One of the most familiar of the psalms begins like this: “By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). The historical setting for this psalm is clearly during the Exile, with the people of Israel no longer in Jerusalem but far from home, in the Babylonian Captivity.

The psalm is wild with grief: we wept, our captors tormented us by demanding that we perform Zion songs for their entertainment (137:3), our hearts were breaking at the very thought of singing one of our worship songs before a heathen audience (137:4). The psalm may well give us the personal remembrances of one of the citizens of Jerusalem who was taken for a slave: someone who actually heard the Edomites chanting “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” (137:7).

The last verse often catches people off guard: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (137:9). How can the Bible offer blessing to those who murder children in such gruesome fashion!? Again, this could well reflect the personal experience of someone who watched it happen: Babylonian soldiers decided that the smallest children were too young to survive the long march to slavery in Babylon, and then they killed those little ones by slamming them against stone walls or down onto the pavement.

If that’s the case, we can easily see how the people of Jerusalem would yearn to pay the Babylonians back for the suffering they had experienced (137:8). The Bible does not shy away from recognizing that sometimes the lament in our souls comes out in raw anguish like this, with the sense that only horrible vengeance will do. At the least, in this psalm we find a vehicle to bewail the injustices we ourselves have experienced.

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Ah Lord God! I too have wanted destruction for those who have hurt me. You teach us to pray “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Yet at times I want you to make an exception: forgive me for my faults, and repay my enemies with full vengeance for their terrible transgressions against me. Even so: in the end, what can we do but plead for grace for all of us lost sinners?