Principle No. 3...
3. These are songs of the oppressedWhen we read a verse in the bible that says:
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun, our first response can be, “How am I supposed to read that as a Christian?” This is an understandable response, but you might find it more helpful to ask, "How would I read this if I had been in Auschwitz?” or, “How would I read this if I was in Darfur?”
It is important to understand that these cursing psalms represent the cry of the underdog, of the abused, of the victim. For many of us that can make these psalms difficult to relate to because we have not been the underdog. We have been used to peace and security and being treated justly. For us, the height of injustice might be getting a parking ticket when we shouldn’t have got one, or receiving an unfair mark in an exam. But part of the call upon us Christians is to side with the poor, the weak, and the abused. If we can read them right, these psalms of violence and vengeance can help us to be more fully Christian, not less.
Back in 1989, between finishing school and going to university, I spent nine months in South Africa. At this time South Africa was still governed under a system called Apartheid, “Separateness.” Apartheid meant that the black majority of the nation were forced to live in the worst areas. They were not allowed to live where white people lived. They couldn’t send their children to the same schools, couldn’t use the same beaches, couldn’t even urinate in the same toilet. But in 1989 apartheid was on its last legs. Nelson Mandela was still in jail but would be released a year later. The white government was still in total control but the winds of change were blowing like a hurricane. There was increasing restlessness and violence in the country and a growing sense of fear that the nation might descend into the most appalling and bloody civil conflict. During those nine months I got to see both sides of the fence. I spent most of my time in white South Africa, with white South Africans. But I also spent a lot of time in black South Africa as I would regularly go into the townships around Cape Town.
One of the fascinating things about that time spiritually was the different way in which black and white Christians would pray. I would go to prayer meetings with white Christians and the emphasis of the prayers would be, “Peace, peace, O Lord, grant us peace!” But when I prayed with black Christians the emphasis would be, “Justice, justice, O Lord, grant us justice!”
The reality is that for those who have lots to lose the desire is for peace, because peace means not losing what you have. But for those who have nothing, the desire is for justice, because justice means that you will get what is rightfully yours but has been denied to you.
When we come to read the psalms we need to understand that often they are written by those whose greatest desire is for justice. They are written by people who have suffered loss. They describe circumstances through the eyes of the victims rather than the victors. And so these psalms express violence rather than peace because they are psalms crying out for justice, for wrongs to be righted, for oppressors to be punished and held to account.
At this point it might be helpful to turn again to Psalm 137 and see if we can make some sense of it.
This isn’t a psalm written by a victor, and it is not a psalm written by anyone who has power to do the things that they pray. This psalm was written by Israelites who had been taken into captivity into Babylon. So it is written by someone wrenched from their homeland, who has seen loved ones butchered in front of their eyes, who has seen the women raped and the old people humiliated and is now a captive in a foreign land. This is a psalm by someone who is now being asked to act like a performing bear for the amusement of its tormentors. This is a psalm by someone who is powerless. So the appalling cry at the end of the psalm (Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!) is actually a plea for justice. It expresses a desire that Babylon’s great power would be ended – that her family line would be brought to a halt. So we could translate these verses in a way which keeps the meaning but loses some of the shock value. Rather than saying:
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
We could say:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who brings you to judgement because of what you have done to us
– happy the one who seizes you and puts an end to your rule forever.
Similarly, where in Psalm 58 we read:
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
We could say:
The righteous will rejoice in the victory of justice,
when they see how the power of the wicked collapses
We could translate it that way. To do so gives the underlying meaning of what is being said. But the whole point of these psalms is that they are meant to be shocking; they are meant to make us sit up and wince; they are meant to make us feel something of the pain of those who wrote them. They are meant to keep us from regarding injustice lightly.
