KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

WHOS BABYLON, WHOSE ZION?: THE ROLE OF PSALM 137 IN FREDERICK DOUGLASSS JULY FIFTH ORATION

A paper presented in partial fulfillment of the course Contextual Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (A06E0A), Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion

Supervisor Prof. Dr. Brian DOYLE

by Samuel POMEROY

6 January 2014

! "! I. Contextual Readings and Reading Contextually The peculiar shift from communal lament to a kind of prophetic timbre in Psalm 137 has not gone unnoticed in contemporary biblical scholarship. Ogdens 1982 article argues that Obadiah 15 is a literary if liturgical response to the petition in Psalm 137:7-9, viz., recasting Israels fortunes upon Edom through a common leitmotif, the day of destruction upon Jerusalem (!"#$%& !$&).1 While such a presentation is illuminating, its implications for reading Psalm 137 areeven if unwittingly on Ogdens partlimited by what Crowell has dubbed the sole arbiter of appropriate interpretations, namely the discipline of biblical historical criticism.2 More recently, scholars have harkened to the other side of the threshing floor, seeing what Gillingham has called the synchronic approach3 of reader-based response as the opening of new network of constructive interpretive possibilities in reaction to the vacuum of Germanic higher criticism. Christopher Hays reads Psalm 137 by drawing parallels between the Jewish exilic communal lament with the concerns of contemporary liberation theology.4 In a remarkable article, John Ahn looks more carefully at ancient sociological concerns, arguing that Psalm 137:1-6 comes from the first group of exiles faced with harsh labor on Babylonian irrigation canals (597 B.C.E.), whereas 137:7-9, a pericope historically distinct from the preceding verses, comes from the second wave of exiles (587 B.C.E.).5 These fascinating studies are thoughtfully executed but primarily hypothesize about the historical context of Psalm 137. The reception history of the psalm in Judeo-Christian traditions is well documented by William Holladay,6 steering one closer to the work of Stowe, who is unique among readers of the psalm. He assesses how it has been used in the context of modern liberation theology and postcolonial discourse, through instances such as The Melodians international hit By the Rivers of Babylon and Frederick Douglasss 1852 July Fifth Speech.7 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

Graham Ogden, Prophetic Oracles Against Foreign Nations and Psalms of Communal Lament: The Relationship of Psalm 137 to Jeremiah 49:7-22 and Obadiah, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 7 (1982), 92. 2 Bradley L. Crowell, Postcolonial Studies and the Hebrew Bible, Currents in Biblical Research 7 (2009), 217. For an excellent account of the historical development of this kind of hegemonic interpretative framework out of the Germanic schools, see Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (OUP, 2010). 3 Susan E. Gillingham, One Bible, Many Voices: Different Approaches to Biblical Studies (Eerdmans Publishing Co.: Grand Rapids, MI, 1998), 173; cf. 172, figs. 19-20; see the definition of reader-response criticism on 183-184. 4 Christopher Hays, How Shall We Sing?: Psalm 137 in Historical and Canonical Context, Horizons in Biblical Theology, 27 (2005): 35-55, esp. 45. 5 John Ahn, Psalm 137: Complex Communal Laments, Journal of Biblical Literature 127.2 (2008), 289. 6 The Psalms through Three Thousand Years (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 144; 151; 171; 198; 287-90. 7 David E. Stowe, Babylon Revisited: Psalm 137 as American Protest Song, Black Music Research Journal 32.1 (2012): 95-112.

