Texts in Conversation
Psalm 137’s unsettling reference to infants dashed on a rock may echo language found in Ezekiel 26:4, where Tyre is reduced to a bare rock exposed to public view. In both texts, the rock provides not only destruction but also a space without concealment, indicating deep public shame.
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Ezekiel 26:4
Hebrew Bible
2 “Son of man, because Tyre has said about Jerusalem, ‘Aha, the gateway of the peoples is broken; it has swung open to me. I will become rich, now that she has been destroyed,’ 3 therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look, I am against you, O Tyre! I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers. I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. 5 She will be a place where fishing nets are spread, surrounded by the sea. For I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, 6 and her daughters who are in the field will be slaughtered by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Psalm 137:9
Hebrew Bible
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: 6th-3rd Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The use in the psalm suggests the idea of retaliation: just as Babylon shattered nations and kingdoms, man and woman, old and young (Jeremiah 51:20, 22), so her little ones will be shattered in return. The phrase “on the rock” at the end of the verse seems superfluous. Nowhere else in the Bible is it said where or how the dashing is carried out. Mentioning the rock of course intensifies the horror of the act, but it might have additional significance. The rock may signify that the blood is visible to all. This is the sense in Ezekiel 24:7–8: “For the blood she shed is still in her; she set it upon a bare rock; she did not pour it out on the ground to cover it with earth. She set her blood upon the bare rock so that it was not covered so that it may stir up my fury to take vengeance.” It is more probable, however, that the rock serves to indicate dry, infertile land, as in Ezekiel 26:4, 14: “They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and demolish her towers; and I will scrape her soil off her and leave her a naked rock. I will make you a naked rock, you shall be a place for drying nets; you shall never be rebuilt.” The rock at the end of the psalm thus functions as an antithesis to the waters at the beginning ..."
Bar-Efrat, Shimon
"Love of Zion: A Literary Interpretation of Psalm 137" in Greenberg, Moshe, et al., (eds.) Tehillah Le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg
(pp. 3-12) Eisenbrauns, 1997
* 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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