Psalms 137:7
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
Psalm 137 is a song and lament that grew out of the exile, expressing the sorrows and afflictions of the Hebrew captives in Babylon during the Babylonian captivity. It belongs with psalms in which those sorrows and afflictions are mingled with assurance of divine help and final deliverance from persecutors. It presents the lament of Jewish captives in Babylon, grieving for Zion and unable to sing their homeland's songs at their captors' request.
It was written after the Babylonian captivity by the captive exiles beside the River of Babylon. In that sense it is also a prophecy of the Babylonian captivity.
In exile the captives grieved for Zion, felt they were in an enemy land where they had been taken against their will and their time was unpleasant, and were unable to sing their homeland songs when their captors requested them. Their captivity provides an image of being held in an enemy's land, which connects with death as an enemy's realm.
The verse recalls how the children of Edom urged the destruction of Jerusalem in the day of Jerusalem during the city's calamity, calling for it to be razed to its foundations. It is the exiles' plea for the Lord to remember that hostility and Zion's enemies for their guilt, bringing judgment on them until they perish, mingled with assurance of divine help and final deliverance from persecutors. Its words against enemies are predictive of tribulation on the enemies of God's church, presenting their downfall as an expression of God's retributive justice and not as an incitement to cruelty.
The psalm shows that the daughters of Babylon belong to Babylon, which applies to mystic Babylon including all corrupt Christianity. The cry to raze Jerusalem illustrates people who work only to tear down what others have built.