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About Psalm 137

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  • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
    Gill's Exposition also raises the possibility as I cited. Jewish Sages have long identified references to Edom as being of Rome, and see dual fulfillments with First and Second Temple destructions. It would be rather odd to see nothing about the Roman Siege mentioned in the Tanach, don't you think?
    From what you cited, you have to look at....
    The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Ethiopic versions, make it to be David's, and yet add the name of Jeremiah; and the Arabic version calls it David's, concerning Jeremiah: but, as Theodoret observes, Jeremiah was not carried into Babylon, but, after some short stay in or near Jerusalem, was forced away into Egypt; and could neither be the writer nor subject of this psalm: and though it might be written by David under a spirit of prophecy; who thereby might foresee and foretell the Babylonish captivity, and what the Jews would suffer in it; as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah did, many years before it came to pass; yet it seems rather to have been written by one of the captivity, either while in it, or immediately after it.


    Now, slow down a minute and read what you cited.... the name Jeremiah has been added to it, but Jeremiah was not carried into Babylon...... MIGHT be written by David "under a spirit of prophecy".... (then there's that LONG sentence, ending with) "yet it seems rather to have been written by one of the captivity, either while in it, or immediately after it."

    There's a WHOLE lot of speculation there, and very little substantiation.
    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
      OK, perhaps you are unaware of what you are doing. Rather than read the text, and allow the context to tell you what's going on, you come up with a possible scenario, and scour then internet for somebody who agrees with you.

      It's not "correct" simply because you can find other people with a similar belief.
      There's no clear context, that's the point.

      When Christianbookworm asked me for a scholarly source you amen'd that, now that I'm giving sources you criticize it. If you have your mind made up and don't want to read what anyone else says about it, ok. Doesn't mean others don't.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
        There's no clear context, that's the point.
        I shall leave you to your ignorance, because you seem to be doubling down in it.

        When Christianbookworm asked me for a scholarly source you amen'd that, now that I'm giving sources you criticize it.
        Merely citing a source does not prove a point -- you can Google just bout anything --- it needs to actually back up your point.

        If you have your mind made up and don't want to read what anyone else says about it, ok. Doesn't mean others don't.
        I'd be happy to read anything that actually supports an alternative view, but I don't believe you can do that with what you're claiming.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
          Merely citing a source does not prove a point -- you can Google just bout anything --- it needs to actually back up your point.
          Never said they proved anything, but they do back up my point. A couple of posters asked me for sources and I gave one about Psalms 137:9, now I gave some more about Psalms 137:7. Do you think I should not give sources about the topic under discussion?

          Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
          I'd be happy to read anything that actually supports an alternative view, but I don't believe you can do that with what you're claiming.
          If you agree that the Babylon in Revelation doesn't only refer to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, and if you agree that the context of Psalms 137:8-9 refers to future events from the time stated, then my view is already supported in that you don't really know which Babylon it's talking about. Could be one or the other or both.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
            Never said they proved anything, but they do back up my point.


            Do you actually READ your cites?
            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

            Comment


            • Johnny,

              Here is a cite that TOTALLY disproves your theory:

              Source: BibleHub

              (18) At (the) Parbar westward.—See 2Kings 23:11, where a plural Parwārîm occurs. The meaning of the word is unknown. According to Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 1123), “Parwār” is the right spelling; and the term answers to a Persian word denoting “summer-house,” i.e., a building open to light and air. He makes “the Parbar” a cloister running round the court of the Temple, from which the cells were entered. (See Note on 1Chronicles 23:28.) Both spellings occur in Persian. Richardson’s Persian Dictionary gives as many as fifteen variant forms of the word, besides Parwâr and Parbâr. His definition of the meaning is, “an open gallery or balcony on the top of a house, au upper room open on all sides to the air; a summer department or habitation; the roof of a house; a private door or entrance to a house.”

