Psalm 137 is one of those wonderful and paradoxical passages of scripture that contains within itself a universe. Written from the Babylonian captivity, it starts with one of the more beautiful and haunting laments in holy writ:<\/p>\n
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
\nyea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
\nWe hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. <\/p>\nFor there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
\nand they that wasted us required of us mirth,
\nsaying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
\nHow shall we sing the Lord\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s song in a strange land? <\/p>\nIf I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
\nIf I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
\nif I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe sense of longing in the verses for a lost Jerusalem, the sense of being in the midst of a mocking and apparently all-powerful world does much more than evoke the feelings of ancient political captives. The emotional tone that the language sets captures at some viceral level part of what it means to be a disciple in a world that does not value discipleship. Its question — “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” — is the quandary of all believers living as strangers in a strange land. I find the reference to song particularly evocative. It could have asked something like, “How do I keep the laws of God in a strange land?” or “How do I explain the things of God in a strange land?”, but instead it couches the issue of religious identity in terms of song rather than practice or theology. In reacing for song we reach for something beyond law or doctrine to the deep and heartfelt joy of the Gospel. How does one capture this in a profane world? Even the KJV’s mis-translation — “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning” should probably be “let my right hand wither” — heightens the anxiety — Will I forget the City of God? Please don’t let it be so! — of being a sojourner, while paradoxically identifying the transcendent value of Zion with the most basic form of getting along in the world, the ability to use one’s hand.<\/p>\n
The second half of the Psalm, however, whipsaws me from the eternal to the ugly:<\/p>\n
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem;
\nwho said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. <\/p>\nO daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
\nhappy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
\nHappy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is harsh and vindictive stuff. Calling God’s judgment upon those who called for the end of Jerusalem. Even harsher, is the beatitude upon those who bash out the brains of Babylonian children. <\/p>\n
What is interesting to me is to trace my own reaction and experience in reading this psalm. I savor the first half of it, pausing over the language and sinking myself and my spirituality into the emotional space that it creates. When I get to the second half of the psalm, however, my mind immediately begins racing with explanations and apologia. “This is just your typical, stark ancient vengeance rhetoric,” I think. Or “To read the Old Testament you have to understand it relative to an ancient baseline rather than a modern baseline — the important thing is to see how it varies from that baseline rather than the absolute position that it takes.” Or “Maybe…” And so on. Of course, I am not the only person to do this. Christians have been struggling with the second half of Psalm 137 for centuries, and it was one of the texts that the early Church Fathers used to develop the idea of allegorical reading of scripture. <\/p>\n
I don’t really use the same exegetical moves when I read the first half of the psalm that I use when I read the second half of the psalm. I don’t think that this is evidence of some sort of debilitating inconsistency, but it does illustrate the point made by the pragmatists and other philosophers, namely that theory is something one does when there is a problem with one’s understanding. Most of the time, however, we seem to manage quite well without it. Indeed, there is a real sense in which my apparently atheoretical reading in the first half of the psalm is a richer and more meaningful experience. I only start building elaborate exegetical theories when I read the second half of the psalm. In this sense reading Psalm 137 is a microcosm of what it means to be religious. At times you soar effortlessly on the beauty of the gospel, and at times you struggle mightily to make sense of what seems ugly or harsh. And often, one is violently whipped from one to the other. That, I suppose, is part of what it means to be by the waters of Babylon.<\/p>\n
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Psalm 137 is one of those wonderful and paradoxical passages of scripture that contains within itself a universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6393,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653\/revisions\/6393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}