Passage

Psalms 137

Book: Psalms · NASB95

Verse

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.' How can we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, 'Raze it, raze it to its very foundation.' O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, how blessed will be the one who repays you with the recompense with which you have repaid us. How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock." (Psalm 137:1-9, NASB95, full chapter, 9 verses)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down and wept, When we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it We hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, And our tormentors mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.' How can we sing the LORD's song In a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth If I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, 'Raze it, raze it To its very foundation.' O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, How blessed will be the one who repays you With the recompense with which you have repaid us. How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock." (Psalm 137:1-9, NASB95)

The full 9-verse psalm is short enough to quote completely above. Surrounding-Psalm context: Psalm 137 sits in Book V of the Psalter (Pss 107-150), grouped with other post-exilic / return-from-exile compositions. Psalm 136 is the great hesed-litany ("for His lovingkindness is everlasting"); Psalm 138 is a Davidic individual thanksgiving. Psalm 137 stands out as one of the most distinctive lament-imprecatory psalms in the entire collection.

Setting

Speaker: Anonymous Hebrew exile (or representative collective voice of the exilic community).
Audience: Originally the post-exilic Hebrew community recalling the trauma of the Babylonian conquest and exile; preserved as part of Israel's worship-poetry canon.
Location: Composed in or after the Babylonian exile; the psalm's setting is "by the rivers of Babylon", likely the canal system around the city of Babylon where the exiles were resettled (cf. Ezek 1:1, "the river Chebar").
Time period: Post-587 BC (after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the Solomonic temple); plausibly composed during the exile (587-538 BC) or early in the post-return period (post-538 BC). The vivid present-tense memory of "we sat down and wept" suggests proximate-temporal composition rather than centuries-later reflection.

Theological reading

The psalm is the central atheist proof-text for "the Bible endorses infanticide", specifically verse 9, "How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock", and as such has been deployed by Christopher Hitchens (god is not Great 2007), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation 2006), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion 2006), and evilbible.com as decisive evidence that the OT is morally monstrous. The Christian-theological response requires careful exegesis on multiple converging fronts:

1. The descriptive-vs-prescriptive distinction is decisive

Psalm 137 is a lament psalm in the imprecatory genre. It records the speaker's emotional state and felt desire in response to genocidal trauma. It does NOT issue a divine command, prescribe an ethical norm, or instruct any action.

The atheist deployment requires reading the psalm AS IF it were YHWH commanding "go dash Babylonian babies against rocks." But:

The verse is in first-person from the exile, NOT third-person divine speech
The psalm contains no command-language (no imperative, no "you shall," no covenantal stipulation)
The verse is in the literary-genre of imprecation, where the psalmist VOICES desire-for-vengeance to YHWH, not where YHWH commands action
The psalm expresses a human emotional response, not a divine ethical instruction

This is the universal hermeneutical principle that applies to ALL biblical narrative-and-poetry literature: the text NARRATES emotional states and historical events without ENDORSING every emotional state expressed or every event described. Reading Psalm 137:9 as endorsement is the same hermeneutical error as reading Cain's murder of Abel (Gen 4) as endorsement of murder, or reading David's adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam 11) as endorsement of adultery. (See OT Atrocities Descriptive vs Prescriptive Objection for the broader hermeneutical defeater.)

2. The historical-trauma context

Verse 9 cannot be evaluated in moral-abstract terms apart from its historical-trauma context. The Babylonian conquest (587 BC) was one of the most catastrophic events in ancient Near Eastern history. Babylonian war-policy documented in their own royal records included:

Mass deportation (the Hebrew exilic community itself)
Razing of conquered cities (Jerusalem destroyed; the Solomonic temple burned)
Mass execution of resistance leaders (2 Kings 25:18-21; Jeremiah 52:24-27)
Violence against children, including documented Babylonian war-policy of dashing infants against rocks during city-conquests (cf. Hosea 13:16; Nahum 3:10; the standard ANE warfare-pattern)

Verse 9's image is the Babylonian war-pattern turned BACK on Babylon, the lex talionis (eye-for-eye, lex retaliationis) principle that what a nation does to others, may God repay to that nation. This is moral retributive logic appealed to YHWH, not gratuitous-cruelty endorsement.

The psalmist is essentially saying: "Lord, the Babylonians did THIS to our children. Let what they did come back on them." The horror of v. 9 is the horror of asking YHWH to enforce justice via the same horror Babylon inflicted. That is morally-comprehensible (whether or not we approve) within the framework of lex talionis + traumatic appeal-to-divine-justice.

3. The imprecatory-psalm tradition

Psalm 137 belongs to a distinct genre: the imprecatory psalms (Pss 7, 35, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, 109, 137, 139). These psalms voice prayers-for-divine-vengeance against enemies. The imprecatory genre raises specific theological questions:

The imprecation is addressed TO YHWH, these are prayers, not action-instructions. The psalmist hands the vengeance over to God ("Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord", Deut 32:35; Rom 12:19). The psalmist explicitly REFUSES to take vengeance into his own hands; he asks YHWH to be the agent.
The imprecation appeals to divine justice, not to permissive divine-will. The psalmist trusts YHWH to be just, even when justice looks frighteningly retributive from human perspective. This is a high doctrine of divine justice, not a low one.
The imprecation gives voice to suffering that secular-rational ethics often suppresses. The pastoral-theological tradition (Bonhoeffer's Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible 1940; C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms 1958) recognizes the imprecatory psalms as honest articulation of trauma-rage that healthy spiritual processing requires.
The imprecation does NOT bypass NT ethical development. Christ's teaching ("love your enemies" Matt 5:44) intensifies and reorients the OT trajectory; the NT believer prays differently than the post-exilic Hebrew exile. But this is moral-trajectory-fulfillment within Scripture, not Scripture-against-itself.

