Wish It Were a Happy Song

Psalm 137
1By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.
2On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
3For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
5If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
6Let 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!
7Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
8O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

Well, this is a shocking way to end the week! This psalm falls in to the imprecatory category (where the psalmist begs God’s judgment and punishment upon his enemies) and it is very difficult to take in and absorb. We don’t like to think this way. But if left in context, the message of this prayer is important for us even today.

This psalm must be placed into its historical context. These are the words of those who were carried off into captivity in Babylon and it is certain they were not happy to be there. While that captivity was a result of their own idolatry, the consequences were painful indeed. Now they are separated from the Temple the opportunity to worship as they had in the past. This psalm is a sad counterpart to the many psalms that speak of the joy Israel experienced during the festivals at God’s house in Jerusalem. If the ascent to Jerusalem was the pinnacle of joy, nothing could be worse than being torn away from the worship that took place in the house of the Lord. Apparently, the Babylonians were looking to the Jews for entertainment. They would request the Jews sing the  songs of their Temple worship, because most of them were happy songs. But this was either cruelty or ignorance on the part of the Babylonians and quite painful for the Jewish people.

Since the sacrifices that were the central part of Old Testament worship could be offered only in Jerusalem, the worship of Israel was not as portable as ours is. As long as the Old Testament sacrifices were valid, Israel was attached to Jerusalem in a way more profound than our attachment to any one place. Only in Jerusalem could the full worship prescribed by the Lord be offered. Only there could the happy songs of ascents be most meaningfully sung.
Brug, J. F. ©1989. Psalms 73–150 (2nd ed., p. 248). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

We find additional information about the disregard the Babylonians had for Jewish worship practices from the stories we find in the Book of Daniel, which reports that time of captivity.

Daniel 5:2-4
2 Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. 3 Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them.

Just imagine our Communion implements or Baptismal founts were being used for entertainment purposes or to serve dinner to the crowd. We would be horrified, as were the Jews. Also mentioned in this psalm are the conflicts had with their cousins, the Edomites. When Jerusalem fell, the Edomites helped the Babylonians and celebrated Israel’s fall, since this gave them a chance to take over some of the land that the Lord had promised to Israel. In effect, they were trying to undo the promise to Jacob.

Finally we come to the terrible curse at the end of the psalm, where the infants are dashed against the rocks in order to kill them.

In Isaiah 13:16, which was written about two hundred years before Babylon’s fall, the destruction of Babylon was prophesied in almost the exact terms used in Psalm 137. The destruction of the children who were too young to be transported into slavery was a common practice in ancient warfare. Since this cruelty was apparently practiced by the Babylonians during their campaigns of conquest against Israel, Babylon would receive from its Persian and Medean conquerors the same treatment it had inflicted on Israel.
Brug, J. F. ©1989©. Psalms 73–150 (2nd ed., p. 249). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

While this psalm is exceptionally difficult to take in, we understand what it means to want the worst for our enemies. Here is a case where we must leave them in the hands of God and trust in Him to do what is best, for that is always what He does.

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