Dashing Babies on Rocks: A Look at Psalms 137

There are times when the world seems overwhelming. Life continues to throw punches, and they all can’t be blocked. Everything can just begin to wear you down, and in those moments, it’s not uncommon to cry out in lament.

In Psalms 137, we see that happen. In just a single sentence, this unnamed man cries out in such violent rhetoric that those lines can be painful to read. His sentiment is jarring, and because of its harshness, the verse has often been used to demonize the Bible.

The words this man utters are, “A blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!” Often, these lines are left out of the liturgy, while those preceding it are used to remember the destruction of both Jewish Temples. Because, after all, this revenge fantasy is horrific.

Yet verses like this are important, as they reveal the depth of human emotion. The reaction here, while filled with anger, is still very much human, and we can’t ignore that. We also can’t validate it, but we can try to understand it.

Part of the beauty of the Psalms is that they provide an entire picture of our conversations of faith. It shows not only the praise and worship that often go up to God, but also the anger and doubt that creep in. Psalms 137 is filled with the latter; it’s filled with doubt.

This doubt is understandable. This individual has lived through the destruction of Israel. The most important part of his religious world, the center of his faith, the place in which he would have felt closest to God, the Temple in Jerusalem, had been destroyed. This was an earth-shattering event.

Jerusalem itself had been conquered by the Babylonians, the towns and villages ravaged by the conquerors, and many, including this individual, had been uprooted from the only place they had called home and forced to move hundreds of miles away. He was a captive in an unknown place.

There, in a foreign land, those who captured him basically say, “Where is your god now?” It’s a question that he was probably asking himself. Where was God when this man’s world came crashing down? Can God even hear him, or act on his behalf, now that they are no longer in their homeland and are separated from the Temple?

This is something many of us can relate to. As the world comes crashing down, the distance from God and the loneliness this individual felt are so understandable. That a bit of doubt creeps in is expected, even if just for the briefest of moments.

For this writer, that loss and pain he’s feeling quickly turns into resolve. While he’s not sure if God has forgotten them, he still has some doubt; he won’t forget. He won’t forget the intimacy he once felt with God, the closeness that he knew. While doubt may creep in, it would never replace his faith.

Even with that resolve, this man’s anger isn’t quenched. It’s in the third part of Psalms 137, after this man speaks of his turmoil, and the mocking he faces from his captors; after he voices his resolve to keep the faith and keep God in his heart and mind, only then does he burst in anger.

The anger he feels bubbles over. What he envisions is horrific. It’s most likely a horror he saw done to his own people. That doesn’t excuse his fantasy of revenge, but it places it in context. It makes it understandable. He’s expressing human emotions.

Even though he has his faith intact, everything that has come upon him isn’t forgotten. He nevertheless feels the same pain and loss he was feeling before. His life is still a mess, and the horrors he witnessed simply don’t vanish.

That’s the beauty of the Psalms. It displays the entire gamut of conversations we can have with God. We can voice our anger, our pain, our doubt, and yet still hold on to this closeness. It doesn’t mean that all of our feelings and wishes will be validated. Because at times, they shouldn’t be validated. But through voicing them, we can work through them.