Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 3 of Babylon laid waste. 626 happy he who shall pay thee back the retribution wherewith thou retributedst us! 9. Happy he who shall take and dash thy little ones upon the stones. 627
5. If I shall forget thee, O Jerusalem! This confirms what was said in the former verse, and leaves us in no difficulty to understand what the Psalmist meant by it. For here God's people declare, and with the solemnity of an oath, that the remembrance of the holy city would be ever engra-yen upon their hearts, and never, under any circumstances, effaced. Having spoken of song, and of the instruments of music, the Psalmist's appeal is made in terms which corre-spond — that his hand would forager its cunning, and his tongue cleave to his palate, or the roof of his mouth The meaning' is, that the Lord's people, while they mourn under personal trials, should be still more deeply affected by public calamities which befall the Church, it being' reasonable that the zeal of God's house should have the highest place
Let my right hand forget The sentence ends abruptly, and some supplementary word is necessary to render it complete. The Chaldee version, by altering the person of the verb, has avoided the ellipsis, May I forget, my right hand. The Syriac reads, May my right hand forget.me. The Septuagint has a passive verb, viz., ἐπιλησθείν, as if the original were.תשכחCalvin, in his Commentary, makes the same supplement as the translators of our English Bible — Let my right hand forget its cunning; and the correctness of this view is supported by the following verse, where we have, Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, etc. The object of both verses is to express a deep, heart-felt interest in Jerusalem; and should he lose that interest, the Psalmist wishes that the two members of the body, by which both instrumental and vocal music are performed, may be rendered incapable of doing their work — that the tongue may be unable to utter, and the right hand may forget the art of playing, or its cunning. "There here is a striking and appropriate point in this which has been overlooked. It is, that as it is customary for people in the East to swear by their possessions, so one who has no possessions — who is poor and destitute, and has nothing of recognised value in the world — swears by his right hand, which is his whole stake in society, trod by the 'cunning' of which he earns his daily bread. Hence the common Arabic proverb, (given by Burckhardt, No. 550,) reflecting on the change of demeanour produced by improved circumstances: 'He was wont to swear by the cutting off of his right hand! He now swears by 'the giving of money to the poor.'" — Illustrated Commentary upon the Bible.
Bishop Horsley translates, "O daughter of Babylon, that delightest in destruction."
"This is not the language of imprecation, but of prophecy, and predicts the horrors which would accompany the taking and sacking of the city of Babylon; and amongst these the atrocious cruelty of 'dashing the children against the stones.' (See Isaiah 13:16; Jeremiah 51:62; Hosea 13:16.) Homer mentions the unnatural practice as not uncommon in ancient times —
'Infants dashed Against the ground, in dire hostility.' — I1, 22 5 63." — Warner.
"Happy he," etc., is merely declarative of the general opinion which would be reputed happy, would be celebrated as having done good service in the world, by destroying a power so universally hated for its oppression.