by Brian Allred “A plague on both your houses.” So spoke the dying Mercutio about both the Montagues and Capulets in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The phrase can rightly be understood as an imprecation. An imprecation, from the Latin imprecatio, is a prayer invoking disaster or judgment upon an enemy or wrongdoer. Long before … Continue reading “O That You Would Slay the Wicked, O God”: Wrestling with the Imprecatory Psalms