Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Lue-Yee Tsang on Psalm 137

Enough of all the vain attempts to find a God who is good all the time. Lue-Yee prefers to keep both feet on the ground:

A Reader’s Guide to Psalm 137

As Eugene Peterson put it, Psalm 137 is the scandal of the Psalter. At the same time, the raw hate of the psalm’s conclusion takes us to that subterranean location where the foundations of justice are exposed.

In life, in the psalms, hate, retribution, and justice are inextricably woven together. It’s not just 137 that is “spoiled” by its conclusion. So is 139. Or perhaps we are the spoiled ones, not the psalms. What does it mean to offer up hate and hope for retribution in prayer?

Psalm 137: A New Translation

The translation offered below is designed to enhance appreciation of the poetry and prosody of the underlying Hebrew text.

Psalm 137: This is the Word of the Lord

Psalm 137 is the talk of the web. See this post by Lingamish for discussion and links. Henry Neufeld widens the net further.

In this post, I affix four theses to the Wittenberg door of cyberspace concerning Psalm 137. It is my view that this psalm – all of it, including its last verses – is a snapshot of the pulsating heart of faith under fire – and that anyone who thinks they possess a faith that has no need to embrace this psalm - all of it - has either had a life empty of Job-like suffering or has yet to apply the Socratic dictum “Know thyself!” to themselves.

Bialik’s “On the Slaughter” and the Tradition of Biblical Lament: Stanza One

Go here and here for introductions to this post.

Bialik’s “On the Slaughter” is informed by the categories of biblical lament. To the extent that we do not understand biblical lament, we will not understand his prayer. It also works the other way. To the extent that we understand his prayer, we will understand biblical lament, including psalm 137.

Bialik’s Prayer and Psalm 137

Nahman Hayyim Bialik (1873-1934) was born into a large, impoverished, and pious family. His father died in 1880. Without the means to raise him herself, his mother parted with him and entrusted him to the care of his well-to-do paternal grandfather. Nahman was 7 years old. He remembered the first six years of his life as the happiest he knew.

“Everybody won't be treated all the same”

The title for this post is taken from a song written by the man in black, Johnny Cash. It’s a powerful song. The blood of scripture courses through its veins. For all the lyrics to “When the Man Comes Around,” go here. The music, which is fabulous, is a click or two away in more than one place.

This post is the first in a two-part introduction to a forthcoming post on Psalm 137. My goal is to prepare the reader to hear the psalm in a new way. My other goal, as always, is to teach the Hebrew of the Bible. Poetry is an excellent means to that end.

Psalm 137 is incomprehensible to the extent that we are not cognizant of the trauma out of which it was born. The disaster and the effect it had on its victims is expressed in words of great bitterness in Lamentations. For a taste thereof, go here.

Another, more bracing path into the viscera of Psalm 137 is by way of the poetry of Hayyim Nahman Bialik. As a young man, Bialik wrote two poems in reaction to the pogrom of 1903 that took the lives of 47 Jews in Kishinev, Moldovia, and displaced over two thousand Jewish families.

By the Rivers of Babylon: Psalm 137

    "By the Rivers of Babylon" (Psalm 137) tells a poignant story. The parallelisms the poet makes use of crisscross the text without regard to the confines of individual poetic lines. Does the poem adhere to the general rule and the length rule? See for yourself.

Go to: Psalm 137 Scansion.pdf
Psalm_137_new_translation.pdf