Blessed is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Psalm 137 ends there. The psalm begins with achingly beautiful exile grief, “by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept” (v. 1).

But shockingly this same Psalm concludes with a wish for the violent death of Babylonian children.

Psalm 137 is extreme, but it is not isolated.

The psalms ask God to break the teeth of the wicked, to make them like stillborn children, to pour out wrath. Psalm 58 calls for the righteous to bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

These are prayers.

They are addressed to God.

They are in the Bible.