The imprecation psalm in a mixed-ability youth group
St Anne’s parish youth group has 14 participants aged 14–18. Daniel, 15, has copied Psalm 137:9 into his notebook - “Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” - and asks how this can be “God’s word.” Maria, 17, says the Bible is simply ancient propaganda and that the Church picks and chooses what to take literally. The catechist has one 45-minute session, no internet, and only a handout containing Dei Verbum §§11–13 and Catechism §§109–119. The parish priest wants a response that neither dismisses the text nor exposes younger teenagers to graphic violence. Two parents have already complained that the session will “water down” Scripture. The catechist must decide how to frame the passage, what to say about inspiration and genre, and how to answer both students without pretending the difficulty is absent.
1. Identify the literary genre and historical setting of Psalm 137:1–9. Explain why identifying genre changes how the verse should be used in Christian prayer and ethics.
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Psalm 137 is a communal lament from the exilic or early post-exilic period. Verses 1–4 give the setting (Judahites in Babylon), vv. 5–6 a vow of loyalty to Jerusalem, and vv. 7–9 an imprecation against Edom and Babylon. The final verse uses the brutal war imagery of the ancient Near East: the dashing of children is a conventional way of expressing total defeat, not a report of a divine command or a Christian moral programme. Genre matters because the literal sense is the meaning the human author intended within his conventions. The inspired text preserves the community’s raw grief and its plea for justice; it does not thereby make revenge a virtue. In Christian prayer the psalm can be read as a lament that hands rage to God, while v. 9 is normally omitted in liturgical use. Ethics is governed by the whole canon, especially Jesus’ command to love enemies, not by extracting a single imprecation as a rule.
2. Using Dei Verbum §§11–13 and Catechism §§109–119, explain how the Church can affirm that Scripture is truly God’s word while rejecting a literal moral application of v. 9.
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Dei Verbum 11 says Scripture teaches without error the truth God willed for salvation; it does not claim that every sentence is a moral instruction or a neutral historical report. DV 12 requires attention to literary forms, the intention of the author, the unity of Scripture, and the living tradition of the Church. Catechism 109–119 distinguishes the literal sense from the spiritual senses and insists that interpretation must be guided by the same Spirit and by the Church’s faith. So the Church can say the psalm is truly God’s word because it is inspired prayer that exposes the human condition and calls for justice, while denying that v. 9 gives a command to kill children. The literal sense is not the same as a literalist reading: the literal sense of an imprecation is the prayer of a wounded people, not a divine licence. The canon’s centre is Christ, who reveals the Father’s mercy and commands enemy-love; difficult texts are read in that light, not erased.
3. Draft a three-step response the catechist could give in the session, one step addressed to Daniel, one to Maria, and one to the whole group.
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Step 1, for Daniel: “You are right that this is in the Bible, and the Church does not hide it. But the first question is what kind of writing it is. This is a lament from people who had seen their city destroyed; the last verse is war poetry, not a command from God. We read it as honest pain brought to God, and we judge all revenge by Jesus.” Step 2, for Maria: “The Church does not pick at random. It reads each book in its genre, in the whole canon, and in the creed and liturgy. That is why the same Bible contains both this cry and Jesus’ command to love enemies. If you treat every sentence as a standalone rule you get contradictions; if you read it as a library moving towards Christ, you can see why some texts are preserved as warning and lament rather than as ethics.” Step 3, for the group: read vv. 1–6 aloud, not v. 9; ask what the exiles felt and what they did with their anger; explain that lament is a form of prayer; then connect to Jesus’ teaching. This protects younger teenagers, refuses to pretend the difficulty is absent, and gives both students a method rather than a slogan.