Psalm 137—The Vulture Sky

"Happy is the one who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock."

Sep 14, 2021

Introduction to Psalm 137—What is an imprecatory psalm?

A few weeks ago, when a friend heard that I was writing poems about the psalms, he asked me, “What are you going to do about Psalm 137?” And my quick answer was, “Avoid it.”

How do you make poetry from a psalm that ends in the line:

“Happy is the one who takes your little ones
And dashes them against the rocks.”

It is a psalm created by a grieving people in the aftermath of the destruction of their country, their homes, and their friends and families by one of the most violent empires the world has ever known.

If you ask a pastor about Psalm 137, they will tell you it is an example of an “imprecatory psalm.” An imprecatory psalm is one in which the writer calls down calamity or judgment on his enemies. There are at least 14 major imprecatory psalms.

While true, talking about imprecatory psalms can also be another way to say, “Stop asking the question.” The theological concept can function as a sanitary baggy that helps it feel safer to handle passages like Psalm 137—like the little black bag you wrap around your hand to pick up dog mess in the park.

However, knowing about the concept of imprecatory psalms doesn’t do much to blunt the trauma of these verses. They are disgusting. They haunt. They are not supposed to go down smoothly.

The Bible has many troubling passages like this. We can be tempted to skip these parts and move on to more “uplifting” ones. But, as Francis Schaeffer said, “The Christian is one who should never be shocked.” After all, if you take the first three chapters of the book of Genesis seriously, you should be becoming a person who can expect anything—any depth of sin, any height of redemption.

If we flinch back from the reality of the Fall where the Bible plunges forward, it may simply be that our own sentimentality is being revealed. The Bible is often more real than we are prepared to be.

Like all the hard parts of the Bible, the difficult psalms should not be omitted or passed over. These are the ones that you should read, meditate on, and pray about more, not less. Perhaps you are supposed to sicken on them until you’re whole?

Rendition of Psalm 137—By the River of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept

By the river of Babylon
We sat down and wept
When we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
We hung our harps
While our captors called for songs,
And the very ones who tormented us required of us mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the Lord’s songs
In the land of our exile?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
Let my right hand wither.
If I do not remember my lost home,
If I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy,
Let my lips close forever.

Remember, O Lord, how the Edomites,
On the day of Jerusalem’s fall, cried,
“Tear it down, leave it empty,
Raze it to its foundations!”
O Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
Happy is the one who repays you
For what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who takes your little ones
And dashes them against the rocks.

Notes on the Rendition

Note #1: What is the role of Edom in the Bible?

Edom was the territory settled by the descendants of Jacob’s brother, Esau. However, in the prophets and psalms, “Edom” means more than just the single nation. It becomes a synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to refer to the whole (like using “my wheels” to refer to your car).

Professor Mike Heiser puts it this way:

“[Edom] transcends just being a place and becomes a paradigmatic or symbolic representative of the hostile nations that surround Israel, especially Babylon.”

Which begs the question: Why is Babylon important?

Note #2: What is the role of Babylon in the Bible?

Babylon was one of Israel’s ancient enemies. They were the regional superpower that displaced the Assyrian empire and which eventually invaded the southern kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and taking many Israelites captive.

But even more than the literal role the city of Babylon plays in Israel’s story, it takes on significance as a kind of ultimate symbol of evil in the Bible. It all goes back to Genesis.

Babylon first enters the story in Genesis 10, the “table of nations” that lists Noah’s descendants after the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9. If you follow the lineage of Noah’s son Ham, you will meet a man named Nimrod. Nimrod is introduced as a gibbor, a “mighty hunter,” but in the storyline of the Bible, this is not a good thing. Don’t picture Captain America. Picture Conan the Barbarian meets Walt from Breaking Bad. He is an empire builder—and the empires he builds become Israel’s arch-enemies for the rest of the Old Testament.

Nimrod ends up creating Nineveh and founding the kingdom of Assyria, but his first project is to build a little town called Babylon. (Note: The word for Babylon in Genesis 10 is “bavel.” In Genesis 10 and 11, the story of the Tower of Babel, the word is translated as “Babel,” but everywhere else in the Bible it is translated as “Babylon.” However, it is the same word and the same place. Hence, the Tower of Babel should rightly be called the Tower of Babylon.)

