"We know him who hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord."[168] Jesus thought not that he was more lenient to sinners when he cried, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! * * * Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell * * * It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee."[169] It is not in the Old Testament, but in the New, that we are told that Jesus himself shall come "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."[170] It is not an old, bigoted Hebrew prophet giving a vision of the Hebrew Jehovah, but the beloved disciple who leaned on Jesus' breast, picturing the Savior himself, who says: "He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God."[171]
Let no man imagine that the New Testament offers impunity to the wicked, or that the Old Testament denies mercy to the repenting sinner, or that Christ exhibited any other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the same Hebrew Jehovah who commands the wicked to forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and to return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.[172] It is exceedingly strange that those who dwell upon the paternal character of God, as a distinctive feature of Christ's personal teaching, should have forgotten that the hymns of the Old Testament church, a thousand years before his coming, were full of this endearing relation; that it was by the first Hebrew prophet that the Hebrew Jehovah declared, "Israel is my son, even my first-born; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me;"[173] and that by the last of them he urges Israel to obedience by this tender appeal: "If I be a father, where is mine honor?"[174] It was not Christ, but David—one of those gloomy, stern, Hebrew prophets—who penned that noble hymn to our Father in heaven, which Christ illustrated in his Sermon on the Mount:
"The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.
He will not always chide,
Neither will he keep his anger forever.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities;
For as the heaven is high above the earth,
So great is his mercy to them that fear him;
As far as the East is from the West,
So far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Like as a father pitieth his children,
So the Lord pitieth them that fear him."—Psalm ciii.
It is utter ignorance of the Old Testament which prompts any one to imagine that it presents any other character of God than "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty."[175] This is the name which God proclaimed to Moses, and this is the character which he proclaimed in Christ, when he cried on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel."[176] Justice and mercy are united in Christ dying for the ungodly.
It is untrue to say that the prophets of the Old Testament were actuated by a spirit of malice, or of revenge for personal injuries as such, in praying for, or prophesying destruction on the inveterate enemies of God and his cause.[177] Of all Scripture characters, David has been most defamed for vindictiveness; but surely never was man more free from any such spirit, than the persecuted fugitive, who, with his enemy in his hand in the cave, and his confidential advisers urging him to take his life, cut off his skirt instead of his head; and on another occasion prevented the stroke which would have smitten the sleeping Saul to the earth, and sent back even the spear and the cruse of water, the trophies of his generosity. When cursed himself, and defamed as a vengeful shedder of blood by the Benjamite, he could restrain the fury of his followers, protect the life of the ruffianly traitor, and thus appeal to God as the witness of his innocence:
"O Lord, my God! if I have done this,
If there be iniquity in my hands,
If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me,
Yea I have delivered him that without cause was mine enemy."[178]
It is true that he does bitterly curse several living persons; of whom it is observable that some had done him no sort of personal injury; as Doeg the Edomite—the Nana Sahib of his day—who anticipated the scenes of Cawnpore, in the streets of Nob, by mercilessly butchering unoffending men, helpless women, and innocent babes. But surely no friend of humanity can imagine that it is improper that the chief magistrate of Israel, anointed for the very purpose of being a terror to evil doers, should express his righteous indignation against such atrocities; nor confound such public execration with the petty gnawings of private revenge. Still less can the fearer of God doubt the propriety of his expressing by the mouth of his prophet, that displeasure he signally displayed by his providence, scathing and blasting the accursed wretch into a terror to all bloody and deceitful men who shall read their own warning in his doom.
"God shall likewise destroy thee forever,
He shall take thee away and pluck thee from thy dwelling,
And root thee out of the land of the living."[179]
We have the most solemn assurance, that every one of the historical incidents of Scripture is recorded for our instruction, and that every prophecy gives a lesson to all ages. "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."[180] The imprecations of the Bible against individual sinners are the gibbets on which these malefactors are hung up for warning to all men to flee the crimes that brought them to that fate.
It is put beyond the possibility of doubt, by the combined testimony of the Lord and his apostles, that by far the greater number of the curses which David uttered, he spoke in the person of Christ himself, of whom he was a type; and with direct reference to the crimes and punishment of his enemies. Thus the Sixty-ninth Psalm, and the One hundred and ninth, pre-eminently the cursing Psalms, are most explicitly and repeatedly asserted by Christ, by Peter, and by John, to belong to Christ, and to express his very words: "This scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. * * * For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein. And, His bishopric let another take."[181] If any one feels reluctant to imagine that such cursings should fall from the lips of the merciful Savior, let him remember that the most awful curse which shall ever fall on the ears of terrified men shall be pronounced by Jesus himself, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."[182] The solemn facts of the Bible will not accommodate themselves to our likes and dislikes. Christ loves righteousness and hates iniquity; in the Bible he takes leave to say so, and he expects his people to share his feelings, and to be willing to express them on fit occasions.