! #! Stowes survey of the psalm in American protest rhetoric serves as the point of departure for this essay, in which I shall closely examine the function of Psalm 137 in the rhetoric of the aforementioned oratory8 by Frederick Douglass with a view towards examining how his reading interprets the exilic experience of 19th Century African-American slaves. I shall answer four questions about his reading by way of assessing its implications: 1) Who is the speaker? 2) Who is the Babylonian empire? 3) where is Babylon? 4) To where does the speaker hope to return where is Zion? Douglasss reading of Psalm 137 manifests the subtle distinction between liberation and black theology as such. Elements in Douglasss thought parallel recent developments in postcolonial readings of Hebrew bible texts, but due to space I shall limit myself to considering the implications for black theology and a kind of African reading of Psalm 137. The psalm is for Frederick Douglass a culminating articulation that decries the social, political, and economic structures of the United States that suppress the dignity of black humanity. He hones in particularly on white Christian churches. Douglass here seeks to find what Carson has said of his autobiographical Narrative, that is the claiming of the enslaved black community as a sanctified location for authentic Christianity.9 Though not an exclusively black theology,10 Douglass reads Psalm 137 to search for a rhetoric of equality amidst a society ingrained with white dominance.11 I shall first examine several rhetorical features of the Fifth of July speech, focusing on the ironic double application of the identity of Israel in the Psalm, and the eschatological priority he creates by connecting the liberation of slaves with the vindication of Zion. These points shall illuminate the unique interplay between the theological and the political, enabling wider considerations of how Douglass reads Psalm 137 as not only a political prophet but as a kind of black theologian. This assessment shall serve to evaluate the interrelationship between the categories of liberation theology, black theology, and postcolonial criticism as uniquely expressed through Douglasss use of Psalm 137. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8

I am not aware of any scholarly consensus on why the address was given on the fifth of July, as the oration was obviously delivered for the national holiday on the fourth. See Robert E. Terrill, Irony, Silence, and Time: Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July, Quarterly Journal of Speech 89.3 (2003), 231; 232n.12. 9 Sharon Carson, Shaking the Foundation: Liberation Theology in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Religion & Literature 24.2 (1992), 20. 10 See Edward Antonio, Black Theology, in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, ed. Christopher Rowland (CUP, 2007), 79-104 for an excellent discussion and attention to the seminal thinker James Cone. 11 Kevin R. McClure (Frederick Douglass use of Comparison in his Fourth of July Oration: A textual criticism, Western Journal of Communication 64.4 [2000], 427) argues that irony and comparison are the main rhetorical features of the speech.

! $! II. Irony and Distance Rightly hailed by William McFeely as the greatest antislavery oration ever given,12 there is nevertheless great ambiguity in Douglasss July Fifth speech around what Stowe has called the organizing frame of the address, Psalm 137.13 Of course, Douglass is the speaker of the psalm, using the lines as the plaintive lament for a peeled and woe-smitten people whose cry has not been heard.14 Prima facie, then, Douglass is a representative of the community of oppressed black slaves in the Americas. They are exiles crying out for deliverance, and he is their voice:
[] I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" [] I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view.15

Locating his speech as an act of remembrance after the pattern of Psalm 137:5-6, he also locates the national commemoration of independence not as a day of jubilee but of mourning. Here the American bondman is the suffering Israelite; Douglass is the lamenting psalmist expressing his communitys sorrow by the rivers of Babylon (Ps. 137:1). Yet this only manages to grasp one side of Douglasss complex use of Israel. Contrary to McClures assessment, prior to the quotation of Psalm 137, Douglass nowhere equates black slaves with the ancient Hebrew people.16 Rather, he equates the Israel of the Hebrew bible with America, a move Stowe describes as the uncanny stroke that created the psalms modern political valence.17 For Douglass, both are guilty of riding on the lineaments of the eternal principles of their founding fathers to the point of systematic neglect. Privilege does not exonerate the people from responsibility in the polis: We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.18 Ancient Israel fell into fragmentation because the nation repudiated the deeds which made [Abrahams] name great, about which he goes on to say: Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12 13

Frederick Douglass (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), 173. Stowe, Babylon Revisited, 103. 14 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 15. 15 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 16. 16 McClure Comparison, 433. While he is right in seeing Douglass suggest at moments an identification of black slaves with ancient Israel, such an equation prior to quoting Psalm 137 would contradict Douglasss point. 17 Stowe, Babylon Revisited, 103. 18 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 13.

