Many of the classic horror movies from the 1980’s started with someone making an incantation – something that always ends horribly. In Evil Dead and incantation is mistakenly read aloud from a book, unleashing true evil upon the earth. A serial killer in the movie Chucky recites an incantation on his death bed to force his spirit into that of a toy doll. Examples abound, but are such devices ever used in the real world? Historically, yes, magic rituals, spells, and incantations were all used as a method to bringing calamity upon one’s enemies. Such things were forbidden for the people of God.

Among the vassal treaties of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) is a series of imprecations and incantations written in cuneiform on clay tablets. They help us understand the culture and religions of the Middle East. In these sections the king is writing down curses (imprecations) against a pact of nations who broke their treaty with Assyria. He calls for terrible things to happen to them, then follows up with spells (incantations) that invoke the nations deities to cause the harm to take place. It may seem overly dramatic today, but this is stuff that Hollywood would love. In once ceremony, actual bows and arrows were broken in the belief that such would happen to all the bows and arrows of their enemies.

While any form of magic – spells, potions, rituals and incantations were all forbidden by God, we do find some imprecations in the Bible. David was fond of this use of language and follows the form set by East Semitic curse formulas in some of the Psalms. Take Psalm 58 as an example:

Do you rulers really pronounce just decisions?
Do you judge people fairly?
No! You plan how to do what is unjust;
you deal out violence in the earth.
The wicked turn aside from birth;
liars go astray as soon as they are born.
Their venom is like that of a snake,
like a deaf serpent that does not hear,
that does not respond to the magicians,
or to a skilled snake-charmer.

O God, break the teeth in their mouths!
Smash the jawbones of the lions, O Lord!
Let them disappear like water that flows away!
Let them wither like grass!
Let them be like a snail that melts away as it moves along!
Let them be like stillborn babies that never see the sun!
Before the kindling is even placed under your pots,
he will sweep it away along with both the raw and cooked meat.

The godly will rejoice when they see vengeance carried out;
they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Then observers will say,
“Yes indeed, the godly are rewarded!
Yes indeed, there is a God who judges in the earth!”

The first section sets forth the problem, the second section is the imprecation, and the third is a predicted response when the curse comes true. Did David do something wrong when writing such a psalm? Not at all. His anger against the wicked is a righteous anger, and though he calls for them to experience terrible circumstances those curses are meant to be in proportion to the evil acts of his enemies, so it is also just. Finally, you will see that David strays from the curse formula of the nations around him in one important way: there are no incantations or magic spells intended to bring it to pass. Instead, David leaves his thoughts and desires on the doorstep of his God and allows the Almighty One to determine its validity.

David is a great example of a man who did not run from his emotions. He ran with them, but endeavored to assure that in the midst of his emotional marathon he didn’t curse God. We can learn from his writings how to rightly handle anger and other emotions, and even how to confess and repent when we’ve taken things too far. So remember these two important lessons, (1) God is big enough to handle our enemies and (2) never, ever read out loud from a book you find at an abandoned cabin in the woods.