Psalms 137:9
Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
BSB
ASV
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.
KJV
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Blessed is he who shall take hold of and dash your little ones against the rock. The "little ones" are said to be thoughts. For example: I have seen a woman, I have desired her: at once, if I do not cut off that desire, and, as it were, take it by the foot and dash it against the rock while the desire is small, it cannot afterwards be cut off when it has grown. Blessed, then, is he who cuts it off at once, and dashes it against the rock. And the Rock is Christ.
And David, pitying her, says, "O wretched daughter of Babylon." Wretched indeed, as being the daughter of Babylon, when she ceased to be the daughter of Jerusalem. And yet he calls for a healer for her and says, "Blessed is he who shall take your little ones and dash them against the rock."
Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. That takes the infants from their mothers' breasts, or out of their arms, and dashes out their brains against a "rock", as the word (k) signifies; which, though it may seem a piece of cruelty, was but a just retaliation; the Babylonians having done the same to the Jewish children, and is foretold elsewhere should be done to theirs, Isa 13:
Happy shall those be that do it; for they are fulfilling God's counsels; and therefore he calls Cyrus, who did it, his servant, his shepherd, his anointed ( Isa. xliv. 1 ), and the soldiers that were employed in it his sanctified ones, Isa. xiii. They are making way for the enlargement of God's Israel, and happy are those who are in any way serviceable to that.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. Fierce was the heart of the Jew who had seen his beloved city the scene of such terrific butchery. His heart pronounced like sentence upon Babylon. She should be scourged with her own whip of wire. The desire for righteous retribution is rather the spirit of the law than of the gospel; and yet in moments of righteous wrath the old fire will burn; and while justice survives in the human breast it will not lack for fuel among the various tyrannies which still survive.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
2 Kings 8:12“Why is my lord weeping?” asked Hazael. “Because I know the evil you will do to the Israelites,” Elisha replied. “You will set fire to their fortresses, kill their young men with the sword,…
leads to
Samaria will bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
Reached by 3 independent paths from here.
Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in…
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
So the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He delivered them continually into the hands of Hazael king of Aram and his son Ben-hadad.
At that time Hazael king of Aram marched up and fought against Gath and captured it. Then he decided to attack Jerusalem.
Through
Hosea 13:16Samaria will bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
leads to
At that time Menahem, starting from Tirzah, attacked Tiphsah and everyone in its vicinity, because they would not open their gates. So he attacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be looted, and their wives will be ravished.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
“Why is my lord weeping?” asked Hazael. “Because I know the evil you will do to the Israelites,” Elisha replied. “You will set fire to their fortresses, kill their young men with the sword,…
