Third Section (vv. 7–9):
Punishments Desired
■
7 The third section (vv. 7–9) shifts the direction of the discourse as
well as the speaker’s attitude. He begins in v. 7a with the imperative
“remember!” addressed in the vocative to Yhwh. While the theme of the two
preceding sections was remembering on the part of the deportees or those
returned from exile, the focus now is on Yhwh’s remembering Jerusalem. This is,
on the one hand, a consistent and at the same time a climactic continuation of
the poetic dramaturgy: if the Israelites have not forgotten the events that
overwhelmed Zion or Jerusalem—and dare not ever forget them—Yhwh as well,
indeed Yhwh especially, may not forget them, and he ought to respond with
action. On the other hand, it is surprising that Yhwh is supposed to remember
the Edomites, and what they cried out “on the day of Jerusalem,” that is, on
the evil day when Jerusalem was destroyed (cf. “day of Midian,” Isa 9:3; “day
of Jezreel,” Hos 2:2). The quotation placed on the lips of the Edomites in v.
7b corresponds, in the poet’s technique, to the quotation of the Babylonian
tormentors in v. 3b, though here in v. 7 the addressees of the Edomite
challenge are not named. It is either implied that they urged each other to
raze Jerusalem to the ground, thus literally extinguishing it. Or the context
of vv. 7–9 may insinuate that the Babylonians are the addressees and were urged
by the Edomites (the Edomite mercenary troops in the Babylonian army or the
Edomites presented in poetic fiction as onlookers) to “expose” the city, that
is, all its buildings and especially its walls, down to the ground. The verb
used here, ערה Piel, was deliberately chosen to evoke a
double wordplay. On the one hand, there is an aural allusion to the first
element of the name Jeru-shalayim. It is true that we do not know what meanings
people associated with the name of Jerusalem at the time when our psalm was
created. But it seems certain that the assonance of ʿārū-yerū could not have been missed. On the other hand, Psalm 122
shows that people also associated the name Jerusalem with the noun ʿîr, “city,” and made plays on it (as,
for example, in Ps 122:3). The imperative ‘ārū,
“expose,” and the intensification combined with it, “down to the ground in
her,” accordingly emphasizes that Jerusalem is to be destroyed in its “essence”
and its “particularity.” It is possible that the aspect of degradation is also
to be heard when Jerusalem is thought of as being personified as a “woman” or
as “daughter Zion,” who is to be publicly “exposed” and “disgraced.”
■
8 Verses 8–9 are addressed to
“daughter Babylon.” “Daughter Babylon” is, analogous to “daughter Zion,” the
theological-political designation of the capital city or center of the
Babylonian empire, which is responsible for the destruction and rape of
“daughter Zion.” That Edom is intended here as “the daughter of Babylon” (that
is, as “Babylon’s ally”) is no more likely than the literary-critical
hypothesis that the reference to Babylon in v. 8 is a secondary insertion. If
we follow the MT in v. 8a, the participle שֵׁדוּדָה,
given as an attribute to “you, daughter Babylon” and best translated as a
gerund, “the one condemned to devastation” or “who must/shall be devastated,”
or else future “who will be devastated,” signals that the devastation called
down on Jerusalem by the Edomites ought now to be reversed—according to the
legal principle of talion—onto Babylon itself. Since the psalm (like Jeremiah
50–51) thinks of the complete destruction of “daughter Babylon,” this statement
is not a clue to a “historical” dating of the psalm, or of Ps 137:7–9, either
with regard to the capture by Cyrus II (539 b.c.e.) or to the putting down of
revolts under Darius I (521 b.c.e.) or under Xerxes I (484/482 b.c.e.), or to
the capture by Alexander the Great (331 b.c.e.), so that the psalm would have
to be dated before one of these
events. (Authors who read the participle as a perfect are inclined to locate
the psalm after one of the events.)
If, as we suppose, vv. 7–9 are redactional (see above), “daughter Babylon” is
in any case a real metaphor for the world powers that have threatened Zion and
still threaten it (on this, cf. Isaiah 13–14; Daniel 2–4; Revelation 17–19).
The concept of talion is
explicitly and even doubly formulated in the first of the two beatitudes that
are again directly addressed to daughter Babylon: on the one hand, by the
repetition of the root גמל, “deed” (v. 8b) or “action” (v. 8c), and,
on the other hand, by the verb שׁלם Piel (v. 8b), known to be a terminus technicus for the idea of
retaliation. At the same time, we have here another wordplay on the name of
Jerusalem. In contrast to the common association that explains Jerusalem as a
city of šālôm, here the perspective
“city of retaliation” is evoked, inasmuch as the injustice exercised against
her by her destroyers must be repaid.
