Ps. 69.22-23 (evil is not to be neutralized, but destroyed)

May their table / set before them / become a trap
a snare / for their good friends
may their eyes / be darkened / so they cannot see
and make their loins / tremble continuously. 

From betrayal emerges this litany of judgment on the evildoers. Taken in and of themselves what we notice is their ‘totality’. The judgment that is called for is one that is not to leave any remainder. The goal, in other words, is destruction. This is important to keep in mind, especially when reading over these litanies. Just as the psalmist has been constantly positioning himself, rhetorically, so as to draw God’s attention toward himself, so too is he now going to ‘position’ the wicked so as to draw down God’s wrath upon them. In so doing, he will put them in his position and, through his words, heighten their danger. This begins the ‘great reversal’. The first reversal is to the immediately preceding act of betrayal. Just as they exploited the fellowship table, so now does the psalmist now look for their table to become “a trap” and, communally,  a “snare for their good friends”. We should point out that this first act of destruction is not one that actively ‘calls God into the fray’. The psalmist merely states “may their table….may their eyes.” In verse 24, he will move into an active ‘calling down’ of wrath. This is not to say that God is not involved in these curses; it is, however, to show that these seem to work more along the lines of the ‘natural justice’ we have seen before (evil comes back upon itself in a type of boomerang, without the necessity of any intervening force). The use of ‘trap and snare’ here points in this direction also as many psalms that employ this type of punishment speak of the wicked ‘falling into the trap/snare they planted; or, the ‘pit they dug’’. The interesting addition here is that their ‘table-trap’ now includes “their friends”. Just as the psalmist was steadily alienated from his friends and family (vs. 8, 20) so too are the wicked now going to, at the ‘ground zero’ of their ‘table’, experience the effect of their own sin returning upon their heads. Further, the ‘darkening eye’ refers back to vs. 3 where he says his ‘eyes are failing from waiting for God’. The psalmist is, in effect, asking that God now “arrive”, satisfy his waiting and allow him to witness his enemies suffer from their deterioration. Asking that their ‘loins tremble’ (unable to stand) refers, also, to the psalmist experience of drowning “without a foothold” (vs. 1). The psalmist looks to see justice enacted and the wicked be caught in the vortex of their own designs. This is not cruelty, per-se. It is the proportion of justice as wickedness now turns to feed upon itself. The fact that there is this ‘inherent justice’ in the world (something perceptible to human wisdom) is immensely satisfying for the righteous. Further, as we almost always detect, this correspondence of reversal and proportion of the judgment, should attune us to the rhythms of judgment, the rhetorical modes used to ‘call God close’. Also, as we will see, the judgment that falls upon the wicked is, as said in verse 27 “adding guilt to their guilt”. There is the sense that their evil punishes them but that God’s wrath ‘compounds’ that punishment so as to remove the injustice and redeem the righteous. The goal, as we can see in this correspondence of suffering and punishment, is not wrath as such, but deliverance and cleansing. Evil is not to be simply neutralized; it must be destroyed.