Commentary - Psalm 137:7-9

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 137 begins with a profound lament by the rivers of Babylon, a sorrow born of exile and the memory of Zion. But it does not end there. The psalm concludes with what many modern Christians find to be a savage and jarring benediction. This has caused no small amount of trouble, with some, like C.S. Lewis, wanting to treat these words as an example of the "uncharity of the poets," something devilish that we are meant to observe and learn from by negative example. But this approach is entirely wrongheaded. The New Testament commands us to sing the psalms, all of them, with no warning labels attached (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). This psalm is God's inspired Word, and that means these final verses are also God's inspired Word. Our task is not to excuse them, but to understand them, and then to sing them.

The passage before us turns from the sorrow of exile to the righteous cry for divine justice. It is a prayer, an appeal to God to act as the covenant judge. The first object of this imprecation is Edom, the treacherous brother nation that reveled in Jerusalem's fall. The second is Babylon itself, the instrument of God's wrath, which must in turn face that same wrath. The principle invoked is the lex talionis, an eye for an eye. The psalm ends with a stark and brutal blessing upon the one who executes this perfect, proportional justice upon Babylon, a justice that extends to its very next generation. For the Christian, this psalm teaches us about the gravity of sin, the certainty of God's judgment, and how we are to deal with the remaining sin in our own hearts.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 137 is one of the imprecatory psalms, a category of psalms that calls down curses or judgments upon the enemies of God. These are frequently a stumbling block for modern readers who have been taught a truncated gospel, one that speaks only of God's love and never of His wrath. But the two are not at odds. God's love for His people necessitates His wrath against those who would destroy them. These psalms are not expressions of personal, petty vindictiveness. They are Spirit-inspired prayers for the public justice of God to be manifested in the world. They are prayers for God to vindicate His own name and His own people. To refuse to sing them is to refuse a central part of the biblical worldview, which is that God is a righteous judge who will, in fact, judge the world.

Key Issues

Verse by Verse Commentary

7 Remember, O Yahweh, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, “Tear it down! Tear it down To its very foundation.”

The psalmist turns from his personal vow to remember Jerusalem to a prayer that God would also remember. This is not a request to jog God's memory, as though He might forget. In Scripture, for God to "remember" is for Him to act upon His covenant promises. The psalmist is calling for covenantal action. The target of this prayer is Edom, the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. This was not just any enemy; this was family. Their sin was particularly heinous because it was a sin of treachery. When Babylon, the great pagan empire, came to destroy Jerusalem, the Edomites stood by and cheered them on. The book of Obadiah details this sin vividly: they stood aloof, they rejoiced, they looted, and they cut off the fugitives (Obad. 1:10-14). Their cry, "Tear it down! Tear it down!" or "Rase it, rase it," was a cry for total annihilation. They wanted nothing left. This malicious glee in the destruction of God's city and people is what the psalmist asks God to bring into judgment. And we should see the historical rhyme when another Edomite, Herod the Great, would later seek to destroy the infant Christ by slaughtering the children of Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16).

8 O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, How blessed will be the one who repays you With the recompense with which you have recompensed us.

Now the psalmist turns his attention directly to the agent of destruction, the daughter of Babylon. He addresses the city as one "doomed to be destroyed" or "you devastated one." Her destruction is a settled matter in the mind of the prophet. It is going to happen. And then comes the first of two shocking blessings. "How blessed will be the one who repays you." This is not a personal fantasy of revenge. It is a statement about the nature of divine justice. The one who acts as God's instrument in bringing just retribution is acting in a blessed capacity. The standard of justice is precise: "With the recompense with which you have recompensed us." This is the lex talionis, measure for measure. What Babylon did to Jerusalem, another nation would be raised up to do to Babylon. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah both foretold this in graphic detail (Is. 13:16; Jer. 50-51). To pray this is to pray for the revealed will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. The saints in heaven do something very similar when apostate Jerusalem, called Babylon in the book of Revelation, is finally destroyed. They cry "Hallelujah! ... For true and just are his judgments" (Rev. 19:1-2).

9 How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your infants Against the cliff.

This is the verse that causes everyone to stumble. It is raw, brutal, and utterly offensive to our modern sensibilities. But we must not flinch from it. This is not hyperbole; it is a literal description of what happened in ancient warfare. When a city was sacked, women and children were not spared. This is what Babylon did to the children of Jerusalem. This verse is a prophetic declaration that the same horrific judgment will be visited upon them. The one who executes this judgment is called "blessed" because he is an instrument of God's perfect, proportional justice. You cannot pray for the airliner to crash and then act surprised when passengers die. The psalmist knew what the fall of a city entailed, and he prayed for it because justice demanded it. He is not being vindictive; he is being biblical. Now, how do we, as New Covenant believers, sing this? We are not called to take up arms against a literal Babylon. But we are in a spiritual war. God has two ways of destroying His enemies: He can annihilate them, or He can transform them into His friends, as He did with Saul of Tarsus. We should pray for the conversion of our enemies. But there is another application, and it is a deeply personal one. We must learn to treat our own sins, especially the "little ones" we like to coddle and excuse, as the brats of Babylon. Our sanctification is a war of total annihilation. We are to take these nascent sins, these infant rebellions, and show them no mercy. We are to seize them and dash them against the Rock, and that Rock is Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). We are to be utterly ruthless with the Babylonian offspring in our own hearts.

Application

Many Christians have a sentimental and sanitized view of the faith. They want a God who is always nice, always affirming, and never, ever wrathful. Psalm 137 is a strong antidote to that kind of thinking. It reminds us that God is a God of justice, and that sin is a terrible offense that will be judged. We are not to be embarrassed by these psalms, but rather instructed by them. They teach us to hate evil as God hates it.

First, we learn that it is right to pray for God's justice to be done. We see evil, wickedness, and oppression in the world around us. We should pray that God would rise up and scatter His enemies. This is not about personal vengeance, but about a zeal for God's glory and the establishment of His righteous kingdom.

Second, we must recognize that God's justice is often worked out in the grimy, bloody realities of history. The fall of nations is a terrible thing, but it is often the instrument of God's judgment. We should not be naive about what it means for God's kingdom to advance against the kingdoms of this world.

Finally, the most immediate application is to our own hearts. The battle against sin is not a negotiation. It is a war. We must learn to identify the "little ones," the seemingly insignificant sins of thought, word, and deed, and we must be ruthless with them. We are not to pamper them or make excuses for them. We are to take them and dash them against the rock of Christ. This is the path of true holiness, a path that recognizes the brutal reality of sin and the glorious power of our redeeming God.