Sunday, September 23, 2007

Thoughts on Psalm 137

Psalm 137
7
Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.


Let’s face it; there are certain passages of scripture that are more essential to the Christian life than others. Pastors and teachers rightly emphasize some books and chapters of the Bible over others because they offer the audience hope and frame God’s character in light of his love and mercy, traits we find comforting in a God whom we entrust our very lives to. However, it is a difficult task to emphasize a particular group of passages without deemphasizing other parts of the Bible. In fact, sometimes we fall into the trap of not only deemphasizing, but avoiding difficult passages because they tend to irritate our finely tuned theology.

One such passage is found in the 137th Psalm, which speaks of the happiness of those who smash children on rocks. At first glance it is easy to understand why such a passage would be minimized in a faith that upholds the preciousness of human life. After all, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to bind up the broken-hearted, and to heal the sick. He implored his followers to be like children, not to smash them on rocks! Still, the passage remains in the canon of scripture, so somehow we have to deal with difficult texts like this if we truly affirm that the Bible and all that is contained in it is God’s Word. To avoid a particular passage of scripture because of its difficulty is to say that there are certain characteristics of God and chapters in his story we just shouldn’t speak of. So how do we justify teaching on a text like Psalm 137?

As a human being living in a culture with other humans, I recognize that life is messy. The issues we encounter on a daily basis are complex and seldom come with easy answers. Although much of our church culture persuades us to look the other way when the messiness of life bubbles to the surface, God certainly does not. In the pages of scripture, God is intimately involved in the affairs of mankind and so is the word he spoke into the world. Among the concerns dealt with in the Bible are jealousy, adultery, sex, slavery, genocide, incest, polygamy, greed, and revenge. It shows the human heart for what it is and shows God as one who is big enough for man’s rawest emotions. The Bible doesn’t sugar coat life.

Now bring that understanding into the aforementioned passage. Psalm 137 is written from the perspective of the Jewish community living in Babylonian exile. With everything they once knew destroyed or taken, the author laments life under the mockery of his new captors. Their holiest city burned, the place of their God’s dwelling destroyed, all their anger and grief is poured out on the empire responsible for their situation. The author pleads with God to repay them with the same kind of horror that they have had to endure. Was he right in doing so? The psalm doesn’t offer us the answer to that question. What it does do is demonstrate how unjust the world can be and how the prayers of God’s people have made their way to him, even ones calling for the infanticide of their enemies.