February 25thPsalm 137
If I Had A Rocket Launcher
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks . . . .
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do [1]
The key word in this psalm is remember repeated in each of the prayer’s three sections.
Vs. 1-4
‘We wept when we remembered Zion.’
Babylon was one of the great (read oppressive) powers of the ancient world. Its hanging gardens were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. At the end of its main avenue stood an imposing temple honoring Marduk, high god of Babylon, the one who empowered them to conquer and subdue lesser races.
The waters of Babylon were man-made canals running between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. We can picture the scene – the slow moving waters lined with willows, the evening of a stiflingly hot day, a day of heavy work of forced labor by the Israelite captives, weary and exhausted. At the end of the day all they could do was weep when they remembered their homeland. Their Babylonian neighbours, however, would not allow them rest. They ordered ‘mirth.’
This brings to mind southern slave owners ordering their slaves to sing for the owners’ enjoyment. Or a Nazi commandant ordering Jewish musicians to provide entertainment for a house party he was hosting. [2]
Vs. 5-6
‘If I do not remember you….’
The ones who prayed this psalm knew that YHWH has promised to care for His covenant people:
Psalm 46: God is in the midst of her (Zion), she shall not be moved.’
Psalm 48: His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth ... within her citadels God has shown himself a sure defence.
But Zion/Israel was moved – her defences breached. She was invaded and destroyed. No wonder the exiles ask: ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this foreign land?’
Vs. 7-9 ‘Remember, O Lord’
Now the prayer turns bitter and vengeful. We cringe at the words. But we should reflect carefully on this prayer. OT theologian, Brent Strawn offers some wise words for us who take scripture seriously.
- ‘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 be so ‘velvet-tongued’ if they had suffered after this ’
- It is tempting to suggest that the psalmist’s own baby was dashed against a rock – and not just any rock. In the Hebrew it reads ‘the rock’ as if the writer has a particular rock in mind. While this does not baptize the violence, it still reads differently when read as a cry for justice on the part of a grieving parent who saw her child die violently. The act haunts her memory and her dreams.
- This psalm is a poem – it is not ethical instruction or law. This psalm is also a prayer. It is not just for reading but for praying. The best way to read this psalm is to hear it as the cry of rage lifted up to God who claims sole proprietary rights to vengeance and payback.
Many North Americans, including Christians, routinely insist that the punishment should fit the crime. Those who have deprived others of a future deserve no future themselves.
We remember too that in extreme situations, grief and anger are both inevitable and inseparable. The worst response to monstrous evil is ‘to feel nothing.’ To forget is to submit to evil, to wither and die; to remember is to resist, to be faithful, and to live again.
The Romanian-born Elie Wiesel lived by the credo expressed in "Night," his landmark story of the Holocaust – "to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."
Is the cycle of violence broken by the psalmist’s honesty with God? Psalm 137 points ultimately toward forgiveness. It is even possible that the psalmist’s cathartic expression of vengeance represents a first step toward forgiving the victimizers. Similarly, after proclaiming God’s forgiveness of the sins that led to exile (Is. 40), Isaiah proclaims God’s word that the mission of post-exilic Israel to be a ‘light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth’ (Isa. 49.6). The desire for revenge gives way to a mission to save. Hate has been replaced by hope.
Ellen Davis writes: ‘No personal vendetta is authorized. . . . On the contrary, the validity of any punishing action depends entirely on its being God’s action, not ours. And readers of the Bible recognize that this is in fact a severely limiting condition. For God’s action is free, directed not only to our healing, but to the healing of the whole moral order. Through this psalm (and others like it) we demand that our enemies be driven into God’s hands. But who can say what will happen to them there? For God is manifest in judgement of our enemies, but also, alas, in mercy toward them. Thus these vengeful psalms have a relationship with other forms of prayer for our enemies.’ [3]
PSALM 137 can be a Christian prayer. Faithfulness will remember in pain and in prayer. This is Easter Saturday faith, sure that Easter Sunday will follow.
NOTES
[1] ‘Masters of War’ – Bob Dylan. Dylan composed this song in 1963 as the momentum for the Vietnam War was building. He was just 22 years old.
Critic Andy Gill described the song as "the bluntest condemnation in Dylan's songbook, a torrent of plain speaking pitched at a level that even the objects of its bile might understand it." Gill points out that when the song was published in Broadside magazine in February 1963, it was accompanied by drawings by Suze Rotolo, Dylan's girlfriend at the time, which depicted a man carving up the world with a knife and fork, while a hungry family forlornly looks on.
African-American singer, Leon Russell sang the song to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. It was not well received.
[2] It is unfathomable to imagine the worst place on Earth being a hub of creativity and musical talent. But there were 15 orchestras at Auschwitz, in which Jewish musicians played at the order of Nazi commanders, and many were also secretly composing in acts of personal resistance. [Jewish Chronicle, Jan. 23, 2025. Accessed online]
[3] Ellen Davis – Getting involved with God: Rediscovering the OT.
[4] To listen to two modern songwriters, angry at the injustice in the world, listen to ]Masters of War’ by Dylan, ‘If I had a rocket launcher’ by Bruce Cockburn. Both these songs are raw, as is Psalm 137, yet we recognize the sad truth in them.