{"id":2497,"date":"2012-12-13T23:52:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T03:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=2497"},"modified":"2012-12-16T19:54:21","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T23:54:21","slug":"dash-them-against-the-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=2497","title":{"rendered":"Dash them against the Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!\u00a0\u00a0 Psalm 137:8-9<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that true?\u00a0 How does that square with a verse like this?\u00a0 Are these just the bitter words of a captive, vindictive Jew?\u00a0 <em>Happy<\/em> the one?\u00a0 Aren&#8217;t these little ones innocent?\u00a0 What did they do to deserve death?<\/p>\n<p>Of course God loves the little children of the world. Of course they are precious in His sight.\u00a0 So, unless we want to say this verse is divinely-inspired precisely to show us how not to think and react, we need a more comprehensive interpretation.\u00a0 St. Benedict of Nursia, in his Rule for young monks, admonished them to take hold of bad thoughts and desires while they were still sprouting, and to dash them against the rock which is Christ.\u00a0 This is certainly an allegorical interpretation that has application for us today.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Joshua, as leader of the ancient people of Israel, was indeed commanded to kill all the enemies of God&#8212;men, women and children. Why? Because He knew if any of them were spared, they would lead the people of God into idolatry.\u00a0 And that is, sadly, exactly what happened.\u00a0 Christ will someday destroy all His enemies.\u00a0 Until that day, we are called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (and then quickly dash it to pieces!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!\u00a0\u00a0 Psalm 137:8-9 Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.\u00a0 Isn&#8217;t that true?\u00a0 How does that square with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=2497\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dash them against the Rock&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2500,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions\/2500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}