye be, O enemies, like headless snakes, and thus plagued by Agni, may Indra always kill the best of you. Whatever relation troubles us, whatever stranger wishes to kill us, him may all the gods destroy; prayer is my powerful protection, my refuge and powerful protection" (S. V., p. 297.—Sama Veda, 2. 9. 3. 8).

Remarkably close is the similarity between the assertion of the Hindu Rishi that prayer is his powerful protection, and that of the Hebrew Psalmist that he is, or gives himself to,