2 Samuel 3: Curses

"May the Lord repay the evildoer according to his evil."

2 Samuel 3:39b

I spent a fair amount of time in earlier books covering the biblical concept of blessings and curses, but that discussion focused mostly on the blessings.  Here, I'd like to take a moment to stop and think about the opposite side of that coin for a few minutes.

A lot of things jump into our minds when we think of curses.  A witch casting a spell to make a person sick or turn them into something small and croaky.  A man spouting foul language at another person (or sometimes at an inanimate object).  A teenager casually using foul language out-of-context and in a cheerful manner (as though pleased with himself for getting away with saying a word he's been taught is bad).  Are these things really curses?

Biblically speaking, no.  They're not.  A curse, like a blessing, is a statement made about the future in which the speaker is essentially promising to make it so, or if the speaker is unable to do so, he is expecting the Lord to do what he himself can not do.  In this particular case, David is expecting that horrible things will happen to Joab and his household because of the evil he did when he assassinated Abner.  The only difference between a blessing and a curse is a difference in what's being requested of God - reward and punishment.

Question of the Day:

Have you ever been so repulsed by someone else's actions that you literally wished for horrible things to happen to them?  Some people feel this way all the time and would do harm to others for the simplest reasons, but others rarely get so vindictive and would only wish ill on those who truly display evil to the utmost degree.  Which one of these are you?

Prayer of the Day:

Lord, bless those who read my blog with the insight to see through my jumbled thoughts and understand Your Word, not my own.  Bless me with the right words to write, so that the eyes which read them may also be blessed through them.  Let not my will, but Yours, be done through this blog and through my daily study of Your Word.  Amen.