Bible blog of award-winning bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller."'Smashing Babies,' the Jewish song"
HIDING IN BETHLEHEM. A mother tries to keep her baby quiet while King Herod’s men slaughter Jewish boys ages two and under in Bethlehem, hoping to kill young Jesus. There were times when the Jews prayed for their enemies to get a dose of their own medicine. Painting by Léon Cogniet.
SOME SONGS THE JEWS SANG wouldn’t go over especially well in a worship service today.
Let’s consider one, for the Bible Question of the Week.
Jews sang a song – and it’s in the Bible – asking God to bless anyone who would smash their enemies’ babies against the rocks. How does that track with Jesus’ “love your enemies”?
It doesn’t.
Let’s say a foreign country invaded, overran, and conquered the United States. They killed most Americans. To kill babies, they saved their ammo. They grabbed the babies by the ankles and smashed their heads onto the concrete.
They bombed Washington DC and most other major cities into the Stone Age.
Then they deported American survivors to refugee camps in their homeland. And then they asked the Grammy-winning musicians among the refugees to entertain everyone with American music—“The Star Spangled Banner” to begin with.
If we said our prayers that first night in the refugee camp, what would we pray?
Psalm 137:1-3 Alongside Babylon’s rivers
we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
remembering the good old days in Zion.
Alongside the quaking aspens
we stacked our unplayed harps;
That’s where our captors demanded songs,
sarcastic and mocking:
“Sing us a happy Zion song!”
4-6 Oh, how could we ever sing God’s song
in this wasteland?
If I ever forget you, Jerusalem,
let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves.
Let my tongue swell and turn black
if I fail to remember you,
If I fail, O dear Jerusalem,
to honor you as my greatest.
7-9 God, remember those Edomites,
and remember the ruin of Jerusalem,
That day they yelled out,
“Wreck it, smash it to bits!”
And you, Babylonians—ravagers!
A reward to whoever gets back at you
for all you’ve done to us;
Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies
and smashes their heads on the rocks!(The Message)
It’s a lament. It’s an angry, gut-twisting, teeth-grinding demand for payback—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a smashed baby skull for a smashed baby skull.
Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq had wiped the Jewish nation off the political map. They leveled Jerusalem and other major cities. They bashed in the heads of Jewish babies. They deported Jewish survivors to Iraq. And then they had the audacity to ask the refuges to “Sing a song from Zion for us!” (Psalm 137:3).
Zion was Jerusalem, a holy city the Babylonians had leveled—destroying even the world’s only Jewish temple.
The book of Psalms is a collection of Jewish songs and prayers that cover just about every emotion people feel when they talk to God.
Sometimes when we talk to God, we’re thankful—and we tell him so. But sometimes we’re confused, worried, mad at the world or mad at God—and we tell him so.
Psalm 137 is a song sung blue.
It’s not a theology we’re to study and apply to our life. Scholars agree on that.
The prayer comes from a poignant moment in the life of someone who has lost almost everything. This is someone we’re to empathize with—to recognize the brokenness and the need for a degree of healing that only God could provide.
This cry of pain is the person’s first call to God.
Free book goes to New Zealand
I give away one free book a week to a random subscriber of this blog or my quarterly newsletter. This week’s winner: Naomi Poasa. She picked The Illustrated Bible Dictionary.
Just released on YouTube
A new video by Steve: Jesus, Roman MD.
 
The Bible only hints at how Isaiah died. Hebrews 11:37 says of Old Testament heroes, “Some were sawed in half.” That’s what one ancient Jewish book said happened to Isaiah. The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah reports that Judah’s King Manasseh ordered him cut in two…with a wooden saw. Who’s Who and Where’s Where in the Bible 2.0, page 207.
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