Does the bible really say that????????????????

"You have not been writing many postes lately, m'love."

I woke up thinking (or dreaming) of Gollum having a conversation with himself about the lack of posts recently. I think my kids are influencing more of my life than I had originally thought. Anyways, if God can speak through a donkey, than I guess he can speak through an ex-hobbit. Whatever.....
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"O Babylon, you will be destroyed.
Happy is the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks.
Psalm 137:8-9.

Imagine doing devotions on that one. Look it up, it's there, God let it in the bible. Jesus did good work scrapping that one from his working list of beatitudes. I can picture it:

Happy are the poor in spirit.
Happy are the meek.
Happy are the pure in heart.
Happy are those who take babies and smash them against rocks.

Good nogo there for sure.

Seriously, what are we supposed to do with that verse? (and similar verses)? It's about as far away from the Jesus that we know than anything we could imagine.

The other day I was dialoguing on my sim baseball message board (imaginesports.com) about faith and someone posted this verse in an effort to reveal the foolishness of believing in the authority of the Bible. Kind of like, "why believe anything that would advocate this behavior?" "Is this, or is it not, the word of the LORD"?

I took the bait and offered my response. Here was my reply to the posters concern:


grooville replied (1 day ago): very likely written by a political prisoner who was painfully remembering seeing his city destroyed. He was overwhelmed with emotion and venting to God.

Psalms are prayers from men to God. Don't confuse them with edicts from God to man highlighting behavior God desires.

The psalms are chock full of statements that aren't "correct", but the point of the book is more about revealing the heart of man (under many different circumstances) rather than a mere listing of things God approves/disapproves.

Another example from a psalm about despair (instead of anger)

PS 13:1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
Did God really forget him? or is he feeling alone?

The point isn't being right. For me at least, these psalms show me that I can be honest before God with my true feelings and not have to put on a righteous "god-face' with the hopes of pleasing him. (Delete)



The conversation continues.....Klement is the person who originally posted Psalm 137

-Klement replied (1 day ago):

There are "inaccurate verses", "untenable verses", "verses that don't deserve to be taken literally", and "incorrect verses", as you and grooville say in the two posts above.

But this is "the word of God," and therefore should not contain all this assorted silliness, a ton of which I won't bother listing here. At one time I, like you, would read it and make excuses for it, and would try to explain it away. Once the amount of strangeness became overwhelming, I permanently set it aside.

-grooville replied (1 day ago): Klement--

I believe there is a difference between making excuses and understanding something in the context in which it was said.

I do not consider a person being frank with God about the condition of their heart "silliness". I consider it refreshing.

Using your method of biblical interpetation, one could argue that the bible denies the existence of God because it contains the sentence: "there is no God."

You could argue that Jesus was a demon because it contains the sentence: "He is a demon." (words directed to Jesus)

You could argue that Jesus was never crucified because the bible says "this will never happen to you" (Matt 16:22) in reference to Jesus' announcement regarding his death.

CIE=context is everything

The book of Job contains numerous speeches from men like Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar. These men say a lot of things about God. In Job 42:7 God says that their descriptions/definitions of God were inaccurate=wrong. The words of Bildad & friends are in "God's word"--they are "the word of God", but to pull them out of their context and use them in an effort to invalidate or question the authority of the bible (because they are wrong and "God's word" cannot be wrong) is pretty bad hermeneutic.

In the end, I really have no problem with Psalm 137:8-9 being in the bible. I personally find it freeing that we can be that open before God with our feelings, as bad as they might be...and His response is grace & healing.

Nope, no problems here....

grace & blessings,

pjim