! %! today?19 Douglass calls for repentance of national practices that perpetuate a system of violence and inequality. To the nation celebrating its independence, he is an ironic prophet, a poet bringing the dull to their senses. His point is that Psalm 137 cannot serve as a communal expression for the Americans, even though they purport to be Israel, Gods chosen people. Douglass creates a poignant sense of distance between the oppressed and the oppressor, between Israel and its captor, Babylon.
Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible [] dare to call in question and to denounce [] everything that serves to perpetuate slaverythe great sin and shame of America!20

This tension enables him to intimate at a kind of liberation theology amidst his political discourse. It is significant to note that this decisive rhetorical shift occurs directly after the quote of Psalm 137. Instead of embodying the ideals of a nation guided by the worthy precepts21 of the constitution and the Bible, the country has held prisoner an innocent people. Thus is Douglasss unique twofold use of the image of Israel, and more particularly, Psalm 137: a political critique of an old empire and the hint at a theological construction of a new one, that of a freed people in a society of equality. Paralleling the constitution and the Bible is not just a syntactical play, but also an ideological argument by which he categorizes his project neither as strictly political nor strictly theological. For Douglass, the former is the expression and practical implementation of the latter. With Stowe, precisely at the quotation of Psalm 137, the tone of the speech shifts from a prophetic voice of the American community to an uncanny political critique from the perspective of an exiled people. It is as if Douglass plays a rhetorical trick on his hearers: by creating a comfortable identity of America as Israel, Douglass pulls back the curtain to reveal a bitter irony: though decorated with its revolutionary Constitution, America is rather the Babylonian empire, its rolling fields of cotton tantamount to the Babylonian rivers. The embarrassing irony of the American land is that slavery remains an integral aspect of economic life even after its logical edifice has been cast aside by the nations founding documents. Douglass scoffs, You have already declared it [that slaves are human beings]. [] Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and

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19 20

Douglass, Or. July 5th, 14. Douglass, Or. July 5th, 16. 21 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 9-10; 14; 29.

! &! argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty []?22 Specifications of place, though, are noticeably absent. Douglasss message is universal, not confined to the banks of the Mississippi and the manners of the South or the employment hierarchy of the North: Babylon is where inequality dominates social norms and oppresses human dignity. The Babylonian empire is thus any individual or institutionalized contributor to the perpetuation of this cycle of willful neglect. But Douglass does not reject the Constitution or the State outright. Notable here is the evidence for his historical break with his mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, who adamantly declared the constitution to be a proslavery document. As Garrison pithily put it, he is no true abolitionist who does not go against this Union.23 In the mid-1840s, during the height of Douglasss fame, Garrison advocated that the only proper recourse in the face of such injustice was to dissolve the union and reestablish it on different social and economic terms.24 This point is significant in our analysis of Psalm 137 in Douglasss famous oratory, as we note that his speech never intimates at insurrection or the threat of a mass exodus of black slaves to Africa or South America. Even more significant to his reading, then, is the rhetoric of omission, namely his clever choice to quote only the first six verses of the psalm. Douglass thereby leaves no room for the violent political dissonance or any kind of triumphant racial discourse that was to be later read from verses 7-9.25 A notoriously difficult passage to interpret and value for modern and ancient readers alike, Douglass retains his most elastic and potent metaphor of exile as a call to reconciliation and reform, to embody in society and economy the equality heralded in the Constitution of the United States, and, for Douglass, the Christian Bible. We shall return to the significance of this omission later in the paper. One final dimension of Douglasss use of Psalm 137 provides an important counterpoint to our considerations and answers the question of Zion, the homeland to which Douglass seeks to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
22 23

