Psalm 137:8f – ‘Happy is he who dashes your infants against the rocks’

This entry is part 19 of 102 in the series: Tough texts
- Genesis 1:26 – Why a plural name for God?
- Genesis 3 – traditional and revisionist readings
- Genesis 3:16b – ‘Your desire shall be for your husband’
- Genesis 5 – the ages of the antedeluvians
- Genesis 6:1f – ‘The sons of God’
- Genesis 6-8 – A worldwide flood?
- Genesis 12:3 – ‘I will bless those who bless you’
- Genesis 22 – “Abraham, kill your son”
- Exodus – Who hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
- Exodus 12:37 – How many Israelites left Egypt?
- Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbour as yourself”
- Joshua 6 – the fall of Jericho
- Joshua 10 – Joshua’s ‘long day’
- Judges 19:11-28 – The priest and the concubine
- 1 Samuel 16:14 – ‘An evil spirit from the Lord’
- 2 Sam 24:1, 1 Chron 21:1 – Who incited David?
- 1 Kings 20:30 – ‘The wall collapsed on 27,000 of them’
- Psalm 105:15 – ‘Touch not my anointed’
- Psalm 137:8f – ‘Happy is he who dashes your infants against the rocks’
- Isaiah 7:14/Matthew 1:23 – “The virgin will conceive”
- Daniel 7:13 – ‘Coming with the clouds of heaven’
- Jonah – history or fiction?
- Mt 1:1-17 and Lk 3:23-38 – the genealogies of Jesus
- Matthew 2:1 – ‘Magi from the east’
- Matthew 2:2 – The star of Bethlehem
- Matthew 2:8f – Can God speak through astrology?
- Matthew 2:23 – ‘Jesus would be called a Nazarene’
- Matthew 5:21f – Did Jesus reject the Old Testament?
- Matthew 7:16,20 – ‘You will recognise them by their fruit’
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:3 – Who asked Jesus to help?
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:7 – son? servant? male lover?
- Matthew 8:28 – Gadara or Gerasa?
- Matthew 10:23 – ‘Before the Son of Man comes’
- Matthew 11:12 – Forceful entry, or violent opposition, to the kingdom?
- Matthew 12:40 – Three days and three nights
- The Parable of the Sower – return from exile?
- Mt 15:21-28/Mk 7:24-30 – Jesus and the Canaanite woman
- Matthew 18:10 – What about ‘guardian angels’?
- Matthew 18:20 – ‘Where two or three are gathered…’
- Matthew 16:18 – Peter the rock?
- Matthew 21:7 – One animal or two?
- Mt 24:34/Mk 13:30 – ‘This generation will not pass away’
- Matthew 25:40 – ‘These brothers of mine’
- Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34 – Jesus’ cry of dereliction
- Matthew 27:52f – Many bodies raised?
- Mark 1:41 – ‘Compassion’, or ‘anger/indignation’?
- Mark 2:25f – ‘When Abiathar was high priest’
- Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10 – The unpardonable sin
- Mark 4:31 – ‘The smallest of all the seeds’?
- Mark 6:45 – ‘To Bethsaida’
- Mark 12:41-44/Luke 21:1-4 – ‘The widow’s mite’
- Luke 2:1f – Quirinius and ‘the first registration’
- Luke 2 – Was Joseph from Nazareth, or Bethlehem?
- Luke 2:7 – ‘No room at the inn’
- Luke 2:8 – Shepherds: a despised class?
- Luke 4:16-19 – An incomplete quotation?
- Luke 7:2 – ‘Highly valued servant’ or ‘gay lover’?
- John 1:1 – ‘The Word was God’
- John 2:6 – symbol or history?
- John 2:12 – Did Mary bear other children?
- When did Jesus cleanse the Temple?
- John 3:16f – What is meant by ‘the world’?
- John 4:44 – ‘His own country’
- John 7:40-44 – Did John know about Jesus’ birthplace?
- John 7:53-8:11 – The woman caught in adultery
- John 14:6 – “No one comes to the Father except through me”
- John 14:12 – ‘Greater deeds’
- John 20:21 – “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.”
- John 21:11 – One hundred and fifty three fish
- Acts 5:1-11 – Ananias and Sapphira
- Acts 5:34-37 – a (minor) historical inaccuracy?
- Romans 1:5 – ‘The obedience of faith’
- Romans 1:18 – Wrath: personal or impersonal?
- Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16 – faith in, or faithfulness of Christ?
- Romans 5:18 – ‘Life for all?’
- Rom 7:24 – Who is the ‘wretched man’?