The next chapter, Genesis 11, highlights one of the first projects of the nascent empire—the building of the Tower of Babel. The tower is more significant than we can get into here, but, in a nutshell, it is a concentrated attempt to make good on the Serpent’s promise from Genesis 3. “If you eat of the fruit, you will be like God.” When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they lost the ability to remain in the garden God planted at the top of the mountain in Eden. God exiled them, but they continued the project of trying to become like God come Hell or high water. On the plains of Babylon, this took the form of building a great tower to regain entry by main force into the realm of the gods. God scatters them and ends the gathering together of the forces arrayed against his purposes for humanity.

But God’s retaliation is not the end of the story of Babylon’s enmity toward God and his people. As the story progresses, Babylon—along with Assyria, Egypt, and Canaan—arises as one of Israel’s chief enemies. They even become the instrument God uses to take his people into exile in 586 B. C.

One of the many ways the story of the Bible can be retold is as a tale of two cities: Jerusalem vs. Babylon. This conflict comes to a fever pitch in Revelation 17 when the anti-God forces on earth are personified by a prostitute riding a red dragon and drinking the blood of the saints. The woman’s name is Babylon the Great. As is the case throughout the book of Revelation, John is writing in the apocalyptic style in order to use symbols and images to describe heavenly and earthly realities.

In Revelation 18, an angel announces, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.” The rest of the chapter pronounces judgment on Babylon on the evil it represents. The story culminates in Revelation 21 and 22 when a new Jerusalem—which was always both a literal city and metaphorically the place where God dwells—descends from the heavens to earth as a picture of the fact that in the new creation God will dwell with his people forever. Just like he did in the garden - so we come full circle.

Notes on the Poem

Chaim Potok’s masterful novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, tells the story of a gifted young Hasidic painter who tries to search for a symbol within Judaism that is powerful enough to convey the suffering he experienced in childhood. But he finds, much to the chagrin of his Hasidic community, that he must turn to Christianity instead. Only the crucifixion conveys the magnitude of the pain that is he trying to capture on the canvas.

Something similar is going on with the poem that I am pairing with Psalm 137.

When the Rwandan Genocide broke out in 1994, 10,000 people gathered in a small church in Nyamata. They locked themselves inside because they thought they would be safe inside a church. Instead, they were murdered there.

Today, the church is one of several sites in Rwanda that memorialize the atrocities of the genocide.

Poem—The Vulture Sky

I.
They came to Nyamata 10,000 wide
In search of a place to hide.
They died.

Our guide mimed taking a child by its legs
And sweeping it like a broom
At the low brown mark on the wall.
Until we understood the crescent stain
Was brains. I fled.

You can come and see - your
self, the skulls, the dust, the clothes,
the bullet holes, the pocked walls, the bits of bone -
where the murdered hid.
I did.

II.
The vulture sky
was dark and heavy.
The wolf fate
was fat and ready.
The bird of peace
was up and gone.
(She didn’t return before the dawn.)
The dogs of conscience
watched the show
and inside 10,000 people waited
for snake night
to swallow them whole.

III.
If what happened to me
Had happened to you,
How would you have survived it?
Why should I not rage at my killers? And rage
And rage and rage?

Why do the wounds remain
So long after they have passed,
Yet kindness is as fleeting as birdshadow?
Is the house of my anger real enough to live in?
Why should I beautify the place of my exile?
How much will it cost when the darkling comes due?
What would I do
If my enemy were here before me
In a land without law
Or consequence?

The questions clatter in my mind’s mouth.
They combust. They cut. I shout.
I chew them. I sicken.
I cannot spit them out.

IV
Other memories are flames, like the time
You accidentally burned the boy.
He rolled on the ground and shouted
but it went on burning.
And you realized: they were lying.
It doesn’t go out.
It wants to be remembered.
Oh, yes indeedy, it is always
On its way back.

You wake at night convinced you need to run.
You are already out of bed.
”Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Help me!”
Your wife says: go back to bed.
It is just the radiator.
Go to sleep. It is just the train.

But you know
Somewhere in the room, the snake is hiding.
Somewhere the boy is still burning.
Somewhere 10,000 people press together.
It is all happening again.

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The Darkling Psalter

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