The Role of Believers: Enact Vengeance - Psalms 149-150

Psalms 149:7-9 (ESV Strong's)
to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishments on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron,
to execute on them the judgment written!
This is honor for all his godly ones.
Praise the Lord!

The Role of Believers:  Enact Vengeance

One of the things the nation of Israel looked for was redemption from God from their enemies.  Psalm 149 was written after the nation had returned from captivity.  They had rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and the walls of the Temple.  The final product paled compared to the days of Solomon and the original edifice.    Never-the-less, the walls were built and the nation was redivide.  But, it had no standing army and no national presence.  Yet, the writer of the song comes along and composes lines that praise God for the final victory of God’s enemies, by the hands of God’s people.  This must have been both a glorious and confusing song for them to sing in worship.   The role of believers in the final judgment is to be part of God’s agents in that judgement.    There is some tension in this Psalm with Isaiah, however. In his description of the Day of the Lord, he states that God will have vengeance, alone:

Isaiah 63:3 (ESV Strong's)
“I have trodden the winepress alone,
and from the peoples no one was with me;
I trod them in my anger
and trampled them in my wrath;
their lifeblood spattered on my garments,
and stained all my apparel.

The tension might be solved as we think about God doing the work alone in His power.   We do know by reading Revelations that the angels and other agents are used to carry out God’s judgments.  In the above passage we are told that the “godly ones” (believers) will “execute the judgments written” on the nations.   The point of the Psalm is that God will have vengeance on the wicked and He will do so using, in some way, those that believe on Him.  God says, “vengeance is mine, I will repay.”   We are not to conduct our own vengeance apart from God. It is God who will conduct vengeance on those who reject Him.   He will, in the end, use the saints as part of that work.