(Download) "Psalm 137: Complex Communal Laments." by Journal of Biblical Literature * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Psalm 137: Complex Communal Laments.
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 224 KB
Description
Classifying Psalm 137 is complex. The form may be a communal lament, a modified Zion psalm, or a malediction against Edom and Babylon. (1) Verses 8-9 are one of the most difficult texts in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. (2) The retributive anger and hatred-laden imprecation encapsulated in a beatitude formula--"Blessed is the one who seizes and dashes to pieces your children against the rock" (v. 9)--has made the text all the more complicated to interpret. (3) But beyond the form-critical and the literary and hermeneutical implications, this piece attempts to demarcate distinctive sociological issues germinating from the first (597 B.C.E.) and second (587 B.C.E.) waves of forced Judean migrants (not to be confused with first and second generation Judeo-Babylonians) to Babylon. The issues surrounding the 597 group (vv. 1-6) were displacement, loss of influential position and power, corvee labor on the irrigation canals of Babylon, (4) and religious or ethnic insults. The issues accosting the 587 group (vv. 7-9) were the collective experiences of the destruction of Jerusalem and the more personal and particular pathos of the atrocious dashing, decapitation, (5) mutilation, or burning (6) of little children--the loss of an entire generation.