This week’s Bible reading from Psalm 137 makes for a good reggae song. It expresses pain and sorrow. And at the end it makes me want to throw up.
I can’t understand the pain that the writer of this Psalm felt, I can’t understand the anguish of the people who endured the atrocities committed against them by the Edomites. I have never experienced the kind of rage that would come from seeing your children savagely murdered and abused.
I can see how a person or a people would feel that payback was the only thing that would give them satisfaction. I can see how a person or a people would want revenge after they had been treated so savagely. I can see how people today want revenge against those who have murdered innocents.
But I can’t understand ever wanting to take little ones and dash them against the rock.
That brutal emotion is expressed at the end of Psalm 137. I wish the verse wasn’t there, but it is.
I just don’t want to read it. Payback is dangerous. Payback doesn’t pay back. It only makes things worse.
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