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| The second great truth is that grief and anger are inseparable. Healthy grieving includes anger. The crying and sorrow of verses 1-4 are matched by the intense anger of verses 7-9, an anger so intense that the poem calls for the killing of innocent babies. Many Christians are bothered by this ending. It seems anti-Christian to want the Babylonian babies to be dashed against the rocks. Some commentators propose that “Daughter Babylon” is a symbol for a whole people (the Chaldeans or Babylonians) and so the “little ones” is also symbolic. There isn’t a real cry for babies to be killed. Others say that this psalm is only calling for a repayment of what the Babylonians did to the people of Judea when they took over Jerusalem. Probably many babies were killed during the takeover. But both comments miss the point. The psalmist, speaking for all the exiles, is terribly angry, and apparently, this anger is okay to express in a song of worship. It is an honest way of dealing with the reality of one’s soul. Many psalms are similar, expressing great amounts of anger that many Christians today are hesitant to own. Psalm 58:6-11 calls for God to break the teeth of the enemy. The righteous will rejoice when they can bathe their feet in the enemies’ blood. In Psalm 94:1-3, God is proclaimed a God of vengeance. The first 20 verses of Psalm 109 call for God to curse the psalmist’s enemies in numerous and creative ways. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like the God of the New Testament. And even upon further reflection, Jesus does seem to take believers to a new level of love for the enemy, which is not fully developed here in the Psalms. But consistent throughout these angry, vengeful Psalms is the cry for God take revenge. God is the only one who should decide when and how to punish enemies. Nowhere do the people see themselves in this position. They leave that duty to God. This, at least in part, redeems the vengeful speech in these psalms. The psalmist can express anger that needs to be honestly expressed—for the sake of the writer and his audience. But the actual act of revenge is left to the One who knows and judges every heart. |
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