Understanding Psalm 137:9
Psa 137:8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Psa 137:9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. Does Psalm 137:9 support infanticide? Not hardly, context is everything. First a little back story. Psalm 137 takes place during the Jewish exile in Babylon (modern day Iraq). The Babylonians had come against Judah and besieged Jerusalem for eighteen months. The account is detailed in the Book of Lamentations. The siege was so serve that the people were starving to death. Children and infants were dying in the streets (lam 2:11-12, 19, 4:4), and mothers were boiling their babies for food (Lam 2:20, 4:10). The city eventually fell and the Jews were taken captive to Babylon. Psalm 137 opens with the Jews lamenting what had happened in Jerusalem. They remembered what the Babylonians did to them and their children and wanted vengeance. They also remembered what the prophet Isaiah...