Dr. Couch, Psalm 137 is a unique Psalm. It sounds so harsh! What is it about?
This Psalm is about the Jews weeping as they were
taken into captivity to Babylon. They longed for the blessings of the
Holy Land and of Jerusalem. However their sins had led to their
captivity. In God’s sovereignty and providence, He will still someday
bring punishment upon Babylon because of its hatred of the people of
God. The Psalm is also called an imprecatory Psalm in that it calls for
horrible punishment to fall upon the Babylonians. ("Imprecatory" means
"To call down a curse") While the call for punishment and vengeance
sounds harsh to our ears, we fail to realize that the Jews are God’s
special people. The Lord is furious when they are mistreated—even though
they are guilty of their own sins!
During World War II, in order to stop the war,
bring it to a completion, and inflict punishment, the allies ceased
being polite! They fire bombed and saturated bombed Germany and Japan
into submission. Since God is the Author of all of history, this was
part of His providential punishment upon these two wayward and cruel
nations.
This Psalm 137 reminds me of a documentary
special I saw recently on Public Television. Thousands of Jews in modern
Israel were gathered to listen to the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra
perform. When they played pieces that were performed in the
concentration camps of Europe, the audience fell absolutely silent! No
one moved!
When the Jews were returning to the Holy Land in
1947-1948 to re-establish the nation of Israel, even while combat was
raging around them, they formed a classical orchestra to play, even
though the bullets were flying.
During World War II the guards of the Jewish
prison camps made the Jews sing and play their instruments though they
were about to be gassed! This is partly what is described in Psalm 137:
When the Jews arrived in Babylon they sat down
and wept, "When they remembered Zion" (v. 1). Their captors "demanded of
us songs, and our tormentors demanded mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of
the songs of Zion’" (v. 3). This was the demand of the Germans in the
prison camps!
The captive Jews who had arrived in Babylon
responded: "How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land"? (v. 4).
Then these famous two verses:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you,
if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. (vv. 5-6)
Then the psalmist goes on and cries out: "How blessed
will be the one who repays you (Babylon) with the recompense with which
you have repaid us" (v. 8). He follows up with the imprecatory verse,
verse 9: "How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little
ones against the rock."
Dr. Merrill F. Unger on this terrible verse notes:
Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch
