Dashing Babies Against the Rocks – An Intriguing Interpretation

One of the most unsettling passages in all of the Bible is found in Psalm 137. Here, the psalm writer laments the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon. The psalm ends with these chilling verses:

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks (vv. 8-9).

How are we to understand this passage from Psalm 137?

Dr. Claude Mariottini, Professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Seminary and one of my favorite bloggers, offers an intriguing interpretation of this psalm in his post: “Dashing Babies Against the Rocks.” I’m not sure whether I agree fully with Mariottini’s interpretation, but I appreciate his effort to take the text seriously and to weigh it in the balance of Scripture.