Texts in Conversation
Psalm 137 voices anger over Jerusalem’s fall by blessing violence against Babylon’s children. Judith 16 echoes this language in Holofernes’ threat to crush Israel’s children, but reverses it when his army is destroyed.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 137:9
Hebrew Bible
6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, and do not give Jerusalem priority over whatever gives me the most joy. 7 Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. They said, “Tear it down, tear it down, right to its very foundation!” 8 O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated, how blessed will be the one who repays you for what you dished out to us. 9 How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock.
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Judith 16:4
Deuterocanon
2 For the Lord is the God that crushes battles. For in his armies in the midst of the people, he delivered me out of the hand of those who persecuted me. 3 Asshur came out of the mountains from the north. He came with ten thousands of his army. Its multitude stopped the torrents. Their horsemen covered the hills. 4 He said that he would burn up my borders, kill my young men with the sword, throw my nursing children to the ground, give my infants up as prey, and make my virgins a plunder. 5 “The Almighty Lord brought them to nothing by the hand of a woman. 6 For their mighty one didn’t fall by young men, neither did sons of the Titans strike him. Tall giants didn’t attack him, but Judith the daughter of Merari made him weak with the beauty of her face.
Date: 100 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Judith 16 alludes intra-textually to Holofernes’ (Nebuchadnezzar’s) bragging that he would crush Israel’s babies against the ground. But it did not happen. Instead, Holofernes was killed and his army was crushed by the very people he thought would be crushed by him. Intertextually, these words can be related to Psalm 137, where the person who crushes the babies of Israel’s enemies against a rock is called ‘blessed’. The poet of Psalm 137 lets himself be dominated by his mounting rage and plunges into the abyss of human emotion and passion. The poet’s prayer in verse 7 moves into a direct curse in a particularly reined form in verses 8−9, namely as a word of blessing on the person who will inflict the most cruel revenge on the hated enemy. The psalm reaches a climax in verses 7−9, where Yahweh is urged to think of the evil deeds committed against his people by the Babylonians, and which must culminate in Yahweh’s judgement of them ..."
S. Philip Nolte and Pierre J. Jordaan, “Ideology and Intertextuality: Intertextual Allusions in Judith 16,” HvTSt 67.3 (2011): 1–9.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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