Psalms 137:9

An unknown poet, writing in the Babylonian exile, demanded that Babylon be paid back in the same cruelty Babylon had inflicted. On October 7, 2023, armed groups from Gaza killed and abducted civilians in southern Israel, including children. This article sets those two records side by side. It quotes the poem. It does not preach the poem’s last verse as an order to anyone living now, and it does not claim the attackers of 2023 were staging the verse.

The attack

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, at about 6:30 a.m. Israel time, Hamas fired a large rocket barrage into Israel. The day was Simchat Torah. The holiday had begun the evening before, which is why the date is easy to misremember as October 6. Reuters reported that Hamas claimed 5,000 rockets in that first barrage and that the Israeli military counted 2,500. Sirens sounded as far away as Tel Aviv and Beersheba. At 7:40 a.m. the military said gunmen had crossed into Israel.

The attackers were the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, together with other Palestinian armed groups, including the Quds Brigades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas called the assault Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Members of those groups, accompanied by Palestinian civilians, numbering 1,000 - 3,000 entered Israel.

They came through the Gaza-Israel barrier on the ground, by sea, and by air. A boat landed at Zikim. Motorized paragliders crossed the line. Rockets and mortars struck communities and bases in southern and central Israel. The attackers also damaged communications and surveillance equipment, which left Israeli forces slow to see the whole assault.

The fighting was in the Gaza envelope, the civilian communities and military posts along the border. Human Rights Watch documented attacks on at least 19 kibbutzim and five moshavim, on the cities of Sderot and Ofakim, on two music festivals, and on a beach party. Places named again and again in the reporting include Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv HaAsara, Alumim, and the Nova festival near Re’im. Reuters reported fighting at the Erez crossing, at the Zikim base, and at the Gaza division headquarters at Re’im. Local police and the communities’ own rapid-response teams fought until the army arrived, often hours later. In some places the killing went on past that day.

Nearly a quarter of the people killed in Israel that day died in and around the Nova festival. The UN Commission counted 379 people killed at the site, near Kibbutz Re’im, or nearby. At least 364 of them were festival-goers, out of about 3,000 who were there. About 40 people were taken hostage from the festival. Israeli assessments cited by the Commission concluded that the attackers learned of the festival from the air.

Citing Israeli sources in its 2024 findings, the UN Commission recorded more than 1,200 people killed by the armed groups and by rockets and mortars. Of those, at least 809 were civilians, including at least 280 women. 68 were foreign nationals. 314 were Israeli military personnel. 40 were children. 25 were aged 80 or older. 14,970 people were injured and taken to hospital.

Human Rights Watch found deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, willful killing of people in custody, hostage-taking, sexual and gender-based violence, mutilation of bodies, pillage, and the use of human shields. It concluded that these were war crimes, and that killing civilians and taking hostages were part of the planned attack and amounted to crimes against humanity.

Psalm 137

The poem has no title and no author’s name in the Hebrew text. What follows is the World English Bible.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows in that land, we hung up our harps.” — Psalm 137:1–2

“For there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. Those who tormented us demanded songs of joy: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How can we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?” — Psalm 137:3–4

“If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don’t remember you; if I don’t prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy.” — Psalm 137:5–6

“Remember, Yahweh, against the children of Edom, the day of Jerusalem; who said, ‘Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!’” — Psalm 137:7

“Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, he will be happy who rewards you, as you have served us. Happy shall he be, who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock.” — Psalm 137:8–9

Who wrote it

The author is unknown. The Hebrew poem names no one. It speaks first as “we,” people sitting by the rivers of Babylon, and then as “I,” someone swearing not to forget Jerusalem. The scene is the exile after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE, centuries after David. This article does not ascribe the poem to David, and it does not rescue a Davidic claim by calling the poem prophecy.

Later readers supplied names the poem does not have. Some copies of the ancient Greek Bible add a heading, “For David. Of Jeremiah.” Saadiah Gaon read it as David writing the future in advance. Those attributions are mentioned here only to set them aside. Jeremiah is a poor fit on the Bible’s own account: after the fall of the city he was taken to Egypt, not to Babylon (Jeremiah 43). The working statement is an unknown author, probably during the exile or soon after, while Babylon was still the poem’s whole world.

What the last two verses say

Verses 1 through 6 are the exile: weeping, harps hung on the willows, captors demanding a song of Zion. Verse 7 asks God to remember Edom, which cheered the tearing down of Jerusalem. Verses 8 and 9 are one demand, and the demand is not an allegory.

Verse 8 says: happy is the one who rewards you as you have served us. The Hebrew uses one root for both sides of that sentence. Gemulekh is the payment owed to Babylon. Shegamalt lanu is the payment Babylon already made to the exiles. The repayment is the deed itself. Verse 9 names the deed the speaker wants paid back: happy is the one who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.

Read together, the close of the psalm says this: this is what you did to us, and because of that, the same should be done to you. Verse 9 is not a metaphor for the fall of an empire. It is the exiles’ demand that Babylon receive the cruelty they say Babylon inflicted. It is not an instruction, and it is not a warrant to kill any child now.

Why the two records sit side by side

Modern readers often meet Psalm 137:9 as a single line pulled out of context—either attacked as proof that the Bible commends killing children, or softened into allegory to make it polite. Setting the poem beside a documented modern assault on homes, families, and children puts the verse back in the world that produced it.

The poet in Babylon was not writing a law code or a manual for holy war. He was a survivor of a sacked city, speaking from captivity after watching neighbors killed and taken away. Scripture preserves that cry without editing out its rage, and without turning a victim’s demand for payback into a command from God.

Sources

The October 7 chronology of the first hours is from Reuters, “How the Hamas attack on Israel unfolded,” filed that day.

Casualty totals, the Nova festival, the children, and the communities attacked are from the UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry, A/HRC/56/CRP.3, and from its report A/HRC/56/26.

The count of places attacked and the legal findings on war crimes and crimes against humanity are from Human Rights Watch, “I Can’t Erase All the Blood from My Mind” (July 17, 2024), and the questions and answers published with it.

The sexual-violence findings are from the UN mission report of March 4, 2024.

Psalm 137 is quoted from the World English Bible. The Hebrew notes on verse 8 follow the Masoretic wording of that verse, and Jeremiah’s removal to Egypt follows Jeremiah 43.