Psalm 137:7

The people of Edom were descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob, so Edom and Israel were kin. The word behind “children”, bên, is the ordinary Hebrew word for a son, and “the children of Edom” are the sons of Edom, the nation that grew from that line. Edom had long been hostile toward Judah, and on the day of Jerusalem that hostility came to a head. The prophets record that the Edomites stood by while the city was taken, then joined in the plunder and urged the Babylonians to destroy it completely.

Coming from a brother nation, this was an especially bitter betrayal, because it broke the loyalty that kin owed one another. The prophets return to it again and again. Obadiah charges Edom with violence against his brother Jacob, with standing aloof on Jerusalem’s day and then acting as one of its enemies (Obadiah 1:10–14), and the whole book of Obadiah is given to Edom’s judgment. Lamentations speaks of Edom’s rejoicing and of the judgment that will come to her (Lamentations 4:21–22), and Ezekiel announces the LORD’s vengeance on Edom for what it did to Judah (Ezekiel 25:12–14).

The psalm quotes Edom’s own words: “Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.” The verb is ʻârâh, to make bare, to strip or empty out, and so to demolish. In Hebrew the command is doubled, ʻârû, ʻârû, “strip it, strip it”, and the doubling shows how fiercely the Edomites wanted it done. They wanted Jerusalem emptied of everything it had and everyone in it, until only bare foundations were left and the city was beyond rebuilding. The city was already falling to Babylon, and Edom called for its utter ruin.

That glee over a neighbour’s ruin is the very thing God condemns in Edom. It stands in Scripture as a warning against delighting in anyone’s misfortune, even an enemy’s, and against helping on the downfall of others.

The prayer opens with “Remember, O LORD”. The verb zâkar means to remember, and in some of its forms to mention or to bring something to remembrance. The exiles bring Edom’s deeds before the LORD and ask him to keep them in mind as the righteous judge of the nations. God sees every act, good and evil, and his memory is perfect, so the prayer rests on the certainty that nothing Edom did that day escaped him and that he will deal with it. The exiles name what they saw and leave the answer with him.

The word for destroyed is shâdad, to ravage, devastate, lay waste or plunder. The form is passive, and it speaks of Babylon as a city whose ruin is already settled. The LORD had declared it through the prophets in the long oracles against Babylon in Isaiah 13–14 and Jeremiah 50–51. Babylon had laid Jerusalem waste, and now she is the one who will be laid waste. Her might counts for nothing before the God who rules over every nation.

“Happy” is ʼesher, the word of blessing that opens the Psalter in Psalm 1:1. It is used as an exclamation, “how happy!”, and it describes someone who is fortunate and blessed by God. Here it falls on whoever repays Babylon, and the same word opens verse 9.

The verse leaves the one who repays her unnamed. In the prophets the LORD often uses one nation to bring his judgment on another, and the happy one here is whoever carries out that judgment on Babylon. The happiness the exiles look for is the relief of seeing justice done at last, with the oppressor receiving what she dealt out and God’s moral order set right.

“Rewardeth” is shâlam, to repay or to make good. “As thou hast served us” uses the verb gâmal, to treat a person well or ill, to deal with them or requite them, together with its noun gᵉmûwl, treatment or requital. Babylon is to be repaid with the very treatment she gave Israel, measure for measure.

This is the principle of “eye for eye” in the law of Moses (Exodus 21:24), applied here to a whole nation, with the punishment matching the crime. The prophets say the same of Babylon. Jeremiah calls for her to be repaid “according to her work” (Jeremiah 50:29), and the LORD tells those who will punish her, “as she hath done, do unto her” (Jeremiah 50:15). Revelation speaks in the same way of the judgment on Babylon at the end (Revelation 18:6).

The exiles’ cry belongs with the many psalms that call on God to rise against the wicked, such as “Arise, O LORD, in thine anger” (Psalm 7:6) and the plea that the LORD would take up the psalmist’s cause against those who strive with him (Psalm 35:1). Behind all of them stands the truth that nations, like people, answer to God for what they do, and that empires built on pride, cruelty and violence come down in the end.

God has kept this verse in his word as the honest cry of people who had seen their city destroyed, and he lets us hear their anguish in full. Scripture shows the whole range of human feeling, grief and anger and the longing for a great wrong to be repaid, and it shows that all of it may be brought to God. Prayers of this kind are called imprecatory psalms, and Psalm 58 is another. They are appeals to God to bring his own judgment on evil, and they leave the doing of it with him.

The psalm records what the exiles prayed, and the LORD’s words about Babylon stand behind it. It gives no reader a command to carry out such an act, and it is no pattern for dealing with enemies today. What it does show is how deep the wound of the exile went, and that God received a prayer as raw as this one from his grieving people.

The psalm and the New Testament agree that God is perfectly just and that vengeance belongs to him. Jesus tells us, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), and Paul tells believers to leave vengeance to God, for “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). The law already said that vengeance belongs to God (Deuteronomy 32:35), a psalm calls on him as the God to whom vengeance belongs (Psalm 94:1), and Nahum calls the LORD a jealous and avenging God (Nahum 1:2).

The exiles prayed under the old covenant, where the judgment of nations for their sins stood in the foreground. Their cry gives a place in Scripture for the deepest hurt and the longing for justice, laid before the one judge. The New Testament’s call to forgive and to love those who wrong us stands alongside it for every believer. Taking vengeance into our own hands is forbidden to us, and God’s justice is certain, and he will right every wrong in his own time and in his own way.