Psalms 137:9

Psalm 137 is one of the rawest poems in the Bible, written from the perspective of Jewish people living in exile in Babylon — a powerful empire that conquered Jerusalem around 586 BC, destroyed the Temple (the center of Jewish worship and identity), and forcibly relocated the population hundreds of miles away. The psalm begins with haunting grief and ends with a shocking curse. Verse 9 is part of that curse against Babylon — the psalmist voices a wish that Babylonian infants would be killed the same brutal way Babylonian soldiers killed Israelite children. This type of prayer is called an "imprecatory psalm" — a prayer calling down judgment or vengeance. It is one of the most disturbing verses in the entire Bible, and it raises honest, necessary questions about suffering, rage, and what it means that this is in Scripture at all.

God, I don't always know what to do with my darkest feelings. Thank you that the psalms remind me you already know them. Help me stop performing composure in my prayers. I want to bring you all of it — the grief, the rage, the things I'm ashamed to feel. You can handle it. Amen.

No gentle reframe makes this verse easier. The honest response is discomfort — and that discomfort is worth sitting in. The person who wrote these words had watched their city burn, their Temple demolished, their people marched in chains. They had seen what Babylonian soldiers did to children. And rather than offering a composed, theologically tidy response to that trauma, they screamed it at God. The darkest wish, the most unthinkable prayer — poured out before heaven, unedited. There's a dangerous habit in faith communities of cleaning up our prayers — editing out the parts that feel too raw, too angry, too un-Christian. The psalms refuse that sanitizing. They suggest God can handle your worst 3 AM, your ugliest thoughts, your fury that hasn't yet softened into forgiveness. This verse doesn't endorse violence. It holds grief. And maybe that's permission — to bring whatever you've been keeping out of your prayers because you thought it was too much. God is not fragile. You don't have to come cleaned up.