Douglass, Or. July 5th, 9-10; 14; 29. Garrison here quoted in David B. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 19; cf. Terrill, Irony, 218. 24 For further discussion on the relationship between Douglass and Garrison, and even an interesting comparison between the latters own 1838 Fourth of July speech, see Neil Leroux, Frederick Douglass and the Attention Shift, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 21.2 (1991), 36-38 and Ernest G. Bormann, Forerunners of Black Power: The Rhetoric of Abolition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 96-105. 25 Consider the use of Psalm 137 in Rastafarian culture and thought outlined in Nathaniel S. Murrell, Tuning Hebrew Psalms to Reggae Rhythms: Rastas Revolutionary Lamentations for Social Change, Cross Currents 50.4 (2000) [journal online]; http://www.crosscurrents.org/murrell.htm [accessed 15 November 2013]. He demonstrates that for the Rastas, the act of remembrance in 137:5-6 is inseparably connected to what amounts to rage, outrage, and the call to political protest voiced in 137:7-9. Their reading, embodied in the Melodians hit By the Rivers of Babylon replaces the Judeo-Christian God with the Rasta God incarnate, Ras Tafari Selassie I.

! '! lead a new people from captivity. After quoting Psalm 68:31 (Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God), a common proof-text for the anticipation of the freeing of black slaves, the oratory climaxes in a poetic eschatological vision of liberation:
God speed the year of jubilee / The wide world o'er! / When from their galling chains set free, / Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee, / And wear the yoke of tyranny / Like brutes no more. / That year will come, and freedom's reign, / To man his plundered rights again restore. [] God speed the hour, the glorious hour, / When none on earth / Shall exercise a lordly power, / Nor in a tyrant's presence cower; / But all to manhood's stature tower, / By equal birth! / That hour will 26 come, to each, to all, / And from his prison-house, the thrall go forth [].

Concluding the speech, this passage is not explicitly connected with the earlier use of Psalm 137. Yet chains, tyrants, lordly power, and the prison-house create unmistakable resonances with the exilic lament of the black slave community articulated earlier by the quote. Freedom and equality for slaves in society is the locus of Gods temporal involvement in the affairs of men to bring about the full realization of human dignity on earth. This interpretation of Douglasss reading goes beyond scholarly assessments of the oratory, exemplified in Stowes excellent article, which have largely focused on the speech as a reclaiming of the public forum as space for dialogue and the articulation of the African-American political voice.27 The eschatological dimension with which he shapes the above quotation goes beyond political reflection: The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved.28 Whether Douglass equated the consummation of Gods Kingdom with the emancipation of slaves is unclear; what is certain, though, is that equality holds a central place in his religious eschatology and that he yearned to realize this vision in the present, not in a futuristic utopia. III. Oppression and Liberation In light of these considerations, Douglasss reading can with careful qualifications be put in conversation with the concerns of Black theology. At points it would overstate Douglass to categorize his work with black theology understood in wake of the 1960s. For while he boldly stands with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, Douglass does so not as James Cone would do a century later, namely to reject notions of universal truth and limit the context of the verification of revelation to the event of black liberation.29 Rather, Douglass !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26 27

Douglass, Or. July 5th, 39. This is McClures critique of J. L. Lucaites (Comparison, 426). 28 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 38. 29 See James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), and The Content and Method of