- Romans 11:26a – ‘And so all Israel will be saved’
- 1 Corinthians 14:34 – ‘Women should be silent in the churches’
- 1 Corinthians 15:28 – ‘The Son himself will be subjected to [God]’
- 1 Corinthians 15:29 – ‘Baptized for the dead’
- 1 Corinthians 15:44 – ‘Raised a spiritual body’
- 2 Corinthians 5:21 – ‘God made Christ to be sin for us’
- Galatians 3:17 – How much later?
- Galatians 3:28 – ‘Neither male nor female’
- Galatians 6:2 – ‘The law of Christ’
- Galatians 6:16 – The Israel of God
- Ephesians 1:10 – ‘The fullness of the times’
- Philippians 2:10 – ‘The name that is above every name’
- 1 Cor 11:3/Eph 5:23 – ‘Kephale’: ‘head’? ‘source’? ‘foremost’?
- Colossians 1:19f – Universal reconciliation?
- 1 Thessalonians 2:14f – ‘The Jews, who killed Jesus’
- 1 Timothy 2:4 – ‘God wants all people to be saved’
- 1 Timothy 2:11f – ‘I do not allow woman to teach or exercise authority over a man’
- 1 Timothy 2:15 – ‘Saved through child-bearing’
- 1 Timothy 4:10 – ‘The Saviour of all people’
- Hebrews 6:4-6 – Who are these people?
- Hebrews 12:1 – Who are these witnesses?
- 1 Peter 3:18-20 – Christ and the spirits in prison
- 2 Peter 3:9 – ‘The Lord wishes all to come to repentance’
- Jude 7 – ‘Unnatural desire’
- Revelation 7:4 – The 144,000
- Revelation 14:11 – ‘No rest day or night’
137:8 O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated!
How blessed will be the one who repays you
for what you dished out to us!
137:9 How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies
and smashes them on a rock!
This apparent celebration of violence is, for many, impossible to countenance.
Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted) asks: ‘Knocking the brains out of the Babylonian babies in retaliation for what their father-soldiers did? Is this in the Bible?’
Derek Flood (Disarming Scripture, p20f) is dismissive of any attempts to justify the text. He cites Grogan as saying, ‘The modern reader … would be much less troubled by the simple statement that it would be good when the evil Babylonian empire came to its divinely predicted end.’ Flood’s response is: ‘In other words, atrocities and violence are less disturbing when its victims are thought of in impersonal and abstract terms. Try not to imagine their faces, and it isn’t as upsetting. This is the advice we are given by a commentary that prides itself for its focus on the Bible’s contemporary relevance and theological reflection.’
We think that Flood should have made a better effort to understand both the text and Grogan’s comment on it before finding fault with both.
Grogan’s comment in full is:-
Crenshaw thinks these imprecatory prayers cannot be justified theologically: “the use of Psalms for daily devotion and as a model of prayer … runs the risk of infecting religious people with harmful attitudes. Do the prayers for vengeance against personal enemies sacralize violence?” Surely our answer to Crenshaw must be no. There is no suggestion of the psalmist himself taking a vengeful initiative. These passages are prayers, not programs for human action. The psalmist leaves the matter in the hands of God, calling on him to uphold the right. In this respect, they are remarkably similar to an NT passage, Rev 6:9–10: “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ ”
Many readers will find Ps 137:8–9 particularly difficult, for here the psalmist invokes a blessing on those who violently take the lives of children in Babylon. Two points may be made. The first is that what the psalmist contemplates is what the prophet Isaiah had predicted would happen (Isa 13:16). The second is that the OT as a whole often tends to use concrete language in contexts where modern writers are more likely to use abstract terms. This is usually helpful to us in giving vividness to the expression, but in this case the vividness is just too intense for the imagination of the modern reader, who would be much less troubled by a simple statement that it would be good when the evil Babylonian regime came to its divinely predicted end, for this is what these verses mean.
This is considerably more nuanced that Flood would have us believe, as are the comments of a range of other interpreters:-
Witherington (responding to the throwaway comment of Ehrman, noted above) – ‘In the first place this is a song, and so should not be treated like a theological or ethical treatise. In the second place, what this song is a revelation of is what is on the heart of the psalmist. In the psalms, human beings speak to, pray to, implore their God in various ways. It is a very truthful and accurate reflection of various things on and in the human heart, including the desire for vengeance. What the psalms are generally not is a revelation of what is in God’s heart or character.’
