The prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict spiritualizes this as being a command to Christians to seize our own sinful thoughts while still half-formed and dash them against the Rock of Christ. That's always seemed to me like a patently obvious attempt to encourage his monks (who recite the psalm once a week) to *not* engage with the raw emotion of it. But reading your article made me realize why that bothers me so much.
To suggest that this passage needs to be spiritualized in order to be an acceptable prayer for Christians to recite suggests that it's *not okay* to have this kind of anger in response to trauma. And that's harmful. As a parent, I know that my kids will say extreme things when they are upset, but if I react in a way that communicates that it's not okay to say that sort of thing, what they hear is that the *feelings* they are having are not okay. It's so much healthier to listen deeply to what they are feeling in a way that isn't fazed by raw language.
On a similar note, Bonhoeffer in Life Together suggests that part of the value of the practice of reading together the *whole* psalter in community is that it invites us to engage with and pray for the suffering of people who *are* feeling all the emotions expressed in the psalter. So avoiding psalms like this would mean *avoiding* empathizing with and praying for trauma sufferers.
I just realized that I meant to post this comment on the *other* article in the series. What I wanted to ask here was about the "lay her bare to her foundation/thigh" translation in verse 7, which I had never heard before. Do you or Brittany Kim happen to know if there is any similar sexual language going on in Psalm 74? I've always thought the sense of violation and desolation in the "your foes roared in the place where you met with us" part could be read as, and might even have been written as, giving voice to a sense of *sexual* violation that perhaps was *too* raw to be explicitly included in lyrics for communal worship.
To translate this to mean the inhabitants of the mother city is problematic. Every use of olel in OT is used in similar ways to Psalm 137. That means that they all would need to use this metaphor and it is never used literally, that psalm 137 breaks the norm inexplicably, or that they all mean suckling babes literally.
The premise is fine in English. Locations are described as mothers and inhabitants described as children. But the language used in that metaphor is different.
I am not saying it couldn’t mean inhabitants of the mother city, but I don’t see it. Perhaps I need to look at your friend’s work on the subject
Thanks for chiming in! Again, I'm NT—my ability to get too deep into the weeds on this is going to be limited. I welcome anyone with more Hebrew jumping in on this, for or against!
But a couple things that seem important as I look at it: the second-person suffix is feminine plural, which means these are the children of the mother city, grammatically. The question is whether we should take Lady Babylon's children to be (primarily or exclusively) the children in Babylon, or whether this is standing in as a broader metaphor for the city's inhabitants.
Olel does both in the OT. A close parallel is seen in Lamentations 1:5, olel refers to the inhabitants of Jerusalem as the children of Lady Zion.
Is it this last item that you disagree with, primarily?
Ah, forgive me. I did not fully understand your meaning. It is a terrible thing to speak with someone and never understand their mind. I hope I did not offend, as I enjoy this linguistic puzzle in fellowship.
Let me perhaps rephrase, as I do not think I communicated my idea effectively.
I would suggest that there are two types of words used to describe the children of a mother city/country. The baseline and the nuanced.
I would say that the language the Old Testament uses to describe a simple inhabitant of a city/country in this parent/child metaphor would be to call them a son, daughter, or child. Those are pretty vague words, and I would posit would be the appropriate term for the populous as a whole.
Then, we find more nuanced descriptions. In Psalm 137, there is this term for a suckling babe. In Lamentations 1:5, you pointed it out, alongside the term for a virgin daughter. I would argue that these more specific terms would apply to a subset of the whole.
Consider the difference in meaning between "daughter" and "virgin daughter". It adds meaning. It communicates youth. It communicates hope and a future. There are ideas of joy in a future wedding and a family of her own some day. I would argue then that by selecting this term "virgin daughter" instead of "daughter," the implication would be a focus on that youth, purity, hopefulness, innocence, and expectation of joy. When the virgin daughters of a place are attacked, it is those ideas and the people who embody those ideas that are vulnerable. While the rest of the people could be too, the writer seems to be focusing in on the subset.
I would argue the same about suckling babes. They are the inhabitants, but they are not ALL of the inhabitants. It would be the helpless and vulnerable. It would likely go beyond just the actual babies who are still nursing to include the widows, the orphans, the slaves, the exiles, etc.
So, in a way, yes. I do think the olel in the passage could very well extend beyond literal nursing children. But, I do not see that the psalmist likely intended the application to be on the oppressors themselves. It seems like language was used that is meant to imply the helpless and vulnerable.
That said, to appeal to your NT side, you can filter the idea of who the helpless and vulnerable people are through the Paul's words in the end of 2 Timothy 2 and arrive at the oppressors. I would say that you do well to view it that way in application. But I don't think that is a good way to interpret what the psalmist meant for this passage.
Just my thoughts. I am a simple biblical scholar, and by no mean claim mastery of the subject. I could very well be wrong.
Ahhhh, totally get what you're saying now! You did not at all offend—I really enjoy good-spirited conversations!
