No, of course the Bible does not teach that we're supposed to kill our enemies' children. Or even applaud when their other enemies do.
But it does say...
As explained at https://www.hillfaith.org/contradictions/contradictions-no-god-does-not-glorify-killing-babies-in-psalm-137 , in its historical context, the singer was not urging people to kill babies. The song was recognized as a Psalm and included in the Bible because the singer accurately prophesied the downfall of Babylon.
Christians have long celebrated the idea of a "spiritual Babylon," the realm of evil, temptation, greed, violence, falling before the wrath of God.
"Babylon falls!
Ho, ho, ho, Babylon falls!
Open up your eyes and Babylon falls!
Rise above the lies and Babylon falls!"
"All her merchants stand with wonder:
'What is this that comes to pass?'
Murmuring like a distant thunder,
Crying, 'Oh, alas, alas!'
Swell the sound, ye kings and nobles,
Priests and people, rich and poor!
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen!
Babylon is fallen to rise no more!"
These songs were not written to express schadenfreude at the destruction of a literal city, but to rejoice in a blessed hope for the destruction of corrupt systems, evil practices, even of sin itself in the Final Judgment. Imagine never being tempted to do things that make you feel guilty again! Ho, ho, ho, Babylon falls!
Is this what we're meant to learn from Psalm 137? I think the original intention was to remind us that some unknown slave, possibly a bereaved parent, was blessed with a vision of the fall of the real, historical Babylon where person was enslaved. We can draw analogies between such historical events and our spiritual lives if we like. Such analogies may or may not be useful to anyone else.
Kathleen Norris told how she had seen this type of Psalm work for a very young Christian, a girl annoyed by an obnoxious older boy. The Bible contains a selection of "cursing Psalms" that foretell the ultimate punishments for sin in melodramatic detail, and an older person advised the girl to join in "praying the Psalms." After reading a few vivid descriptions of what awaits the unrepentant sinner, aloud, the girl started to feel sorry for the wrongdoer: "Oh, stop! He's just a college kid!"
That's one of the salutary effects Psalm 137 can have for us. The sinner in Psalm 137 is portrayed, atypically, probably with literal truth, as a rich woman who demands that people who work for her should seem happy. Speaking to someone who didn't feel like singing, very likely the mother of a child who died in a prison, a "barracoon" for slaves waiting to be sold, this woman said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion." One of the consolations of being sold as a slave in a foreign country was that the slavemasters didn't understand the words in the slaves' songs, and so this nameless slave made a song just for all the victims of emotional bullying by people who are not content with good work but presume to demand control of the workers' moods. Anyone who's ever been ordered to "Smile!" has a right to pray, or chant, or sing Psalm 137 all the way through...but in the absence of a prophetic vision, how many of us actually wish any harm to the emotional bully's children? From quarrels among adults, were we not taught to spare children? Psalm 137 can remind us that our anger, though just, has certain natural limits.
C.S. Lewis offered another way to read Psalm 137 that may be even more helpful for people who aren't comfortable with the reality that our bodies are built to feel anger energy. It was not at all original with Lewis; only his words, in Reflections on the Psalms, were anything new to most of his readers. Victorian Christians, most of whom weren't interested in the history of any ancient tribes but their own, were familiar with the idea that most of the Old Testament should be read as metaphors for the spiritual life. The "little ones" of the "daughter of Babylon" did not have to be imagined as human children. They could also be imagined as the little temptations that set us up for the big ones--the temptation to go to the party where the temptation to start an addiction or an unwanted baby will be found, say. The temptation to eat heavily at night that makes it so easy to oversleep and be unfit to work the next morning. The little things that can only be called sinful in a particular context where we know very well that they were sinful choices. Show them no mercy, Lewis said. Bash the little monsters' brains out.
I don't believe it's good for either our mental health or our spiritual health to shudder away from reality, including the reality that somewhere in ancient Babylon a slavemaster who emotionally abused her slaves received a punishment that seems disproportionate...to everyone but the slave.
I don't believe that the slave wrote that Psalm in a spirit of detachment or compassion. I believe he or she was a grieving parent. I can picture the person's face, already haggard and baggy-eyed from weeping, becoming really ugly during the performance of this song. You want "happy:? God will show you "happy"! The foolish daughter of Babylon probably clutched her pearls and observed to the other women who hung out together, even in the richest families, seeking safety in numbers, that "Those Israelites are savages! Look at those eyes!" Then she made efforts not to look at her slaves' faces, and the slaves were glad. And when she got what was coming to her, they said with feelings of great relief, "Righteous are the judgments of the Holy One." The singing and dancing waited until they were allowed to go back to their ancestral land as free men and women. But some people surely did think, during the historical collapse of Babylon, that nits make lice and one less Babylonian was a good thing, even if it was a baby a soldier killed before driving its mother into a shed full of newly enslaved Babylonians. Serve'm right. I believe that kind of thought comes from our mortal, sinful nature, along with our appetites for food, sleep, sex and suchlike, and like them it needs to be disciplined, but accepted.
The Bible is not as "spiritual" a book as some people think they want. It was written by and for people living in bodies. It advised people who thought that ascetic practices might impress God, "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrow; for so God gives to His beloved sleep." If young people torture themselves they are more likely to make themselves ill than they are to make themselves patient and "spiritual." Bodies go through a stage of passion before they reach a stage of patience. No "spiritual" benefit is achieved when people in their twenties make it a goal to feel the way people in their fifties feel. The detachment from emotions our minds achieve when our blood hormone levels subside does make it easier to use whatever wisdom we have gained by living long enough to become middle-aged, but it is no more virtuous than grey hair is. What the Bible shows us is that young people need to offer their passions and energy to God, and older people need to offer their lack of those to God. That may mean suppressing what our bodies give us, or it may mean using it.
I believe the slave who first sang Psalm 137 may have been angry enough to enjoy the thought of the slavemasters' babies being killed. Enslaved people are likely to have feelings like that. This is why we should only ever allow slavery, as Moses taught, for people who sell up to seven years of their lives to pay their debts, if we allow it at all. That lesson needed to be in the Bible, although historically people managed to ignore its being there. It needs to stay. It needs to be hammered into our minds.
It has relevance today, when the surplus of humans relative to the technology we imagine can replace human labor is allowing some people even in English-speaking countries to think that "people have too much freedom." Generations of English-speaking people have held it to be a self-evident truth that all people are endowed by their Creator with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by any means that does not materially harm other people, but some of us are feeling the effects of overpopulation directly. Some of us, unfortunately including the most talented (and obsessive) technologists, have been given reasons to resent the anti-intellectual types who would rather say that someone is "weird" or "crazy" than do the research necessary to understand what the person is saying or doing.
So we have people echoing the nineteenth century thinker who wrote to John Stuart Mill that the best thing for "the masses" would be to allow them to enjoy the pleasures of life while young and then die. We have people observing "scientifically" that people are more likely to say they're happy in countries where they can't afford choices and can expect punishment for complaining, arguing that people would be "happier" if all the choices were made for them. We have a resurgence of that loathsome arrogance that imagines that "We, the superior people, can and should decide what our inferiors 'need,' give it to them, and tell them to be happy about it. We don't have to respect their right to choose."
Anyone who is thinking that way needs to meditate on Psalm 137. We don't know whether God will use people who think that way to oppress and abuse and enslave one another, but it would certainly serve them right if God did. It would be better if people who want to be the "planners" and the "gatekeepers" could learn some humility from this Psalm, and back away from the idea of interfering with anyone else's right to do anything that is not materially harming someone else.
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