“For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.”
The psalmist's intensification of his condemnation of those who take God's name in vain establishes a particular form of wickedness: the appropriation of God's name for purposes contrary to God's will and character. This verse suggests that the most heinous form of rebellion involves using God's name while simultaneously opposing God's purposes, creating a form of hypocrisy that compounds the original sin by adding sacrilege to disobedience. The emphatic questions introduced by Do I not hate those who hate you establish the psalmist's conviction that proper love for God necessarily involves hatred of those opposed to God, creating an identification between the psalmist's values and God's own orientation. By condemning those who exploit God's name while pursuing wickedness, the psalmist establishes that authentic faith involves not merely intellectual acknowledgment of God but active opposition to those who corrupt God's name and purposes through their deception and rebellion.
Church Fathers on Psalms 139:20
1. ...Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks in the Prophets, sometimes in His own Name, sometimes in ours, because He makes Himself one with us; as it is said, “they two shall be one flesh.” Wherefore also the Lord says in the Gospel, speaking of marriage, “therefore they are no more two, but one flesh.” One flesh, because of our mortality He took flesh; not one divinity, for He is the Creator, we the creature. Whatsoever then our Lord speaks in the person of the Flesh He took upon…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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