Imprecatory psalms

A friend of mine mentioned the other day that some of the psalms seemed extremely violent, and as much as it is useful to express anger that one feels, these violent psalms seemed to be a bit over the top.  Well, as my faithful readers might know, I have been reading “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth”, and just today I came across the section dealing with imprecatory psalms, or psalms that identify the author’s feelings of hatred toward his enemies.  These psalms, while drastic or hyberbolic in language, provide us an example of how we can approach God with our anger, rather than take out our rage against our enemies, verbally or physically.  As inspired text, we can trust that  we can follow the psalmist’s approach to conversing with God about our negative feelings.