Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 35:4 (Autumn 2021)
Article: The Psalm Of Vengeance, The God Who Listens, And How I Learned To Forgive My Mother’s Abuser A Sermon Preached At Acadia Divinity College Chapel
Author: Spencer Miles Boersma

PP 35:4 (Autumn 2021) p. 20

The Psalm Of Vengeance, The God Who Listens, And How I Learned To Forgive My Mother’s Abuser
A Sermon Preached At Acadia Divinity College Chapel

Spencer Miles Boersma

Spencer Miles Boersma teaches theology at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia and is an accredited ordained minister recognized by the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. He holds a ThD from Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. Spencer is a board member for the Atlantic Society for Biblical Equality (see http://BiblicalEquality.org).

The passage we are going to reflect on today is not your typical Bible passage. It is a part of the group of Psalms called the imprecatory Psalms. These Psalms are angry and vengeful. Why are such Psalms in the Bible? What is God trying to tell us in them? These are the questions we will take up today. First, please give your attention to a reading of Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

6 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.

7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks. (NIV)

The Psalms retell the story of God’s people. The earlier Psalms speak of the life of King David. Later ones lament the failure of human kingship, looking to God as the true King.

This one, located towards the end of the Psalms, was written around the time of the Babylonian exile. God’s people were oppressed, enslaved, carried off into exile while their homes were burned. Their children were slaughtered, and their neighbours—like the Edomites, the cousins of Israel—cheered on the Babylonians as they pillaged.1

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