"If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem..."

One of the most poignantly sad verses I know is Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it.
For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, and those plundered us requested mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth-- if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, "Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!"
O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!

A certain simplicity in the theme-- the sorrow of refugees, captured and taken into exile, longing bitterly for home-- is offset by the unexpected turns the words take.  It starts with a bitter irony: their captors ask them to sing one of their native songs.  The rhetorical question that follows-- "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"-- carries with it the subtle and profound thought of how joys are connected with one another: the song and the place are tied together.  And yet the Jews learned, in their long years of exile, to "sing the Lord's song in a foreign land."  

Then comes the startling conditional curse upon himself: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!"  The power of this oath is easier to feel than to explain.  What is the point of willing something (that his right hand loses its skill) that his oath surely has no power to cause to happen?  What power is he notionally invoking to carry out the curse he utters?  Supposing that the curse were somehow efficacious, why worsen one's options?  That is, if if the singer previously had two options, a) remember Jerusalem, and b) forget Jerusalem and make the best of his life in the new country, his curse worsens option (b) to: forget Jerusalem and lose the skill of his right hand.  This is a pedantic way of saying that the singer does not trust himself; he is afraid he might forget Jerusalem, and wishes to bind himself.

Even before the scorching hatred of the last line, a modern therapist might find the whole mood of the psalm decidedly unhealthy, like a broken-hearted teenager vowing that if he ever loved another girl he should drop dead.  Oughtn't one to reconcile oneself to fait accompli, to "accept the things one cannot change?"  And yet there is a defiance, a shaking of the fist against tyranny and injustice, in Psalm 137, which seems noble compared to this mealy-mouthed, utilitarian advice.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no doubt, the modern therapist is right: the thing that seems all-important in the moment of passion doesn't matter so much, really, and you should "let it go."  But there might be some things that one ought to refuse to accept, even to the extent that willing curses on one's probably-wayward future selves would not be disproportionate, though a greater Being than we may mercifully overrule them.

The singer, no doubt, meant "Jerusalem" literally, but it must ultimately be a symbol, and not just because no reader today has a poignant personal memory of ancient Jerusalem.  For was Jerusalem the singer's "chief joy" when he lived in it?  Perhaps.  But in my experience, the golden ages, the glory days of our lives, those on which we look back with longing, shine with a light that we do not understand while we are in them, and which in retrospect we attribute to the identifiable circumstances of those times by mistake.  That is, we might think we were happy then because we were young, or in college, or drinking and partying, or learning, or in love with and loved by a particular person.  But these are only conjectures, usually untestable.  When they are testable, they often turn out to be false.  For example, lovers separated by chance or choice might look back on their former happiness and credit it to the other person; or a person who was happy in Rome or Paris or his hometown might credit it to the place.  But likely as not, should he reunite with his former lover or his former abode, he would not find the joy renewed.  So the psalmist of Psalm 137 might not, if he should return to Jerusalem and somehow rebuild it, find again his lost joys.

The Christian Church refuses to be content in the Babylon of this world.  From the paradox of earthly joys-- they seem as if they ought to endure forever, yet they are transient-- it deduces that earthly joys are like mirrors or moons, shining with the reflected light of a distant Sun of joy.  The "good news" is that our exile is temporary, and that there is a hope, even in a way an assurance although an unappeasable conditionality is attached to it which opens the door to an endless rhythm of repentance which fills the whole life of a Christian.  In the meantime, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem...": we must be thankful for God's gifts, remembering that at every moment existence is dependent on the will of God, hanging by a thread of the mercy of God as it were; yet we must also refuse to make our peace with this world, we must retain undimmed, as best we can, the visions of a joy that surpasses all understanding, with which all of us are sometimes visited, we must exalt that above all our joys in the world.  This may sound like living for the sake of a dream, but the reverse comparison is more apt: the Beatific Vision is to us now like memories of times awake are to a sleeper when they filter into his dreams, for it is more real, not less, than what we take for reality-- as the Babylonian captivity was a mere episode, where the Jewish nation went on for 3,000 years.

The last line-- the blessing on the man who bashes the baby's brains out-- is perhaps the most violent verbal image I have ever encountered.  Christians usually read this to mean that we should nip sin in the bud, destroy sinful habits when they are just beginning to develop.  Non-Christians might find this to be an ingenious but implausible sanitization of an embarrassing passage, and be glad that they need not engage in such exegetical gymnastics in order to exonerate indefensible ancient texts whose holiness they are precommitted to uphold.  Certainly it seems that this psalmist did not meet Augustine's standard of hating the sin but loving the sinner.  Yet if it is a sin to hate men, it is a virtue to hate injustice with as scorching a hate as the psalmist expresses.

Comments

[Nato]

Given the era, it might be considered somewhat progressive to require a reason beyond expedience to seek vengeance, though the concept of collective versus individual responsibility is not, of course, very developed. On the other hand, it's possible the contemporary Greeks, Phonicians etc. were as morally advanced. I don't know.

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I do like this verse myself - If I forget Jerusalem I will forget my right arm... I am more familiar with this more simple translation! The city of Jerusalem must have been a true oasis of beauty and holiness those days.

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It starts with a bitter irony: their captors ask them to sing one of their native songs. The rhetorical question that follows-- "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"-- carries with it the subtle and profound thought of how joys are connected with one another: the song and the place are tied together.

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we must retain undimmed, as best we can, the visions of a joy that surpasses all understanding, with which all of us are sometimes visited, we must exalt that above all our joys in the world.

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From the paradox of earthly joys-- they seem as if they ought to endure forever, yet they are transient-- it deduces that earthly joys are like mirrors or moons, shining with the reflected light of a distant Sun of joy.

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This may sound like living for the sake of a dream, but the reverse comparison is more apt: the Beatific Vision is to us now like memories of times awake are to a sleeper when they filter into his dreams, for it is more real, not less, than what we take for reality-- as the Babylonian captivity was a mere episode, where the Jewish nation went on for 3,000 years.

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This is a pedantic way of saying that the singer does not trust himself; he is afraid he might forget Jerusalem, and wishes to bind himself.

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But there might be some things that one ought to refuse to accept, even to the extent that willing curses on one's probably-wayward future selves would not be disproportionate, though a greater Being than we may mercifully overrule them.

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This is a pedantic way of saying that the singer does not trust himself; he is afraid he might forget Jerusalem, and wishes to bind himself.

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And yet the Jews learned, in their long years of exile, to "sing the Lord's song in a foreign land."

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That is, we might think we were happy then because we were young, or in college, or drinking and partying, or learning, or in love with and loved by a particular person. But these are only conjectures, usually untestable.