Remember, O Jehovah, against the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem; who said, Lay [it] bare, Lay [it] bare, down to its foundation!
Psalm 137 is the song of exiles who cannot forget Zion. At verse 7 they turn to Edom, the neighbours who watched Jerusalem fall and cheered, and they ask God to remember.
Edom came from Esau. Israel came from Jacob, Esau's younger brother. So this hatred runs inside one family, and the prophets keep returning to it.
The prophets often speak of Edom. This people came from Isaac, just as Jacob did, yet they held a deep and lasting hatred for the descendants of the younger son, who were favoured as the people of Jehovah. Psalm 137 tells of this hatred in the seventh verse. Ezekiel 35 dwells on this unending hatred, shown from the first when Edom refused Israel a way through their land… Edom is united with Babylon in Psalm 137 as Jerusalem's lasting enemy.
Behind the shout lay an old jealousy:
Edom took pleasure in Judah's punishment while judgment was falling on it. Of Jerusalem they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!" (Ps. 137:7). This shows, as other passages do too, the hatred and jealousy of the descendants of Esau.
"The day of Jerusalem" is the day Babylon captured and sacked the city. Edom did not swing the crowbar. It stood on the sidelines and shouted for total demolition.
The burden of the book of Obadiah is the doom of Edom, a people known for pride, wisdom and power. Their rage against the people of Jehovah's choice broke out at the Chaldean destruction of Jerusalem. Sadly, the Babylonians needed no encouraging cry from the Edomite as they took their vengeance on the poor Jew: "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!" (Ps. 137:7).
The prayer is not "let us pay them back" but "remember." A long delay does not mean God has dropped the case.
Whatever power opposes God's earthly people, the Almighty will deal with it at last, when the time for His vengeance arrives… God repaid Amalek's conduct towards Israel in the wilderness in the days of Saul and Samuel (1 Sam. 15)… Centuries may pass, as with Amalek, before the judgment falls. How many centuries have passed since Edom cried against Jerusalem, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!" (Ps. 137:7). God has not forgotten that.
Edom asked for a city stripped to its foundations. What the prophets promise Edom in return is harsher than anything said to the other nations.
Of all the nations that reappear at the time of the end for judgment, Edom alone will have no "remnant" preserved. God will judge the Edomites without mercy because of the way they treated His people. They were the most wicked, and the most eager to destroy Israel… Obadiah, the one prophet who deals only with the judgment of Edom, says, "there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau: for the Lord has spoken it" (Obadiah 18). Out of all the other nations God preserves a "remnant."
Readers often stumble here and in the verses that follow. Commentators answer that God is doing one thing now, and will do another when He sets the world right.
Judgment will come before the kingdom, and that fact explains what some find difficult — the so-called "imprecatory psalms," the psalms that call down judgment on enemies. Some people do not see the difference between God's dealings with Christians and His dealings with the Jews. They apply to the one what belongs to the other, and it leads them into confusion and error. We Christians do not look for judgment in the world. Our place is to suffer, if we are called to do so… But when it is a question of the government of the world, God must act in righteousness and put down evil. Israel will therefore rightly look for His judgment on their enemies, because they cannot have their rest and blessing on earth until the wicked are put down.
One writer adds that Edom pictures the flesh, our own sinful nature:
Today we do not use the language that they will use then, for we are told to love our enemies. But at that time the judgment of God will be near, and God will call to account those who have afflicted Israel. Edom, simply a type of the flesh, demanded the complete destruction of Jerusalem (v. 7). Certainly, God could not forget this.
- Brother: Edom and Israel both came from Isaac. The hatred showed early, when Edom refused Israel a way through its land, and it lasted to the day Jerusalem fell.
- Cry: On "the day of Jerusalem," Babylon needed no encouragement from Edom. The shout only exposed Edom's heart.
- Remember: The captives ask God to keep the record. They do not plan revenge of their own.
- Reckoning: Delay is not forgetfulness. Amalek waited centuries, and of all the nations only Edom will be left with no remnant.