              © Copyright Original Source

              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post


                Do you actually READ your cites?
                Yeah what about them, they agree with what I said, that the verses may not only apply to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon:
                Source: Gill's Exposition of Psalms 137:7

                Many Jewish writers, as Aben Ezra observes, interpret this of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. -Source

                © Copyright Original Source



                Source: Biblical Horizons

                The key to understanding the prophecy "against" Babylon in Psalm 137:8-9 is to remember who the Rock is in the psalter. The Rock is God. Dashing the children’s heads against the Rock is an image not of utter destruction but of salvation. (This is a great verse to preach on when doing an infant baptism.) Either a man falls upon the Rock and is saved, or the Rock falls upon him and crushes him (Luke 20:18). (In Psalm 137:9 "rock" is singular, not plural, contrary to the old King James and the NIV.) -Source

                © Copyright Original Source


                Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                Johnny,

                Here is a cite that TOTALLY disproves your theory:

                Source: BibleHub

                (18) At (the) Parbar westward.—See 2Kings 23:11, where a plural Parwārîm occurs. The meaning of the word is unknown. According to Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 1123), “Parwār” is the right spelling; and the term answers to a Persian word denoting “summer-house,” i.e., a building open to light and air. He makes “the Parbar” a cloister running round the court of the Temple, from which the cells were entered. (See Note on 1Chronicles 23:28.) Both spellings occur in Persian. Richardson’s Persian Dictionary gives as many as fifteen variant forms of the word, besides Parwâr and Parbâr. His definition of the meaning is, “an open gallery or balcony on the top of a house, au upper room open on all sides to the air; a summer department or habitation; the roof of a house; a private door or entrance to a house.”

                © Copyright Original Source

                You lost me on that one.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
                  Yeah what about them, they agree with what I said,
                  No, they actually don't but that seems to be the only thing that matters.

                  You lost me on that one.
                  Seriously? SERIOUSLY!?!?!?! You don't see the correlation between "the rock" and "parbar"?
                  The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                    No, they actually don't...
                    Yeah they really do, starting with Jordan agreeing that Jesus is the Rock people are dashed against in Psalms 137:9.

                    Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                    ...but that seems to be the only thing that matters.
                    It mattered to Cerealman and Christianbookworm when they asked for sources, gripe at them about it. You used NewBibleCommentary HERE to support your view. Don't be such a hypocrite and get to a real argument.

                    Like, if you agree that the Babylon in Revelation doesn't only refer to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, and if you agree that the context of Psalms 137:8-9 refers to future events from the time stated, explain why Psalms 137 should only refer to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. If that's your position, I'm not really sure at this point.

                    Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                    Seriously? SERIOUSLY!?!?!?! You don't see the correlation between "the rock" and "parbar"?
                    Nope what do you see.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
                      Nope what do you see.
                      Nonsense.
                      The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                        Nonsense.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by JohnnyP View Post
                          [ATTACH=CONFIG]2788[/ATTACH]
                          Yup... that's EXACTLY your tactic!
                          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                          Comment


                          • Nope that was referring to you, instead of discussing the topic you just want to whine that I gave sources -- same as you did. Lame.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by whag View Post
                              It's not a good article. It's a mishmash of painful rationalizations, most of which amount to "the parents were so evil, the kids needed to die."
                              No, "the parents were so evil, the parents (and their older sons who fought alongside them) needed to die." The whole Baal Peor incident was basically a plot cooked up by Balaam to destroy or forcibly absorb the Israelites by getting God to cast them out.
                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              And any article that randomly bolds phrases throughout is immediately suspect, IMO.
                              That's just the way he emphasizes and is certainly not "random." I tend to italicize in order to emphasize online. Do you consider me "suspect?"

                              Originally posted by whag View Post

                              A lack of resources is a silly excuse for a culture whose God provided for them when they lacked.
                              Nowhere does God guarantee manna from Heaven every time the Israelites ask for it. If you want to take issue with that, go ahead, but it's a different issue.
                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              The thing I always found odd about the article is that the author lacks the courage of his conviction at the end, eventually planting the seed in the reader's mind that the little boys were spared. If they weren't, the heck's the point of citing Philo?



                              Either the absorption of babies was possible within the culture or it wasn't. I say it would've been relatively easy and especially humane to take in a small amount of boys, and so does Philo.
                              You're reading that emotion into it. He brings up Philo to cover all the possible bases in answer to the reader's question. Any scholar writing for a journal would do the same. In the same paragraph he says why he disagrees with Philo, a non-expert philosopher writing 2000 years or so later in Helenized Alexandria and didn't have the anthropological data we do. If you want to agree with Philo, go ahead, but you'll need an argument as to why. At least Miller attempts to calculate how many survivors they were dealing with. Philo does not.


