Not that verse

This week’s Bible reading from Psalm 137 makes for a good pop 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.