A friend wrote me this week asking about my thoughts on Psalm 137 (see an old post HERE). These aren’t the precise words of my reply but his questions and texted replies spurred me on to write this. So here is a bit of my further rehearing of this brutal psalm and wrestling with it as a piece of community literature, as lament, and as testimony to Jesus.
First, it isn’t a standalone. This psalm belongs to a collection of songs. It belongs to a community (indeed, communities). As such, it is best reheard as a community text rooted in the story of a people and part of a much larger collection of stories, instructions, songs, prayers, and oracles. It is a part of the living community who takes up these words (regardless of whenever they were written or by whomever they were written). Were these words to be sung on a particular day such as the Ninth of Av remembering the destruction of Jerusalem in 586BCE? And, thus, also of necessity remembering the rebellion of Israel/Judah against Yahweh causing this long delayed judgment to finally fall? Is it sung with confessions of traitorous acts against Yahweh along with confession of promises for restoration (like Lamentations, Daniel 9, Ezra 9, and Nehemiah 9)? Is lament supposed to be answered immediately or should there be a lingering space for silence, sorrow, anger, fear, questions? Is it heard alongside a rehearing of the terms of the covenant in Leviticus and Deuteronomy with blessings and curses against the covenant people? And this song as the inheritance of the church … how should it be reheard in the covenant community hidden in Jesus and with yet further texts of confessions, prayers, songs, laments, stories, and instructions (what we call “New Testament”)?
This particular lament leaves off any response from Yahweh. It only includes the voice of the exilic community called to sing and play music of fallen Zion. It includes the voicing of the abusing captors who demand a happy song. Yet there is no answer in this psalm from Yahweh. Only statements of what has happened and call for just judgment (a sort of do unto them as they have done unto us and others). Are those hearing and singing and praying such a psalm to imagine Yahweh’s answer? What might it be? Is it heard in other texts (like those mentioned above)? Is it heard in the prophets pronouncing oracles against the nations following the oracles against Israel/Judah (like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel)? Is it to be heard in light of the Lord Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and coming again? What is Yahweh’s answer? Is it only heard in the unfolding history that we find in our texts of the Old Testament or even the New Testament? Does he only console those who cry out like this or is there also confrontation even of them?
Finally, as one who hears Scripture as witness to God’s self revelation in Christ, I cannot but re-hear and re-see Jesus in this psalm. Perhaps not as most who simply avoid such a psalm as belonging to some pre-Jesus era awaiting God to be pacified in Christ. I don’t simply hear it against words of “Father, forgive them” concerning those who crucified, mocked, and scorned him (not that I don’t also do that). I hear lament. I take up lament. I am overcome with grief in the beaten and crucified one. I find myself buried with him in his death, committed to awaiting the answer he has testified to, yet in silence remains through the grave for an answer. With Spirit-ed groans joining creation in longing for Zion! In this psalm is a song to a particular place, people, and God, a song to be sung over every enemy of that blessed dwelling of “God with us”!
Here we remember the beauty of God’s tabernacling lifted up and cast down unto death. Here we echo a call for the shame of death to all who have participated at every turn. Here we find ourselves cast down with him. Here we testify in shame with the singing of unsung songs. Here we await his answer.