Remember / Yhwh
Against
the Edomites
Jerusalem’s
day
Those who said, / “Lay bare, lay bare
Down to
its foundations
Lady Babylon / you devastator
How
fortunate / is the one who repays you
With
the treatment / you gave us
How fortunate / is the one who seizes and dashes
Your
children / against the rocks.
The psalmist has been plagued by his memory of Zion and
Jerusalem. The destruction of this sacramental city and Temple was, for the
psalmist and his people, tantamount to the destruction of the Cosmos. It left
them in a state of exile, in a Babylonian state of mockery, temptation, and
torture.
It is for this reason that the psalmist turns again to
memory, imploring Yhwh now to “remember.” The psalmist’s memory is one of absence;
Yhwh cannot be adequately remembered in Babylon because he cannot be
liturgically called upon without the Temple. Yhwh’s ‘memory’, on the other hand, is one of
actualizing his Presence. And, for those who are evil, Yhwh’s memory becomes
their destruction. For those who are within Yhwh’s covenant sphere, it is for
their deliverance.
The psalmist implores Yhwh to remember or, activate his
Presence, by referring back to the Edomites and “Jerusalem’s day.” This seems
to refer to a time when the Edomites collaborated with the Israelites shortly
before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, only to abandon them at the last minute
to the Babylonians. They stood by while the city was overtaken and laid waste.
Obadiah 11-14 speaks of their faithlessness and the destruction that would fall
on them for their betrayal. The psalmist, then, looks back to this time, and
asks Yhwh to “remember it”, to arouse his righteous anger, at the time when
Jerusalem was destroyed. In a way, the psalmist is asking for Yhwh to enter
into the same memory the psalmist has of Zion’s destruction and, from within
that space, to ignite within Yhwh his violent concern for his city and Temple.
When the psalmist sees this flame ignited he begins his
terrible act of beatitude—unlike others that see beatitude in the abundance of
life that is produced from following Yhwh and wisdom, here that ‘bliss’ is
transferred to a vision of vengeance and righteous punishment on Babylon.
Babylon, the devastator, will be devastated. Babylon’s children (her cities)
will now be dashed against rocks just as ‘daughter’ Jerusalem was dashed. This
is a terrible and absolute ‘eye for an eye’, the boomerang justice of Yhwh as
he ignites Babylon’s sins and they are hurled back upon her own head, or, to
say it another way, Yhwh ignites their sins and they are consumed in the flames.
That the psalmist is calling for the destruction of Babylon’s cities—her ‘children’—I
think is clear from the fact that the initial quote that is now coming back on
Babylon’s head was “Lay bare, lay bare, down to its foundations.”. That city
wide call for Jerusalem’s destruction will now destroy Babylon and her
children.
This type of violence pervades the New Testament. Jesus
refers to city’s destruction in the wake of their rejection of him and his
disciples and Revelation is this in dramatic form as the stench of Babylon
reaches heaven and is turned into flaming incense, thrown down upon her (and
her children/cities).
Finally, we should note how Babylon is here being reduced to
the silence that the psalmist and his people experienced while they were in
Babylon and the curses they levelled against themselves if they forgot
Jerusalem as their highest joy. Their liturgical/physical silence—that totalizing
silence we spoke of—is the state that Babylon will exist once her sins are
ignited by Yhwh’s Presence. And their destruction—what causes their total annihilation—is
not simply that they destroyed Jerusalem. It is also their treatment of Yhwh’s
people—their mockery of them and their acts of torture as they asked them to
sings the songs of Zion in a foreign land. Throughout the Scriptures, a cities’
destruction is a public act of shame. All of the neighboring people see it and “nod
their heads”. In a sense, then, Babylon is being turned inside out. The mockery
they levelled at those in their midst is not being externalized such that they
become the mocked.
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