■
9 The second beatitude (v. 9) must
also be understood as a wish for the realization of the concept of talion. The
following points of view must be taken into account if we are to achieve an
appropriate understanding of the disturbing image in v. 9: (1) The killing of
children was frequently an element in the depiction of a military judgment sent
by God, either for Israel or for foreign peoples. These military images were
inspired by the brutal practices in war (unfortunately still common in our day),
whose excesses of violence were evident particularly in the cases of the murder
of helpless children, pregnant women, and old people (cf., for example, Deut
32:25; 2 Kgs 8:12; Isa 13:15–18; Jer 51:20–23; Hos 14:1; Nah 3:10). (2) Psalm
137:9 probably chooses the element of “children” out of this “picture of
violence” for two reasons: on the one hand, this element corresponds to the
address “daughter Babylon” in the sense that she is the “mother” of these
children (v. 9: “your children”); on the other hand, this evokes the royal
house in Babylon, whose continuation is to be thwarted through the death of the
children of “daughter Babylon.” That the aim of making “daughter Babylon”
“childless” is to put an end to its “royal rule” is a central perspective also
of the “Babylon poem” in Isa 47:1–15 (cf. especially 47:1, 8–9). (3) Verse 8
explicitly emphasizes that the sentence must correspond to the principle of
talion; this is confirmed in its content by Lam 2:19. Likewise, the contextual
incorporation of the “daughter Babylon poem” in Isaiah 47 within the
composition of Deutero-Isaiah emphasizes the antithesis between “daughter
Babylon” and “daughter Zion.” The contrast between “Zion” and “Babylon” also
shapes the sequence of Isaiah 12 → Isaiah 13–14 (though now with a positive
application to Zion). (4) The proclamations of the judgment and destruction of
Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51 (especially 51:6, 20–26, 49–50, 55–56) must also be
adduced in an interpretation of vv. 7–9. Psalm 137:8–9 has the “thematic words”
בת בבל (“daughter Babylon”), שׁדד
(“devastate”), שׁלם (“repay”), גמל
(“do”), and נפץ (“destroy”) in common with this
perspective. It is probable that Ps 137:8–9 was inspired by Jeremiah 50–51. (5)
Whether v. 9b, with “rock,” also alludes to “Edom” (cf. Jer 49:16; Obad 3) or
to Sela (= rock) as an Edomite city (cf. 2 Kgs 14:7) is difficult to determine.
Overall, we must say that the image of violence in v. 9 has, on the one hand, a
broad background in the history of ideas; it is above all a politically laden
image with which the psalm protests against the viciousness and brutality of
the great empires of the time toward their small neighbors. On the other hand,
the virulent violence of such images, especially in their appeal to the
emotions, is very problematic in today’s perspective, especially when they are
given additional religious overtones.
Verses 8–9 do not say who ought
to accomplish vengeance on daughter Babylon. It is rightly and repeatedly
emphasized by interpreters of Psalm 137 that in biblical usage beatitudes
always refer to human beings and never to God, yet vv. 7–9 begin with an appeal
to Yhwh to remember “the day of Jerusalem”—and act accordingly. In that light,
the desired restoration of the order of justice destroyed by the Edomites and
the Babylonians may ultimately be
expected from Yhwh, especially since that would correspond to the concept of Yhwh
as the God of justice.
Accordingly, behind Psalm 137
stands not the prophetic and Deuteronomistic theology of judgment that
interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation as “just
punishment” for the sins of the kingship or of the whole nation. Psalm 137
belongs more to the theological context that, like Jer 51:20–26, judges the
“striking down” of Zion by Babylon as an act of violence contrary to Yhwh’s
plan for history, which therefore calls for Yhwh’s retaliation. This appeal is
extended by vv. 7–9 with their appeal, “remember, Yhwh!” It is not only the cry
of Israel, apparently still intimidated and politically discredited, for help
but also an invocation directed at Yhwh, calling on him to correspond to his
own “claim to be God”: Tua res agitur!
(Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3: A Commentary on
Psalm 101-150 [trans. Linda M. Maloney; Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical
Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2011], 518-20)
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