Vengeance Is Mine
Happy who seizes and smashes your infants against the rock. Psalm 137:9 Alter
Happy – It’s difficult to believe God in the midst of great trauma. If God is good, if He cares about us, then why do we suffer so much? It doesn’t feel like a test. It feels like abandonment, or divine failure. Is it any wonder that we want to lash out against those who are responsible for our misery? If God isn’t going to get even for us, then maybe we should seek justice on our own. Certainly, that’s the feeling behind this verse. The Babylonians have destroyed Israel. The nation is finished. And now what? Let me tell you. I want these oppressors to feel the same despair that I feel. I want them to suffer loss.
What’s the alternative? Well, it’s almost unimaginable. Maybe, just maybe, the gods of the Babylonians are stronger than the God of Israel. Oh, we don’t think like this today, but centuries ago, when the world was populated by many gods, this could have been an explanation for the destruction of Israel. As Peter Ackroyd notes:
There are some members of the community for whom the disaster finds its explanation not in the neglect of Yahweh but of another deity, evidently familiar over a long period of time. The other indications in the earlier Old Testament material of the existence of this cult are hereby confirmed, and so, too, is the recognition of Israel’s syncretistic tendencies.[1]
. . . the acceptance of the obvious consequences of Babylonian conquest, namely that the Babylonian gods have been victorious.[2]
If we suffer as obedient followers, doesn’t that mean that our God is impotent? We can’t embrace the idea that He is vindictive, that He toys with us and brings disaster upon us at His whim. That’s the Job story. No, we believe He is good. But then the enemy prevails. How can that be explained? Is our God less powerful than the gods of the enemies? Has He been defeated too? And if that’s the case, why do we worship Him? Let’s worship a god who can actually keep us safe.
The Hebrew is ʾesher, meaning “happiness,” or “blessedness.” I prefer the former as the latter has been co-opted by Christianity to mean something other than lucky. With this correction, we can appreciate the tone of the verse. The author is not saying that God will bless those who kill Babylonian infants. He is expressing the projected feeling of revenge against the Babylonians in a manner that would cause them to grieve in the same way he is grieving. He wants them to see the destruction of their future just as he has seen his. This is an entirely human emotion, an anticipation of happiness (which, by the way, may not actually come true). This is pent-up desire for vengeance exploding into verse, laced with despair that God has not set things straight.
Just like we feel sometimes when God doesn’t seem to arrive. Right?
Topical Index: happy, ʾesher, vengeance, Babylon, trauma, Psalm 137:9
[1] Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, p. 41.
[2] Ibid.
