How Do You Respond To The Unspeakable?

Psalm 137:5-9

5If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget its skill upon the harp.

6May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth

if I fail to remember you,

if I don’t make Jerusalem my highest joy.

7O LORD, remember what the Edomites did

on the day the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem.

“Destroy it!” they yelled.

“Level it to the ground!”

8O Babylon, you will be destroyed.

Happy is the one who pays you back

for what you have done to us.

9Happy is the one who takes your babies

and smashes them against the rocks!

Psalm 137:9 probably ranks among those verses in Scripture that you wish weren’t there. Why is this in the inspired Word of God?

Because it is the true, human desire of the psalmist. The Psalms can be inspirational, comforting, and instructive, but more than anything, they’re honest expressions of the human heart in relationship with God.

After the Armenian massacres in Turkey in the early 1900s, a Christian relief worker visited a village where almost every man had been killed and fifteen hundred orphans were left roaming the streets. He brought some food for the starving women and children and then arranged for a church service. When he suggested they sing one of their hymns, they replied that they hadn’t been able to sing since the massacre.

Can you blame them? Which of the Psalms would you give them to sing? It’s easy to criticize the intemperate language of Psalm 137:9, but as Charles Spurgeon writes: “Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain; they might not perhaps be so velvet-mouthed.”

Strong emotion against inhuman violence is not wrong when it comes as a cry to God. But make sure you leave the outcome in his hands. God says, “I will take vengeance; I will repay those who deserve it” (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19).

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish;

Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel;

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;

Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

THOMAS MOORE

Bible Networking

Verse 8 seems like the macabre flip side of Jesus’ Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12). For another version of this principle, read Job 4:8.

Notable Quotable

“Let all the secret and open enemies of God’s church take heed how they employ their tongues and hands against God’s own. They that presume to do either may here read their fatal doom written in the dust of Eden, and in the ashes of Babylon.”

DANIEL FEATLEY