Bad Old Bible
There's that startling text Psalm 137:8-9 that says, "O Daughter of Babylon...happy is he who...seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." You don't have to be one of those genuinely tedious "politically correct" people to find that passage a challenge. Here in "the word of God" we have someone exulting in the brutal killing of a child. To the non-believer who has little time for explanations the case is closed; there's no chance to say, "Wait, let me explain." Others would really like to know how the Bible could promote such feelings. Non-believers of that stripe gladly admit that the Bible ranks high as a book that has promoted justice and virtue and are willing to listen.
Believers handle such texts in different ways. There are those who dismiss this one as a vindictive outburst by a person who is best ignored. I suppose that's possible but since the psalm wasn't inserted into the canon by such a person we can't settle for that. Whoever included the psalm wanted it heard, and in fact, wanted it sung. Still, even the compilers of the psalms might have thought the original psalmist was being vindictive but still wanted his voice to be heard. To show, maybe, how mistreatment can drive a man over the edge. We've seen that kind of thing in movies and in real life where a person was driven to the point of madness and said what he wouldn't dream of saying under ordinary circumstances. We might nor approve it but we "understand" it.
Others, moving in the same general direction, insist that the psalmist might have felt this was how he should feel and that it wasn't simple vindictiveness. "But we've outgrown such a moral response," is what they'd tell us. They'd add that this shows the development of moral ideas in the Bible. I think there's something to that but it's not as simple as it appears because there are lots of things in the Bible that were never meant to be taken as "normative". The Bible doesn't mind rehearsing what this man or that generation felt and it sometimes does it without critiquing it as it records it. But even if we knew that the psalmist in 137:8-9 was speaking from a low moral level that wouldn't mean this was the biblical norm. When the chronicler tells us that God was thought to be a mountain-God and that's why he defeated their armies we're not to suppose that's the normative teaching of scripture. Even in this day and age we can find people whose views aren't as "advanced" as our own so we shouldn't think it strange if we find it in the truthful Bible.
But is the psalmist being vindictive? Is he approving of a low moral response? Well, of course, in a Western society where so many oppose the death penalty for even the most horrendous crimes there's no way to justify 137:8-9 but maybe it won't hurt to see what he might have been saying before we damn it.
Bear in mind the passage doesn't reflect an individual opinion about crimes perpetrated on individuals. It's speaks of war and the horrors committed against nations. Reflect on the World Wars and think maybe of the Kaisers and Hitler from the angle of the oppressed of Europe and we're beginning to set the scene correctly. Whatever we think of the grounds for beginning a war, when we're in the middle of one and the oppressor has savaged nations and hundreds of thousands have been butchered we might expect the kind of speech of 137:8. "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us." Not everyone even in this modern age would call that vindictive or vengeful if it were uttered in light of early revelations of what the Nazis were doing to humans in the death camps. At least we would "understand" it and might think it a hope-filled wish for justice. What if this passage is just that, a nation expressing it's longing that justice be carried out on the oppressor?
But surely we shouldn't take it out on the infants? Of course not! But we don't need to read the psalm as "infant-phobia". The psalmist wants justice against Babylon and not against infants. He assumes that justice will take place via military conflict and he knows that in warfare the children will suffer this wicked violence (it was a common practice to kill children in this way--see a concordance for passages). Note that it's "your" infants that are killed. The object of scorn and indignation is not babies but a predatory nation! We all allow ourselves the room to condemn as immoral "a nation's" predatory behaviour even though we know it isn't the will of every individual in that nation. Even those who without remorse wage warfare express regret at times that the innocent suffer in the process. Maybe we should bear that in mind when reading this text.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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