Thinking through your argument...my initial thought is that metaphors don't always work quite that rigidly. The image of a suckling infant may be used not as a one-to-one correspondence to the city's vulnerable but to heighten the emotional impact—and if we were to take this reading, that's probably what it's doing here.
Another excellent article exploring a very “Payneful Passage”.
Your point about how the fall of Babylon to Cyrus was anticlimactic caused me to think of a different way of looking at it.
What if it is not looking forward but looking back. In 689 Sennacherib did a punitive sack and destruction of Babylon that was considered shocking even in that time. There would have been massive a massive number atrocities including babies head bashed.
What if that line is both a taunt and an indictment. You have become the very thing you hated. You are no better than the Assyrians. You speak with outrage over what the Assyrians did to you, but your behavior now shows you aren’t any better.
And I think that line can speak to us. Hurt people hurt people. It is a reminder for us not to become what we hated, not to visit the trauma we experienced on others, but to pour it out to God so we can have His grace to break the cycle.
Mmm, that’s intriguing! The Babylonians were brutal, but the Assyrians were…just absolutely gratuitous. Could certainly be evoking some communal memory there, whether as an insult or a taunt/warning.
And certainly the idea of breaking cycles of violence fits well with the psalm. Judgment is not Israel’s to deal out; it is left to God.
A belated comment... I'm reading through Esau McCaulley's "Reading While Black, African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope" right now, and he spends a few pages on Psalm 137 in a chapter titled "What shall we do with this rage?" I was reminded of this post, and thought you might appreciate his perspective. And if you've already mentioned him in these two posts and I'm just not remembering, my apologies!
I made the mistake of borrowing it from the library, in an effort to be economical. Naturally, after reading it, now I want my own copy. Book hoarder problems.
I deeply prefer this potential reading to last weeks, if only because even in an act of vengeance I can't possibly fathom hurting actual babies. But I appreciate that you're going through both interpretations and wrestling with it. I tend to take the stance that since all scripture is divinely inspired, multiple different interpretations the same text can be true or valueable because God layered symbolism and meaning for us to dissect. So even as I prefer this week's interpretation, I really like seeing the different reads on the same chapter.
Also despite how thoroughly uncomfortable last week's article made me I found myself wanting to continue. You have a good narrative voice that makes it feel a bit safer to explore these topics, even as they still haunt me a little.
The prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict spiritualizes this as being a command to Christians to seize our own sinful thoughts while still half-formed and dash them against the Rock of Christ. That's always seemed to me like a patently obvious attempt to encourage his monks (who recite the psalm once a week) to *not* engage with the raw emotion of it. But reading your article made me realize why that bothers me so much.
To suggest that this passage needs to be spiritualized in order to be an acceptable prayer for Christians to recite suggests that it's *not okay* to have this kind of anger in response to trauma. And that's harmful. As a parent, I know that my kids will say extreme things when they are upset, but if I react in a way that communicates that it's not okay to say that sort of thing, what they hear is that the *feelings* they are having are not okay. It's so much healthier to listen deeply to what they are feeling in a way that isn't fazed by raw language.
On a similar note, Bonhoeffer in Life Together suggests that part of the value of the practice of reading together the *whole* psalter in community is that it invites us to engage with and pray for the suffering of people who *are* feeling all the emotions expressed in the psalter. So avoiding psalms like this would mean *avoiding* empathizing with and praying for trauma sufferers.
Mmm, great insights! And God is not fazed by our raw language.
I just realized that I meant to post this comment on the *other* article in the series. What I wanted to ask here was about the "lay her bare to her foundation/thigh" translation in verse 7, which I had never heard before. Do you or Brittany Kim happen to know if there is any similar sexual language going on in Psalm 74? I've always thought the sense of violation and desolation in the "your foes roared in the place where you met with us" part could be read as, and might even have been written as, giving voice to a sense of *sexual* violation that perhaps was *too* raw to be explicitly included in lyrics for communal worship.
I have no idea—I’ll see if Brittany has any thoughts!
To translate this to mean the inhabitants of the mother city is problematic. Every use of olel in OT is used in similar ways to Psalm 137. That means that they all would need to use this metaphor and it is never used literally, that psalm 137 breaks the norm inexplicably, or that they all mean suckling babes literally.
The premise is fine in English. Locations are described as mothers and inhabitants described as children. But the language used in that metaphor is different.
I am not saying it couldn’t mean inhabitants of the mother city, but I don’t see it. Perhaps I need to look at your friend’s work on the subject
Thanks for chiming in! Again, I'm NT—my ability to get too deep into the weeds on this is going to be limited. I welcome anyone with more Hebrew jumping in on this, for or against!
But a couple things that seem important as I look at it: the second-person suffix is feminine plural, which means these are the children of the mother city, grammatically. The question is whether we should take Lady Babylon's children to be (primarily or exclusively) the children in Babylon, or whether this is standing in as a broader metaphor for the city's inhabitants.
Olel does both in the OT. A close parallel is seen in Lamentations 1:5, olel refers to the inhabitants of Jerusalem as the children of Lady Zion.
