NOTES for Psa 137

How should we conduct ourselves in a hostile environment, among those to whom the sacred things we cherish are alien and, at best, arouse curiosity as something strangely exotic? In the refusal to sing sacred hymns for enslavers, we should see not only an unwillingness to demean oneself before oppressors, but also a refusal to cast pearls before those capable of trampling them underfoot. Many sacred things have already been lost and desecrated by enemies; preventing the desecration of the little that remains is a way of remaining faithful to what was once so thoughtlessly undervalued.

The resolve to resist a hostile environment spiritually is absolutely necessary. But we also see that the anger of enslaved captives can take extreme forms. The cruel words about Babylonian infants have troubled readers and hearers of the psalm many times over the centuries. These words have often been interpreted allegorically, with the infants understood as sins. Yet in any case the question is unavoidable: why is the allegory expressed in this particular form?

Yes, the oppressed often dream of cruel retribution, and more than once their fury has proved blind, making no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. But can we deny that cruel retribution has repeatedly fallen upon enslavers, provoked by their own atrocities? In our own day, many Germans, recalling with pain their country's sufferings at its military defeat, acknowledge that it was not the victors who began the cruelties...

If we want to understand fully the thought of the psalm, expressed in a way unfamiliar to us and perhaps even repellent, we must not tear it out of the Bible, but relate it to the rest of its pages.