Dashing Her Little Ones: Psalm 137 – Part 1

Once its priestly context is understood, Psalm 137 can be emancipated from its incidental “Zionist” trappings, and our own hearts can be pierced as we witness the ongoing destruction of churches by God’s enemies around the world today.

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

Psalm 137 concludes with what is considered to be one of the most embarrassing verses in the Bible. The real embarrassment, however, is our own ignorance of the Bible. Instead of exalting ourselves as judges over the text, we must humble ourselves before it. Only then will God reveal to us its meaning. Credo ut intelligam.

Western believers are quite comfortable with the first half of the psalm for the same reason that we are quite comfortable with the sufferings of Christ on the cross: those who suffer are admirable but ultimately harmless. But the latter half makes us uncomfortable for the same reason that the conquest of Canaan and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 make us uncomfortable.¹For more discussion, see The Sword of Adam: Preterism vs. Pacifism. We rightly admire the ministry of mercy, but our failure to understand spiritual warfare as a process of threshing wheat from chaff means we are too cowardly to call upon God to take actual vengeance upon those who have refused to repent.

Since the final judgment will not occur until the end of history, it is kept at a safe distance by divorcing it from actual history. It is locked away in the rifle cabinet of neo-gnosticism in case it hurts anyone. The thought that the God who is love might ever intervene in actual history as an avenger is too shocking to contemplate. But covenant history shows us that redemption never comes without corresponding vengeance.

The sword of Jesus is a two-edged sword. The Hebrew word for “redeem” also means “avenge.” To free somebody is to cut their bonds. To plunder God’s priestly vessels is to bind the strong man who has taken them captive (Matthew 12:29; Mark 3:27). The freedom of the Hebrews required the plagues upon Egypt. The future of the children of Israel required the judgment of their Egyptian-hearted parents in the wilderness. The emancipation of the Hebrews under Zedekiah required the destruction of the apostate kingdom of Judah. The deliverance of the fledgling Church required the holocaust of AD70.

If a culture rejects God’s mercy, His covenant love, it ultimately comes face to face with God’s covenant justice. If we choose the switchblade over the cross, we discover that God Himself has a much bigger knife. Although He is long-suffering, not willing than any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), He never fails to arrive on a white horse before it is too late. He brings not only salvation but also sudden destruction in His wake, vindicating the faithful against the scoffers (2 Peter 3:3-4).

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now. (Numbers 14:18-19)

Since Jesus calls His people to love their enemies, commentators write off the imprecations in Psalm 137 as merely a device to “give a voice” to the grief of those in exile, not a call for actual vengeance but a rhetorical release of pent-up sorrow and anger. This is a fashionable retreat to the comfort zone of pietism—the religion of the heart—in order to avoid prophetic conflict in the real world. However, this text stoutly refuses to be emasculated by monkish academia or passive, feminized Bible teachers. It must be understood for what it is—not the cry of a heart burning with hatred but a call for holy justice. This was exactly the desire of the prophet Habakkuk, who questioned God’s silence and called Him to honor His promises of judgment upon Israel. The Lord responded with a terrifying revelation of the coming Babylonian invasion. He does not delay forever.

Likewise, the final verses of this song of lament are grounded in God’s promises as Israel’s eternal ga’al, the redeemer/avenger who not only uses the nations to turn ungodliness from Jacob, but also avenges the righteous against the “goat” nations whose hatred of the people of God He used as a catalyst to divide Israel’s own sheep from its own goats. Those who bless the true sons of Abraham will always be blessed. Those who curse the true sons of Abraham will always be cursed (Genesis 12:3).

Overview

The psalm is comprised of six stanzas, following the heptamerous covenant pattern established in type in Genesis 1 but omitting the final “day,” the ultimate Sabbath. The reason for this is that the final step (Covenant Succession) concerns the inheritance of the saints, and the entire point of this song is that the repossession of Canaan by Israel—as promised through Jeremiah—would not be accomplished until the rulers of Babylon were judged. Levites bore the sword in the Garden-Sanctuary (as human cherubim) but not in the Land.

This is the song of an “Adam” (chief priest) who longs to enter once again into God’s Sabbath rest. But Israel would remain in captivity until all of the Sabbaths she had stolen from the Land—under her Egyptian-hearted kings—were repaid. Following this “social flood” that wiped out the old order, the promises of a “new heaven and new earth” would be fulfilled. ²For more discussion, see Cosmic Language – Part 1.

For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (Leviticus 25:3-4)

This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall make slaves even of them, and I will recompense them according to their deeds and the work of their hands.” (Jeremiah 25:11-14)

And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. (2 Chronicles 36:19-21)

The book of Leviticus follows the same sixfold pattern, since the Levites—as representatives pictured in the golden Altar of Incense—were apportioned no earthly inheritance in the Land, represented in the bronze Altar of Blood. Their ministry was not in the natural realm but in the spiritual, the heavenlies.³See The Shape of Leviticus.

The fact that the Jews described in Psalm 137, including the author, were musicians who sang the songs of the Lord, reveals that they were Levites who served God as ministers of worship in the Temple. During the reign of David and afterwards, the Kohathite Heman and his family had a prominent role in the service of the music of the sanctuary (1 Chronicles 6:33; 16:41; 25:1). The Kohathites were those charged with “the ark, the table, the lampstand, the altars, the vessels of the sanctuary with which the priests minister, and the screen; all the service connected with these.” In other words, those who sat down by the rivers of Babel were not common Jewish exiles estranged from their own houses, cities, and vineyards—the heritage of the non-priestly tribes—but priests without a Temple, Sons of God without a House of God.

Like Abraham, as those with access to the courts of God, what they really longed for was their “heavenly country.” The Temple of Solomon had been their entire world, and without it there were no mediating sacrifices for the actual world.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. (Psalm 84:10)

The psalm is not an expression of nationalistic hatred but a desire for God to be vindicated against idolaters by those who had already been judged for similar sins. God was justified in His case against Israel and the exile had circumcised their hearts. He must also be vindicated against the idolaters whom He used to destroy her, since they did so for their own ends.

In Part 2, it will be seen that a closer line-by-line analysis of the covenant-literary structure of the Psalm not only justifies the author’s imprecations but also explains his careful use of symbols that allude to previous Scriptures and events in covenant history.

If you are new to this method of interpretation, please visit the Welcome page for some help to get you up to speed.