This is not the kind of praise song I am going to encourage for use on Sunday mornings. I thought, since we are nearing the end of the psalms, that the next ones would be easy praise and declarations of God's goodness. What I get instead, is a crusader psalm akin to "Praise God and pass the ammunition." My mind, remembering Jesus' words of "love your enemies," resists Psalm 149.
On the one hand, I could just say that this is a psalm celebrating obedience. After all, the glory of the saints is not the bloodshed, but the fact that they are carrying out that which God has sentenced (verse 9). But the problem is that, on the other hand, the sentence is vengeance, punishment and bloodshed! It's this kind of passage that dissuades many people that the God of the Bible is the God of love.
I don't have an easy answer. I can't square my belief system with the commands for complete destruction. I don't think Jesus, who rebuked Peter for using the sword to defend Him, would have us regularly live this way.
Then again, we can't box God up, and so I have to live in the mystery of this psalm. Let's not bring our swords to church on Sunday, and be reminded of this quote about mystery (from Bishop William Willimon):
"That's why He's so mysterious with (us). He wants more than mere obedience. His master plan is to win from them the free, unforced recognition of His love, and the free, unforced response to it."
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