Psalms 137:7-8 (ESV)
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
This is a troubling song to read. The writer of the song is not identified. We can deduct from the passage that the writer(s) was someone still in captivity in Babylon. They are being told to rejoice and to sign a song, but they can’t.
Psalms 137:2-3 (ESV)
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
They are lamenting that they are not back in their beloved Jerusalem (Zion):
Psalms 137:4-6 (ESV)
How shall we sing the LORD’S song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
That is the setting. That might give us a way to explain why anyone would write this horrible thought about having little ones dashed against the rocks. This sounds so cruel. To interrupt this hard passage consider:
1. This is not written by people in power. This is written by people in a submissive state. They are not executioners they are victims. They are an oppressed people. In our oppression we are not allowed to be in-human, but it does explain their outbursts for vengeance.
2. This is a cry to God not to fellow man. The psalm is a song and prayer to God. It is referred to as an imprecatory prayer. Whoever composed the song/prayer, is asking God to do what He already promised and that was to deliver them from their captors and send the appropriate punishment to them. Isaiah the prophet prayed a similar imprecatory prayer for Babylon in Isaiah 14:21. Since it is not mankind giving out the vengeance and it is a prayer for God to do so, whatever follows will be done in holy justice and mercy. An imprecatory prayer ought not be us calling down fire on our enemies. But it should be a prayer where we call down God’s Word to be fulfilled in the lives of our enemies based upon God’s justice, mercy and grace.
3. The prayer is less about the slaughter of innocent lives and more about the ending of a cruel nation. Babylon was one of the worse nations ever to rule the planet. Their recorded acts of terror and slaughter can’t even be imagined. They were a very wicked people. This is why the prophet Jonah did not want to go their capital city, Nineveh. This is not someone asking God to be fair, but to render unto this nation the seeds they sowed in their lives. They murdered innocent children so the writer of the song simply asked God to cause them to reap what they have sown.
This is a tough couple of verses to digest for our mindsets in this day and age. But the horrors that were exploited onto those composing this song allow us to read it with less malice and more empathy for their condition. We read it as a raw prayer to God and it is God who will sort out the response.
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