Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
The verse belongs to an imprecatory psalm, one of the psalms containing fierce denunciations, curses, and prayers for the destruction of others. It is inspired Scripture declaring God's justice, not words added on merely human authority. It pronounces punishment on the wicked: their children are left continually wandering as vagabonds, begging and seeking bread from desolate places.
It is not an expression of personal revenge or a prayer for private retaliation. It is a predictive plea and declaration of God's retributive justice, whose severe words typify tribulation to come upon the enemies of the church, pronounced against those whose lives were evil and who sought to harm others, asking that those who plot wickedness against the innocent receive the consequences of their own wrongdoing. As a passage of curses, it raises the question of how such words relate to Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
The verse belongs to an imprecatory psalm, one of the psalms containing fierce denunciations, curses, and prayers for the destruction of others. It is inspired Scripture declaring God's justice, not words added on merely human authority. It pronounces punishment on the wicked: their children are left continually wandering as vagabonds, begging and seeking bread from desolate places.
It is not an expression of personal revenge or a prayer for private retaliation. It is a predictive plea and declaration of God's retributive justice, whose severe words typify tribulation to come upon the enemies of the church, pronounced against those whose lives were evil and who sought to harm others, asking that those who plot wickedness against the innocent receive the consequences of their own wrongdoing. As a passage of curses, it raises the question of how such words relate to Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.