Psalm 137 has some of the most recognisable lines of any of the Psalms. Its opening was made popular through the rather cheery sounds of Bony M back in the day, and its closing words are often used to demonstrate the horror of the Bible.

Firstly, while I kind of like the Bony M tune for Rivers of Babylon, it doesn’t capture the sense I get of the Psalm at all. Because of that there’s part of me that loves that the words of a Psalm were popularised and made widely known, but there’s another part that thinks we’ve all been done a disservice by not capturing the real humanity behind the words that were written. To illustrate, how many people could imagine, with the tune of the Bony M song in their head, that the same Psalm also contains these words:

Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

That’s probably one of the most violent expressions of anger in the Bible and there it is, the closing words to the same Psalm whose opening 4 verses were used for a happy sounding Bony M song.

That fact is that nothing in the Psalm is happy. The whole Psalm is an expression of grief. It has both confusion and unbridled anger. It’s seething with anger at the Babylonians and in their anger, it’s author(s) is calling for the worst they can possibly imagine to happen to them – that the babies of the Babylonians would be smashed against rocks. It is both awful and gut wrenching. It’s the expression of people that have been ripped apart, broken and that have stared their destruction in the face. Ironically it comes right after a Psalm about how God’s love will endure forever (Psalm 136). I’m guessing whoever wrote Psalm 137 wasn’t feeling it when they penned their angry poem.

Psalm 137 is a Psalm expressing the feelings of the ancient Israelites who had just been taken into captivity by the Babylonians. They had lost everything, and experienced the horrors and violence of a most terrible war. The trouble of Jerusalem that led to Psalm 137 happened across the late 7th century BC and the early 6th century BC as Babylon and Egypt underwent a power struggle that had Israel caught in the middle as a strategic piece of land. Various political happenings led to various stages where the Babylonians took people into captivity and the ultimate sacking of Jerusalem and the pillaging of its temple. All accounts paint the whole thing as horrid and violent. Blood would have flowed in the streets.

Psalm 137 is the human response to that violence and struggle. It’s a refusal to do what their captors want, a mourning of those caught in captivity and the expression of a desire for revenge. It is intensely human.

I know that many people struggle with the violence of Psalm 137, but I find it extremely valuable, alongside the likes of the book of Job and the mention of Jesus weeping in John 11:35. You see, too often I see life with God sold as some feel good panacea for life, that when embraced, will lead to your own personal happiness and fulfillment. For me this selling of the faith was perfectly encapsulated in the words of a young lady who called a talk-back show I did on radio years ago. She said she was giving up on God and walking away because God hadn’t done anything for her – her life wasn’t any better because she had prayed the sinner’s prayer. She had been sold a line that life would be better, good things would happen and that happiness would ensue. In this sales pitch the Bible often gets reduced to a set of isolated motivational verses.

In trying to be relevant by pitching Christianity as the feel good answer, its salespeople are sadly making it irrelevant. With such a faith, what happens when we encounter the rawness of life? What happens when we feel torn apart by life and its circumstances and we can’t muster the feeling of being bigger than the hurt and the pain? What happens when we don’t feel like we’re ‘more than conquerors’? What happens when we feel angry, confused, hurt, betrayed, and broken? What about those times when we encounter all of that happening in the lives of others? How much room is there for us to be honest? In a feel good Christianity there is little room for it, but in scripture and in God’s embrace of us, there is heaps of room for us to throw it all out there. You see, Psalm 137 is permission giving. It gives permission for us to feel and experience the grit of life and to honestly put it out there without needing to coat it in some strange veneer of a false righteousness and happiness.

Any pitch of Christianity that doesn’t allow us the honesty of Psalm 137 is giving us a small God, a precious God who has no room for the reality of what it means to be human in a broken world. If the story of Jesus tells us anything, it’s that God knows the raw reality and struggle of humanity. He’s the Jesus who wept with Mary at the death of her brother, Lazarus. He’s the Saviour who sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he experienced the anguish of the suffering he knew was coming. He’s the Messiah who felt abandoned by God on the cross, and said it. He’s the God who jumped into the pain and suffering with us and while that’s not the end of the story, we need to know that it’s that story of God, along with the likes of Psalm 137 and Job that give us permission to be human and its that experience of suffering in scripture that makes the story relevant to the entirety of our humanity, not just the happy bits.

Read more of my reflections on the Psalms.

Here’s why I’m walking this journey through the Psalms.