God’s Word for You

Psalm 137:7-9 By the rivers of Babylon (Part 2)

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, June 29, 2025

7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day that Jerusalem fell,
how they shouted, “Tear it down!
Tear it down to its foundations!”

There are several places where these wicked acts of Edom are hinted at, especially in Lamentations, where the Lord’s judgment is called down upon them: “Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who live in the land of Uz. A cup will also be passed to you. You will become drunk and you will strip yourself naked… You, O daughter of Edom, he will punish your sin and expose your wickedness” (Lamentations 4:21-22). Long-time enemies of Judah, the Edomites “shed the innocent blood of the people of Judah” (Joel 3:19). They bought captives who were Israelites and took them as slaves (Amos 1:6-9). Obadiah says: “On the day you stood aloof when strangers carried off Judah’s wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them” (Obadiah 1:11). All of those things were earlier in Israel’s history, mostly dating to the time of the divided kingdom, more than a century before the Babylonian exile. But now in the Psalm we hear about what the Edomites said when Jerusalem’s walls were breached by Babylon. “Tear it down” is literally “Strip her!” since cities were usually described in terms applying to women.

The Psalm writer prays that God would remember the arrogant and greedy sins of the Edomites, sins against the First Commandment, but also the Seventh Commandment, grabbing some land from southern Judah to expand their territory—with or without Babylon’s knowledge or collusion.

The psalm ends with one of the most shocking passages in the Bible:

8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction!
Blessed is the one who repays you
with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed is the one who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the cliff!

This kind of prayer, where God’s curse is called down on God’s enemies, is called imprecation. There are several imprecatory psalms, including Psalms 55, 56, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83 and 109 in particular. Sometimes you hear an attitude about such psalms that thinks that they’re part of an old-fashioned religious view that’s barbaric and which we have outgrown—but that view misses the point. Many people wrestle with statements like this because they seem to contradict Jesus’ directive to “love one another” (John 13:34-35). But as Martin Luther pointed out, we can’t pray without cursing at the same time:

“I cannot pray without cursing at the same time. If I say, ‘Hallowed be your name,’ I must thereby say: “May the name of… all who blaspheme your name be accursed, condemned and dishonored.’ If I say, ‘Your kingdom come,’ I must thereby say, ‘May…all kingdoms on earth that are opposed to your kingdom be accursed, condemned and destroyed.’ If I say, ‘Your will be done,’ I must thereby say, ‘May the plans and plots… of all who strive against your will be accursed, condemned, dishonored and brought to naught.’ Truly, thus my lips and heart pray day in, day out, and all who believe in Christ are praying this with me” (“Against the Assassin at Dresden,” What Luther Says #3519).

I wonder about the last word of this psalm, which is “cliff.” In Hebrew it’s sela, very similar to a word that occurs in many Psalms, Selah. The usual Psalm-word, Selah, means something like “lift up,” and indicates a pause for reflection, an instrumental solo when the listener has time to think about what was just said. Here I wonder if this term, “high cliff” or sela, was chosen because it sounds like that other word but recalls the terrible things that the Babylonians and Edomites did when they destroyed Judah and Jerusalem.

We never take revenge into our own hands, and that isn’t at all what the Psalmist is writing about. We leave the punishment of sin in God’s hands and in the hands of those God has appointed to punish according to their station in life. Governments punish public wrongdoing and they discipline their citizens, parents discipline their own children, churches discipline their own members, and teachers discipline their own students just as businesses might discipline their own workers. These things are matters of justice, and we pray with the Psalmist that God would let justice be done. We also pray for his mercy and that God would lead sinners, including our enemies, to repentance and faith. All of these things give God glory, just as the existence of heaven and hell give God glory. Jesus summarized the Gospel and left the warning of the Law in place when he said: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).

We also pray that God would drive us to reach out with his Gospel so that people would turn from the sins that condemn them, repent, and put their faith in their loving and merciful Savior.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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