                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              So much for "they were not a big enough population to effectively raise the boys." The use of the word "effectively" is suspect here, as that's up to one's interpretation.
                              That's my word, not Miller's. I apologize for the wishiwashiness picked from my college teachers. "They were not a big enough population to raise the boys at all." What's a "very small number" of boys when there's 32,000 girls left? I think you'd still be talking about the hundreds here, at the very least. And it isn't just size, this was my mistake in my reading. It also has a blood-succesion component (emphasis Miller's:
                              No ANE land-based and/or blood-succession-based civilization had means for assimilating foreign males into them, except as severely constrained/debilitated slaves (e.g., “prisoners were often blinded en masse. When brought to their captors’ land, they could still perform certain tasks, such as carrying water from a well or canal with a bucket and a rope” [OT:DLAM:237]);
                              All ANE civilizations recognized the military threat/risk that male slaves (even children) of foreign stock represented. Even the case in which David ‘served’ the Philistines, the Philistine leaders were sensitive to the issue—that David might ‘turn on his Philistine masters’ in the heat of battle (1 Sam 29);
                              There were no ‘social relief’ institutions in this world [only the largest of empires could afford to take in destitute women and children as temple ‘personnel’—see OT:CANE:445], and the land in which this event occurred was depopulated .(“Those who were able to flee from their conquerors often died of exposure, starvation, or thirst” [OT:DLAM:237])
                              There would be no practical way to transport these boys to their ‘next of kin’ down south, and there was no guarantee that they would take them in anyway. Even the Kenites, generally loyal to Israel, were divided in policy, as Heber the Kenite’s alliance with Syria in Judges indicates. “The propensity of pastoral nomads for raids, or razzias, both [B]against one another-/B] and against sedentists is well attested in the near eastern historical record.” [OT:CANE:251]
                              As in the case of the Amalekites, Israel was forced--by the Midianite atrocity--into the difficult situation of selecting the ‘most humane way’ of dealing with the boys, which, in most situations in the ancient world, was killing them very quickly (similar to ‘euthanasia’, perhaps, which was also considered the ‘most humane’ way of doing this, according to ANE testimony—see the discussion/documentation in the case of the Amalekites, at rbutcher1.html)
                              They'd just lost some 24,000+ men to a plague brought on by the idolatry. The girls were useful to replenish the population (though even taking in the prepubescent ones would still have been a hardship). The boys were just a liability. Indeed, it's likely a case of "kill them now or kill them later."


                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              That's absurd. Cultures adapt. Cultures led by the one true God, even moreso.
                              Adapt to what? As soon as these boys (we're not talking about babies, btw. The babies would likely already have died in the frey. These are 5-12 year-olds, old enough to be relatively independent from their mothers but not old enough to be counted fighting men) find out what was done to them, they'd try to rebel. These were honor based cultures. We're still beating our heads against the wall over that to this day regarding the Mideast. I'm not saying it's right or optimal, but it's how people behaved now and back then. What, do you want God to send Moses into the future to learn some Maoist brainwashing techniques? Because I'm pretty sure that's the only way you're going to keep these boys under control as the grow up.

                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              This is a great argument not to let ANY war-time baby survivors live, lest they slit your throat later. Raising boys without that bent would be a doddle in a culture overseen and provided for by the one true God of infinite mercy.
                              No, because few of the girls would have thought of it (and I only say few because we have examples of women such as Jael that can be counted on one hand). Way different gender politics.
                              Last edited by Kelp(p); 11-23-2014, 11:11 PM.
                              O Gladsome Light of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father, Heavenly, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ! Now that we have come to the setting of the sun and behold the light of evening, we praise God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For meet it is at all times to worship Thee with voices of praise. O Son of God and Giver of Life, therefore all the world doth glorify Thee.

                              A neat video of dead languages!

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                                Native American cultures pretty much universally adopted captured women, children and infants into their families, regardless of lean times or bountiful times.
                                I'd need to see specific numbers on that. My guess is it's an inapplicable analogy (I don't recall an incident off the top of my head of quite so many assimilated war numbers in any NA conflict). Also, I don't know if any Native American culture outside the Tlingit had quite the same ideas of honor as a limited resource which would have gone into the Midianite boys trying to rebel. Also also, don't forget about the Eskimo practice of straight-up abandoning people who can't care for themselves in times of extreme hardship.

                                And even if you're right, it really doesn't matter. I'm not trying to say that Moses was perfect or anything like that. I'm even willing to go with the idea that this was all some kind of test that Moses failed, if I have to. I just don't think it need be the case here.
                                Last edited by Kelp(p); 11-23-2014, 11:08 PM.
                                O Gladsome Light of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father, Heavenly, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ! Now that we have come to the setting of the sun and behold the light of evening, we praise God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For meet it is at all times to worship Thee with voices of praise. O Son of God and Giver of Life, therefore all the world doth glorify Thee.

                                A neat video of dead languages!

                                Comment

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