The reports from Israel have been horrific.
On Oct. 7, 2023, invaders from the Hamas organization had penetrated the state of the art defenses of Israel. They had attacked some military targets, but much of the damage they inflicted was aimed directly at civilians. Many had labeled Hamas a terrorist organization and they were earning that epithet.
And it wasn’t just civilians they went after. They killed women and children. Social media was instantly aflame with fake and unrelated images which made me question the truth of the atrocities. But then the legitimate ones began to roll in. Children and babies weren’t just murdered, they were mutilated. The violence was horrific. Obscene.
It reminded me of the most notorious verses in the Bible:
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 (Ps. 137:8-9).
Psalm 137 has been important to me. Its grief and humiliation at the beginning of the psalm well up into outrage and then in a wild fury that spews a wretched blessing on baby killers. It’s been important to me not because I’ve ever felt that angry, but because I haven’t. It’s been important because it’s given me range in my praying to include the vilest of emotions and imaginations of revenge.
If the Scriptures include a prayer expressing such out of control rage, then I can express the dark emotions I myself feel. The boundary is set so wide for praying that I have room to voice anything and everything inside of me.
I have always assumed God answered the prayed sentiment of Psalm 137 with a NO. I could imagine praying those words, but I couldn’t imagine them ever becoming reality. I wasn’t prepared for a modern day expression of Psalm 137, one that was acted out. But that’s precisely what Hamas did.
Like the Hebrew people in Psalm 137 who were exiles in Babylon, the Palestinian people have be exiles from Palestine ever since the Jewish people burst through the British barricade and took over the land for themselves. Having just endured the horrors of the Holocaust, European Jews were adamant: They would have a homeland of their own in Eretz Yisra’el. They would not live among pogroms and antisemitic derision any more. But the establishment of the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948 led to the exile of the Palestinian people.
In an astonishing turnabout, the Israeli people created a Psalm 137 situation for the Palestinian people. And so, for the last 75 years, Palestinians have been the landless exiles of Psalm 137, seething in anger at the ones who robbed them of their sacred soil. Unlike the greedy Babylonians who already had their own city state, the post-Holocaust Jews were landless and “reclaimed” their ancient homeland. But the results for the unsettled people were the same. Shame. Poverty. Rage. Kicked out of their land and unwanted by the rest of the Arab world, for decades they have sought their revenge in failed attempt after failed attempt.
Now, I have no political solution for this mess. Jews need a homeland. Palestinians need a homeland. There have been attempts at a two-state solution, but I don’t know if any have been sought in good faith. Each side hates and fears the other side too much. That doesn’t mean there aren’t those who would love to make some sort of peace, but shalom seems particularly elusive here despite big-hearted efforts, including those of Palestinian Christians.
If there is to be any way forward, it will arise more from prayer than politics.
In a way, Hamas treated Psalm 137 as if it were a political blueprint: Sulk. Resist. Massacre. Rejoice.
The celebrations in Lebanon and Iran, among other places, after the Hamas invasion mirror the blessings of Ps. 137:8. Political action feels like, well, action. It feels like something is finally getting done.
Prayer, on the other hand, feels like inaction. It feels like wishing upward. It feels like a pacifying opiate of the masses which leaves them subservient to their dominating masters.
But prayer does much more than that. Among other things, it bleeds us of our rage. Voicing out fierce objections to what’s wrong with the world to the God who ought to do something about it, leeches the venom of wrath from our veins. Simply voicing anger is cathartic.
But prayer does more than that as well. Speaking it to God is a relinquishment. When I hold out my hands to God in prayer, I relinquish to him whatever or whomever it is I hold in my hands. I leave it to God to deal with. That doesn’t mean I never do anything. Rather, it means I no longer own the action. I may join the action of God, but it’s no longer mine. This is how Black Americans sang and prayed and resisted Jim Crow laws and engaged in other nonviolent protests in the 1960s.
So this is my challenge to anyone who has read this far:
For every article you read or every video you watch about this war between Israel and Hamas, offer a prayer. It needn’t be long. But do not let a single news story or social media post go into you without a prayer going out of you.
Refuse to be a consumer of violence. Rather, be a pray-er out of the violence. Refuse to let politics define the issues. Rather, let prayer define the issues.
That is why Psalm 137 is in the Scriptures. It isn’t a political call to violent action, even if the original writer would have been glad for that. The Spirit of God included it to teach us how to turn that violence into prayer. So let’s get spicy in our praying.