What is the context here?
The writer of the Psalm is mourning the complete destruction of their holiest temple and city, Jerusalem, and the mass slaughter of their people. In their rage and sorrow after the death and destruction they have suffered, they wish the same upon those who inflicted it. This includes razing the Babylon empire to the ground (as the Babylonians did to Jerusalem) and the killing of their children (as the Babylonians did to their children).
It is a tough read, as the writer is clearly in distress, but this action is seen as just punishment by the writer and a fulfillment of the Prophecy in Isaiah 13:16. In addition the action was unfortunately common in the times of the Old Testament, as shown in Homers Iliad. Let me know if you have any more questions.
God damn it if you will allow the phrase.
I have the tendency to infer that the Bible is the bedrock of American Christianity. But your meme speaks truth. Nobody but me and like Mike Pence care what it says.
Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter 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.
For context, the book of Psalms is a collection of jewish hymns. Psalm 137 is written from the viewpoint of defeated jews in Babylonian exile; the last verse may well be read as a defiant answer to the line "sing us one of the songs of zion!". The god of the bible is not speaking directly here nor is he being addressed.
As additional context, Boney M's disco version is actually a cover version of The Melodians "Rivers of Babylon" (featured on the soundtrack of the film The Harder They Come) and tactfully omits the verse about dashing Babylonian infants against rocks.
What's "holier" than killing kids for being born wrong?
Fucking gross.
I was hoping the nouveau American Taliban would outlaw divorce before permitting any-sex marriage.
im tempted to download a bible reader app just to see if thats true
if i do that and stop coming here, my phone was hacked by the satanic illuminatti convoys. please wish me good luck fighting them if thats the case.
It's absolutely accurate...
It expands upon it here
and tries to paint it in a different light but I'm still not satisfied with their washing of it, at all...
Perfect example of "don't take the Bible literally" when you point out its contradictions. That article even points out a contradicting verse from Romans and says "use that one instead". So dumb. Maybe don't include that verse on psalms in the Bible if it's not meant to be followed. There needs to be a new council of Nicaea.
I prefer the Boney M version of that song
And that's how you make Christian sangria!
