Spiderman and the Imprecatory Psalms

A response to Lisa's interesting comment:  Eddie Brock in Spiderman 3, praying to God in church to kill Peter Parker, might even have quoted one of the many "imprecatory" psalms, where the psalmist indeed asks God "to smite a particular enemy of [his]."  For example, Psalm 69:20-29:

20

You know my reproach, my shame, my disgrace; before you stand all my foes.

21

Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak; I looked for compassion, but there was none, for comforters, but found none.

22

Instead they put gall in my food; for my thirst they gave me vinegar.

23

Make their own table a snare for them, a trap for their friends.

24

Make their eyes so dim they cannot see; keep their backs ever feeble.

25

Pour out your wrath upon them; let the fury of your anger overtake them.

26

Make their camp desolate, with none to dwell in their tents.

27

For they pursued the one you struck, added to the pain of the one you wounded.

28

Add that to their crimes; let them not attain to your reward.

29

Strike them from the book of the living; do not count them among the just!

These psalms, like the church scene, are "theologically troubling" with their curses on others, and whether and how to pray them have been recurring questions.  One of the most common answers, I think, is that the psalmist is asking not for personal vengeance, but for vindication of God's justice.  And Eddie's in a very weak position to claim such justice, since it was his own deceit for which Peter publicly humiliated him (I'll keep this vague to avoid spoilers).  But, in an example of what I like about the movie's moral anthropology, it also clearly paints Peter as having satisfied a vengeance lust against Eddie, as having gone over the top, and as implicated in the original competitiveness that started the whole cycle.  Eddie "looked for compassion [from Peter], but there was none."  (By contrast, the triumph of good at the end requires characters to give up their vengefulness and exercise compassion for each other.)  The wise, and Christian, emphases are that vengeance -- personal and social -- spirals out of control so easily, and that even those who are wronged -- as Peter is by Eddie -- often mix their claim for justice with a simple desire to satisfy vengefulness (cf. Mark's recent observations about some victims in sex-abuse cases) or ego.

And all the sticky, crawly black stuff is awesome.

Tom