The English Standard Version includes a footnote to its translation of Psalm 109:4. The text reads: “In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer.” The psalmist cries out to God, whom He calls “O God of my praise” (v. 1), for relief and retribution against the wicked who are assailing him.
The ESV footnote, however, cites the literal rendering of the Hebrew text, “but I am prayer.” The New International Version perhaps captures the Hebrew better by saying, “but I am a man of prayer.” But even that falls short of the startling statement expressed by the original language.
Psalm 109 is an imprecatory psalm. Rather than speaking benediction, it pronounces malediction. In today’s parlance, the psalmist’s prayer is filled with hate speech. To understand how this can find a place in Holy Scripture and in our prayer lives, see my article, “Praying the Imprecatory Psalms.”
What we concern ourselves with here, though, is what it means to say, “I am prayer.”
Clearly, the psalmist is weighed down under the onslaught of evil. While his own oppression by the wicked fuels his prayer (see vv. 22-25), his overarching concern is for his covenant Lord. In verse 21 he says: “But you, O God my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!”
We are especially taken aback when we hear in this psalm echoes of the cross in v. 25: “I am an object of scorn.” “They wag their heads at me.” How could these words possibly find themselves on the lips of our Lord Jesus, who prayed from the cross that the Father would forgive those who wagged their heads in scorn?
The resolution has to do with the covenant curses that belong to and will fall on the unrighteous, and with the curse Christ became for us as a covenant substitute, the Righteous for the unrighteous. The answer is found in the cross itself.
But for the psalmist reeling under the circumstance that provoked his prayer and writing of the psalm, what does he mean by saying, “I am prayer”? I think it has to do with how pervasive and comprehensive is his cry to God in his desperate state. The totality of his being is seeking God. He knows no other help, no other refuge against the foe.
Such is the state of his being and posture toward God that he has no life apart from God. Like a flower continually oriented toward the sun for its needs, so the psalmist can turn nowhere else—not even for an instant. He is consumed with God in his need.
That state of being is in evidence to its fullest at the cross.
Although we live in relationship with our God day in and day out, although we commune with Him and turn to Him as needs arise, casting our cares upon Him, it is those times of most overwhelming need that we burrow into His arms saying, “this is my situation, but I am prayer.” It is then that our very being becomes immersed in the presence and promises of our God—and, as with the psalmist in vv. 30-31, rejoices in such a great salvation and deliverance from those who condemn him.