4. The psalm's own internal-textual framing

The psalm's structure suggests it knows what it's doing literarily:

Verses 1-3: lament posture (sitting and weeping by the rivers of Babylon)
Verses 4-6: oath of Jerusalem-loyalty (the right-hand-forgetting and tongue-clinging vows)
Verses 7-9: imprecation against Edom (who collaborated with Babylon, see Obadiah) and against Babylon
The psalm escalates emotionally from grief (vv. 1-3) to identity-affirmation (vv. 4-6) to retributive-prayer (vv. 7-9)
The retributive-prayer climax is positioned as the most-emotionally-intense moment, NOT as the psalm's central thesis or normative-ethical instruction

Reading v. 9 in isolation from its psalm-internal narrative-arc misrepresents the psalm's literary integrity.

5. Apologetic deployment

When opponents deploy Psalm 137:9:

Lead with descriptive-vs-prescriptive distinction (per move 1 above)
Provide the historical-trauma context (per move 2)
Note the imprecatory-genre framing (per move 3)
Emphasize the prayer-not-command structure, the psalmist asks YHWH; he doesn't act
Cite the NT moral-trajectory-fulfillment (Matt 5:44; Rom 12:19) showing the ethical development from imprecation to love-of-enemies WITHIN Scripture's own arc
Tactical force-commit move: "Show me where God commands the Israelites to dash Babylonian babies against rocks. Just one verse. The text contains a psalmist's PRAYER, not a divine command. If you can't show the command, and you can't, your 'Bible endorses infanticide' reading misreads the text's own genre and structure."

Patristic and Reformation reception

Augustine (Enarrationes in Psalmos 137), extensive treatment; reads "the little ones" allegorically as the nascent evil thoughts and impulses in the heart, to be "dashed against the Rock" (Christ, 1 Cor 10:4). This allegorical reading dominated medieval interpretation; while not the historical-grammatical reading, it shows the patristic tradition's hermeneutical sophistication in handling the difficult text.
John Chrysostom (Hom. on Ps. 137), treats the imprecation as authentic-emotional-expression of traumatized exiles, addressed to God for divine-justice; emphasizes the lament-genre framing.
Aquinas (ST II-II q.83 a.8, on the morality of imprecatory prayer), distinguishes between (a) imprecation against PERSONS as ends-in-themselves (impermissible) and (b) imprecation against the EVIL that persons embody, as petition for divine justice (permissible). The Psalm's imprecation falls under (b).
Luther (Operationes in Psalmos + multiple psalm-lectures), embraces the imprecatory psalms as authentic Christian prayer when properly understood; notes that the NT believer prays "may God's kingdom come and Babylon-of-this-world fall" in the same retributive-against-systemic-evil mode.
Calvin (Comm. on Psalms 137), extensive treatment; affirms historical-grammatical reading + the lex talionis moral-logic; rejects allegorical-evasion of the text's literal force; notes the psalmist's appeal to divine-justice rather than to personal-revenge-action.
Modern: C.S. Lewis (Reflections on the Psalms 1958, ch. 3 "The Cursings"); Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible 1940); Erich Zenger (A God of Vengeance? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath 1994); James Adams (War Psalms of the Prince of Peace 1991); John Day (Crying for Justice 2005).

Key words (Hebrew)

dashes / shatters, נִפֵּץ / nippēṣ, piel of nāpaṣ (H5310): "to shatter, dash to pieces, scatter." The piel intensification carries violent-fragmentation force. Used in Babylonian and Israelite war-poetry alike for the standard ANE-warfare destruction-of-conquered-population vocabulary (cf. Hosea 13:16; Nahum 3:10).
little ones, עֹלָלַיִךְ / ʿōlālayik, plural of ʿōlāl (H5768) "infant, child, suckling." Specifically the young children of the conquered population, the Babylonian war-victims-pattern that is being asked to be retributively-applied back to Babylon.
blessed / happy, אַשְׁרֵי / ʾašrê (H835): "blessings, happiness, blessedness, fortunate." Same word that opens Psalm 1:1 ("blessed is the man who walks not..."); a wisdom-formula. In v. 9 the ʾašrê is iron-bitter, the "blessed one who repays Babylon" is an acknowledgment of the lex talionis moral-logic, not a celebration of cruelty for its own sake.
rock, סֶלַע / selaʿ (H5553): "rock, cliff, crag." In Augustine's allegorical reading, selaʿ points to Christ (1 Cor 10:4, the spiritual rock following Israel in the wilderness). In the historical-grammatical reading, selaʿ names the standard ANE-warfare instrument used by victors against conquered infants.

Cross-references

Obadiah, the Edomite-collaboration-with-Babylon background; the v. 7 "Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom" indictment grounded
Isaiah 13.16, "Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes", the Babylonian-war-pattern documented as Babylon DOING this to others (lex talionis basis)
2 Kings 25, historical narrative of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (586 BC); the trauma the psalm laments
Lamentations, companion exilic-trauma literature
Romans 12.19, "never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord", NT articulation of the imprecation-handed-to-God logic
Deuteronomy 32.35, "Vengeance is mine, and recompense", OT source of the Pauline citation
Matthew 5.44, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", NT moral-trajectory-fulfillment that intensifies and reorients the imprecatory tradition