Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the LORD persecute them.
The prayer for a dark and slippery path with the angel of the Lord in pursuit is an utterance of God's righteous justice against the wicked, not an outburst of personal resentment or a longing for revenge. It establishes the principle that the Lord requites persecutors for the persecution they have inflicted upon His saints, so that Babylon, having filled the cup of persecution, receives judgment in return, with the very evil she sought to bring upon the saints returned upon herself in double measure. It stands within a prophetic portrayal of Christ's life-and-death struggles with the enemy, in which David was given to foresee and to feel in part what Christ would endure, thereby disclosing the inner suffering of Christ more fully than the Gospel narratives themselves set forth.
The prayer for a dark and slippery path with the angel of the Lord in pursuit is an utterance of God's righteous justice against the wicked, not an outburst of personal resentment or a longing for revenge. It establishes the principle that the Lord requites persecutors for the persecution they have inflicted upon His saints, so that Babylon, having filled the cup of persecution, receives judgment in return, with the very evil she sought to bring upon the saints returned upon herself in double measure. It stands within a prophetic portrayal of Christ's life-and-death struggles with the enemy, in which David was given to foresee and to feel in part what Christ would endure, thereby disclosing the inner suffering of Christ more fully than the Gospel narratives themselves set forth.