Is it this last item that you disagree with, primarily?
Ah, forgive me. I did not fully understand your meaning. It is a terrible thing to speak with someone and never understand their mind. I hope I did not offend, as I enjoy this linguistic puzzle in fellowship.
Let me perhaps rephrase, as I do not think I communicated my idea effectively.
I would suggest that there are two types of words used to describe the children of a mother city/country. The baseline and the nuanced.
I would say that the language the Old Testament uses to describe a simple inhabitant of a city/country in this parent/child metaphor would be to call them a son, daughter, or child. Those are pretty vague words, and I would posit would be the appropriate term for the populous as a whole.
Then, we find more nuanced descriptions. In Psalm 137, there is this term for a suckling babe. In Lamentations 1:5, you pointed it out, alongside the term for a virgin daughter. I would argue that these more specific terms would apply to a subset of the whole.
Consider the difference in meaning between "daughter" and "virgin daughter". It adds meaning. It communicates youth. It communicates hope and a future. There are ideas of joy in a future wedding and a family of her own some day. I would argue then that by selecting this term "virgin daughter" instead of "daughter," the implication would be a focus on that youth, purity, hopefulness, innocence, and expectation of joy. When the virgin daughters of a place are attacked, it is those ideas and the people who embody those ideas that are vulnerable. While the rest of the people could be too, the writer seems to be focusing in on the subset.
I would argue the same about suckling babes. They are the inhabitants, but they are not ALL of the inhabitants. It would be the helpless and vulnerable. It would likely go beyond just the actual babies who are still nursing to include the widows, the orphans, the slaves, the exiles, etc.
So, in a way, yes. I do think the olel in the passage could very well extend beyond literal nursing children. But, I do not see that the psalmist likely intended the application to be on the oppressors themselves. It seems like language was used that is meant to imply the helpless and vulnerable.
That said, to appeal to your NT side, you can filter the idea of who the helpless and vulnerable people are through the Paul's words in the end of 2 Timothy 2 and arrive at the oppressors. I would say that you do well to view it that way in application. But I don't think that is a good way to interpret what the psalmist meant for this passage.
Just my thoughts. I am a simple biblical scholar, and by no mean claim mastery of the subject. I could very well be wrong.
In His grace,
R.A. Sweeney
Ahhhh, totally get what you're saying now! You did not at all offend—I really enjoy good-spirited conversations!
Thinking through your argument...my initial thought is that metaphors don't always work quite that rigidly. The image of a suckling infant may be used not as a one-to-one correspondence to the city's vulnerable but to heighten the emotional impact—and if we were to take this reading, that's probably what it's doing here.
Another excellent article exploring a very “Payneful Passage”.
Your point about how the fall of Babylon to Cyrus was anticlimactic caused me to think of a different way of looking at it.
What if it is not looking forward but looking back. In 689 Sennacherib did a punitive sack and destruction of Babylon that was considered shocking even in that time. There would have been massive a massive number atrocities including babies head bashed.
What if that line is both a taunt and an indictment. You have become the very thing you hated. You are no better than the Assyrians. You speak with outrage over what the Assyrians did to you, but your behavior now shows you aren’t any better.
And I think that line can speak to us. Hurt people hurt people. It is a reminder for us not to become what we hated, not to visit the trauma we experienced on others, but to pour it out to God so we can have His grace to break the cycle.
Mmm, that’s intriguing! The Babylonians were brutal, but the Assyrians were…just absolutely gratuitous. Could certainly be evoking some communal memory there, whether as an insult or a taunt/warning.
And certainly the idea of breaking cycles of violence fits well with the psalm. Judgment is not Israel’s to deal out; it is left to God.
A belated comment... I'm reading through Esau McCaulley's "Reading While Black, African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope" right now, and he spends a few pages on Psalm 137 in a chapter titled "What shall we do with this rage?" I was reminded of this post, and thought you might appreciate his perspective. And if you've already mentioned him in these two posts and I'm just not remembering, my apologies!
That one’s on my list! I loved his memoir but haven’t yet read RWB.
I made the mistake of borrowing it from the library, in an effort to be economical. Naturally, after reading it, now I want my own copy. Book hoarder problems.
Yes—that’s precisely what the invaders did to her & others’ children.
This is so interesting once again!!
Oh, thank you!!
I deeply prefer this potential reading to last weeks, if only because even in an act of vengeance I can't possibly fathom hurting actual babies. But I appreciate that you're going through both interpretations and wrestling with it. I tend to take the stance that since all scripture is divinely inspired, multiple different interpretations the same text can be true or valueable because God layered symbolism and meaning for us to dissect. So even as I prefer this week's interpretation, I really like seeing the different reads on the same chapter.
Also despite how thoroughly uncomfortable last week's article made me I found myself wanting to continue. You have a good narrative voice that makes it feel a bit safer to explore these topics, even as they still haunt me a little.
Very well done!! 👏🏻
Thank you!
“We, too, can sing the world toward justice.” Love this line!
Thank you! It was my favorite line to write.