- Now: Christians are told to love their enemies and to expect suffering. God is not yet ruling the world by open judgment, so this cry belongs to that coming day, not to ours.
Daughter of Babylon, who art to be laid waste, happy he that rendereth unto thee that which thou hast meted out to us.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Happy he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock.
The psalm opens with exiles weeping by the rivers of Babylon, and ends with a line that stops most readers cold: a blessing on the man who destroys Babylon's babies. Who is speaking, and against whom is the sentence really aimed?
The verse belongs to a song with a date and a future. One writer sets out both layers before touching the closing lines:
Historically, the psalm sets forth the sorrows of Israel in captivity: prophetically, it expresses the sorrows of the godly in Israel in a latter day.
The closing verses are read as the natural end of that sorrow — the sufferers ask God to settle accounts:
Babylon is to be destroyed, and they long for her judgment; Edom's hatred is not forgotten. The point of the psalm is to bring out their love for Zion while they were captives. Their hearts never separated from it in the foreign land.
The blessing is not on cruelty as such. A close rendering of the two final lines shows what the word attaches to — the man who gives Babylon back her own measure:
Daughter of Babylon, the desolated, happy he that renders to you your measure you meted to us. Happy he that takes and dashes your babes against the rock (crag).
Summarised in a phrase, the person called happy is God's chosen agent:
Ps. 137:8, 9 happy the instrument of Jehovah's judgment on Babylon.
The psalm is not inventing a punishment. It echoes a sentence the prophets had already published over Babylon:
But this Psalm also looks forward to the day when God will measure out His retribution to the daughter of Babylon, and will punish Israel's enemies for the sins they committed against His people. The fate of the final Babylon, given in Isaiah 13:16, matches the last verse of this Psalm. See also Isaiah 47:6.
Commentators do not soften the shock; one admits plainly that a Christian recoils from the wording, then places it inside God's already-announced sentence on both nations:
It is the desolation of those who are away from the place of Jehovah's manifestation; with the prayer only for judgment upon their enemies, who have destroyed or sympathised with the destruction of the home of their affections, in language from which the Christian naturally shrinks. But Edom and Babylon are both doomed by the prophets to extinction as a people; and to this doom of the latter there is distinct reference made here. Judgment is God's strange work: we may be sure, a necessary one.
Another writer takes the children's case further, and reads their death as gain rather than loss:
It is solemn that the children are involved in their fathers' wickedness. However, their early death is actually a mercy, for they will then be in heaven, as was surely true also when Noah's flood destroyed the whole world.
Every writer who touches this verse says the same thing: it is not language for the believer today.
This would also explain the pleas for punishment or for vengeance on the enemies (e.g. Ps. 137:9), which are difficult to understand for many a reader. The feelings explained in these Psalms are feelings of believers but not of Christians living in the household of grace (compare Rom. 12:17-21). They are feelings of believing Jews living in the coming last days.
The reason given is a difference of destiny, not a difference of morals:
They are not the expression of Christian feelings. We leave the world and go to heaven. In no sense have we to demand the destruction of our enemies in order to pass into glory. But Israel cannot have their rest on earth until the wicked are destroyed; and therefore they do demand this righteous judgment, and this is the way they will be delivered.
There is one thing in this closing cry a Christian may share — and one thing they may not:
Even the judgment of those who corrupted it is looked for with joy by the Christian. Not of the individuals, a Christian could not do that — it would be revenge — but of the whole power of evil.
- Measure. The verse blesses the man who pays Babylon back her own measure. The happiness lies in justice repaid, not in violence enjoyed.
- Measured by God. The exiles did not choose that measure. The prophets had already sentenced Babylon, and Isaiah 13:16 matches this last line.
- Measured by an instrument. The one called happy is the agent through whom God's sentence falls.
- Measured on the babes. One writer calls judgment God's strange but necessary work. Disasters sweep away babies with their parents, yet these evils are short, and eternity settles the balance.
- Not our measure. The believer today goes to heaven and does not need enemies destroyed first. A Christian may long with joy for the end of the whole power of evil, but never for the ruin of people. That would be revenge.