Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 137:8

"O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee As thou hast served us." — Psalms 137:8 (ASV)

Daughter of Babylon— i.e., Babylon itself. (See Psalms 9:14, Note.)

Who are to be destroyed.— Considerable doubt attaches to the meaning of the Hebrew word here. Our version is that of Theodotion. Aquila and Jerome have “wasted” (compare to Prayer Book version); Symmachus, “robber;” the Septuagint and Vulgate, “wretched.”

As pointed, the word is a passive participle and must be rendered as Aquila renders it, “wasted” or “destroyed,” but with the recollection that a Hebrew would speak in this way proleptically of a doom foreseen though not yet accomplished. Delitzsch quotes an Arab saying: “Pursue the caught one”—i.e., sure to be caught.

The “luxury of revenge” is well expressed in this beatitude, pronounced on him who can carry out to all its bitter end the lex talionis. Commentators have, in turn, tried to disguise and justify the expression of passion. Happily, the Bible allows us to see men as they were, without taking their rules of feeling and conduct as ours. “The psalm is beautiful as a poem—the Christian must seek his inspiration elsewhere.”