Calvin – ‘It may seem to savor of cruelty, that he should wish the tender and innocent infants to be dashed and mangled upon the stones, but he does not speak under the impulse of personal feeling, and only employs words which God had himself authorized, so that this is but the declaration of a just judgment, as when our Lord says, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Mt 7:2.)
Kidner (TOTC) suggests that in the cool light of day the Psalmist might have reasoned: ‘What do the perpetrators of such acts deserve? the dispassionate answer would presumably be ‘the degree of suffering they imposed on others’, leaving aside the further question of what should in fact be done to them, and by whom. To that further question the New Testament replies that ultimately God ‘will render to every man according to his works’, but also makes it clear that wrath is only for the ‘hard and impenitent heart’ (Rom. 2:5f.).’
As it is, the Psalmist’s thoughts and feelings are expressed with white-hot intensity. Kidner proposes a threefold response for us reading this today: ‘First, to distil the essence of it, as God himself did with the cries of Job and Jeremiah. Secondly, to receive the impact of it. This raw wound, thrust before us, forbids us to give smooth answers to the fact of cruelty. To cut this witness out of the Old Testament would be to impair its value as revelation, both of what is in man and of what the cross was required to achieve for our salvation. Thirdly, our response should be to recognize that our calling, since the cross, is to pray down reconciliation, not judgment.’
Broyles (UBCS) notes that ‘such passionate loyalty is something with which few of us can identify, though not necessarily because we are more noble. We too should passionately guard the heritage God has given us, and we must ensure that our passionate rage be committed to God in prayer, as this psalm endorses, and not taken into our own hands. Otherwise, we abuse the text by ignoring its context, namely that Psalm 137 is in the mouth of powerless victims, not powerful executioners. As we have seen elsewhere in the Psalms, especially the laments, these prayers allow God’s people to vent their feelings, even when they may not have complete theological endorsement or legitimacy (see the Introduction). Although, for example, the lament, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psa 22:1), is not an accurate reflection of God’s actual relationship to the speaker (note how the psalm later withdraws this claim in v. 24), such impassioned expressions of feelings are not expunged from the canonized psalms.’
Mays, too, has some helpful things to say: ‘There is no evading the passionate pain and anger that animates these prayers. They call for the accounts in the books of history to be balanced. But they are not to be reduced to a personal desire for savage revenge…Whatever justifiable reservations may lead us to omit their prayers from our lections and prayers must not obscure the question their passion and understanding places against ours.’
Ellsworth notes that ‘in the process of taking Jerusalem, the Babylonians committed unspeakable atrocities against its citizens. Babies were brutally killed and women were ravished. In taking this position, the writer was merely acknowledging the moral principle that God himself has revealed, namely, what we sow, we reap (Job 4:8; Prov. 22:8; Hos. 10:13; Gal. 6:7). More particularly, he was delighting in the prospect of that which God himself had promised to do, namely, bring severe judgement on Babylon (Isa. 13:1–22, esp. v. 16).’
According to Zengler, this psalm ‘is an attempt, in the face of the most profound humiliation and helplessness, to suppress the primitive human lust for violence in one’s own heart, by surrendering everything to God—a God whose word of judgment is presumed to be so universally just that even those who pray the psalm submit themselves to it.’
‘Psalm 137, along with the other imprecatory psalms in the Psalter, reminds us of the basic human desire for revenge when we or those we love have been wronged. God does not ask us to suppress those emotions, but rather to speak about them in plain and heartfelt terms. In the speaking out, we give voice to the pain, the feelings of helplessness, and the burning anger. In speaking out to God, we give the pain, the helplessness, and the burning anger to God. And we trust that God’s justice will be done.’ (deClaisse-Walford)
‘The words “dashes [your infants] against the rocks” are usually regarded as being so contrary to the teachings of the New Testament that here is little need to discuss the matter any further. Curiously enough, these very same words are repeated in the New Testament by no one less than our Lord (Lk 19:44). In fact, the verb in its Greek form is found only in Psalm 137:9 (in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text) and in the lament of our Lord over Jerusalem in Luke 19:44. This is the clearest proof possible that our Lord was intentionally referring to this psalm.’ (HSB)
‘What, then, does “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” mean? It means that God will destroy Babylon and her progeny for her proud assault against God and his kingdom. But those who trust in God will be blessed and happy. For those who groaned under the terrifying hand of their captors in Babylon there was the prospect of a sweet, divine victory that they would share in as sons and daughters of the living God. As such, this is a prayer Christians may also pray, so long as it is realized that what is at stake is not our own reputation or our personal enemies, but the cause of our Lord’s great name and kingdom.’ (HSB)