I once heard it said that it is wrong to take the worst things about someone else’s religion and compare them to the best things in your religion.

Is that what we are doing when we compare Islam to Christianity, looking at the worst aspects of Islam and the Quran and comparing them to the best aspects of Christianity and the Bible?

I have sought to avoid that, making fair and accurate comparisons when addressing this issue, most recently in my article comparing verses of violence in the Bible and the Quran.

But what about Psalm 137:8-9, which reads, “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”

How can these verses be defended, especially verse 9?

And what would Christians say if this were in the Quran?

We would certainly hold it up as an extreme example of religious violence – perhaps the most extreme that could be imagined – saying with mocking sarcasm, “So, Allah pronounces a blessing on His people as they smash little babies on the rocks! What kind of God would do that?”

It is important, then, that we ask some hard questions about these verses – especially verse 9 – using the same standard of interpretation when reading the Quran.

In other words, if we are willing to read the Scriptures sympathetically, doing our best to look for possible solutions to problematic verses, then we need to do the same with the Quran, even if we believe one book (the Bible) is from God and one (the Quran) is not.

Let’s take a look at this psalm and see if, in fact, it supports committing atrocities against the little children of our enemies and, worse still, doing so in the name of the Lord.

The background to the psalm is obvious.

The people of Judah had been defeated violently by the Babylonians, with Jerusalem, their capital city, destroyed in 586 B.C., their sacred temple burned to the ground, and tens of thousands of their people carried off into exile in Babylon.

From that place of exile, languishing in a foreign land and longing to return home, the psalmist begins by saying, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ (vv. 1-3)

The response to this request was emphatic: “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!” (vv. 4-6)

You can see how deep the emotions were and how acute the pain was. This wound was unbearably sensitive.

The psalmist next asks God to remember what the Edomites did when the Judeans were going into exile – the Edomites and Israelites were ancient blood brothers – saying, “Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, ‘Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!’” (v. 7)

Instead of helping their brothers or at least sympathizing with them, the Edomites called on the Babylonians to utterly destroy.

This overflow of agony and this longing for justice gives way to verse 8, which says, “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!”

But the word “blessed” does not mean “blessed by God,” which comes from an entirely different Hebrew root, but rather, “Truly happy.”

The psalmist’s sentiments could be compared to those of a Jew dying in a German concentration camp, saying, “Oh Nazis, who are certain to be destroyed, the Jewish soldier who will repay you for what you have done to us will be happy indeed.”

That would be understandable and, in terms of justice in this world, such sentiments would be justifiable.

But what of the last verse, which begins with the word “blessed” – again, not meaning blessed by God but rather “truly happy” – will be the man who dashes your littles ones against the rock?

Here are some honest answers which remind us once again that the verses of violence in the Bible are different than the verses of violence in the Quran.

First, in contrast with the Quran, which claims to contain the verbatim words of God, the Bible often includes the words of man, meaning, it includes religious debates (as in the book of Job), words of unbelief (as in the Psalms), and words of spiritual questioning (as in Ecclesiastes).

That’s why there are psalms in which the author asks God why He failed to help him in his time of need, not because God actually did fail but because that’s how the psalmist was feeling. And we believe that God inspired these words to be included in our Bibles so we would understand the struggles others endured.

So, we could simply say that Psalm 137:9 reflects the intense desire for vengeance on the part of the psalmist, but we reject his attitude in light of the rest of the teachings of the Bible, especially the words and example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul (see Romans 12:17-21).

Second, the psalmist could simply be expressing an expectation, namely, that the vengeance that would be carried out against Babylon would be so violent that the one smashing children against the rocks would be considered happy. These were typical, tragic acts of war, and the psalmist, longing for Babylon to receive the punishment it deserved, pronounced these words of expectation.

Third and most importantly, there is no pattern found in Christian history where these words were used with the official blessing of church leaders to slaughter infants and children in this way. It simply does not exist, because it is not the consistent theology of Scripture.

All this is in stark contrast with the Quran’s verses of violence, which have been used to justify violent acts against others, beginning in Muhammad’s day and right until today, as we have previously explained.