! (! belongs to black theology in preliminary outline, concerned with what Edward Antonio emphasizes as the central tenants: to decry black humanitys negative definition by whites, and to critically reflect on what it means to be black in such a context.30 His prophetic denouncing of the former, seen namely in his critique of slavery, is clear. His reflection on black identity, though, and thus his place in the task of Black theology articulated by Antonio, requires further elaboration. I shall consider three aspects of the oratory that contribute towards defining oppression and liberation from the unique context of 19th African American slavery. First, he addresses the silence of God, which Murrell articulates as a primary concern for black theology.31 For Douglass, despite centuries of religious, political, and socio-economic racial oppression, God has in fact not been silent. Rather, he speaks from the locus of the oppressed. Douglass does not, as Cone came to do, exclude the oppressors from the possibility of understanding the truth of the gospel.32 But his ironic reversal of the identity of Israel, which with the tones of Psalm 137 recasts the people of God as the crushed and bleeding slave, accomplishes a relocating of Gods expressed favor. With the dramatic eschatological inclusio at the apogee of his speech seen above, Douglass announces Gods verdict of equality and universal liberation in the present, rejecting any notions that God has abandoned the black people, or will set them free in an otherworldly state. The silence of God is not a punishment but rather an eschatological promise. Oppression, it seems in this case is conceived within the framework of Gods salvation history and, interrelated at every point, Americas political future. Second, Douglass reflects on black identity through the question of land. For him, America can be Zion. Marcus Garvey, the famous influence on the Rastafarian revolution, asked, where do you stand in relation to Africa? Erskine elaborates that the Rastas saw Jamaica (Babylon) as so corrupt and hopeless that liberation could come only through divine intervention, as God would repatriate them to Ethiopia.33 But Douglass reads the black experience into the American context, connecting African American identity with liberation amidst the very lands in which they were enslaved. He does not privilege Africa: The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Afric must rise and put on her !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Black Theology, Journal of Religious Thought 32.2 (1975): 90-103; references and discussion in Antonio, Black theology, 84. 30 Antonio, Black theology, 82. 31 Murrell, Tuning, http://www.crosscurrents.org/murrell.htm [accessed 15 November 2013]. 32 Antonio, Black theology, 94. 33 Noel Leo Erskine, Black theology in Jamaica, in The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology, ed. Dwight N. Hopkins et al. (CUP, 2012), 271

! )! yet unwoven garment. Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God [sic].34 Scripturally identifying the African people as a lamenting community not overlooked by God, Douglass uses this biblical quotation as a means toward fashioning a definition of oppression from the black perspective. It is the responsive expectation of the lament issued in Psalm 137. Oppression is not exile from the African continent but the inequality faced in the heart of a land so ironically confident in its notion of freedom. His black theology identifies African-American slaves with the oppressed whom God shall rescue in the realization of his kingdom in the American land. Equality is the political means by which this vision can be realized in the present. Finally, it is important to not leave Douglasss rhetorical brilliance as a blanket critique of America or the West. Most blameworthy in his eyes is the popular church of the land, a critique leveled by Cone and common to black theology. More than any other single institution, the mass body of white Christians in America is the Babylonian Empire, superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery.35 This recalls the technique seen in his use of Psalm 137 as a device of political distancing. Douglass refrains from incorporative language like brother or fellow Christian in his appeal to the American church. Thinking about black humanity for Douglass occurs in the traditional binary relationship with the white man, namely that of oppressor and oppressed, strong and weak, rich and poor, but it is here applied to the American church which he shows to be profoundly unchristian and even unAmerican. Never is his critique purely theological or purely political: we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain oblations [].36 But Douglass never loses his vision of equality. Even in his tragic portrayal of the church he anticipates the geo-political aligning of black and white humanity, two groups imagined within the same brotherhood of man.37 IV. Violence and Hope Douglasss laudable discourse on equality nevertheless fails at points to grasp the implications in its critiques, especially that applied to the Church. For this Harding criticizes him, arguing that his polemic did not in the end pose the radical challenge to American !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
34 35

Douglass, Or. July 5th, 39, quoting Ps. 68:31. Douglass, Or. July 5th, 30. Similarly, with Erskine we note that Rastas judged the church to be part of the Babylonian establishment that was organized against the poor (Jamaica, 269). 36 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 29, quoting Isa. 1:13-17. 37 Douglass, Or. July 5th, 29.

! *! slaveholding for which the times surely called.38 Carson disagrees, holding that Douglass carefully manipulated cultural religious language in order to subtly suggest sanctified violence as a necessary black response to abusive white culture.39 Given the vision of equality here presented though, condoning violence seems far from his mind. Nevertheless, Douglass might have better anticipated the debate among critics like Harding and Carson in order to provide a more adequate account of violence and its place in the abolitionist movement, and importantly for our purposes, its place in black theology. Despite the urges toward equality, his brilliant identification of the Babylonian Empire with white (Christian) Americans too easily provides the basis for armed dissension.40 In neglecting to address the issue of violence, Douglass misses an opportunity to advance and clarify his mission of equality with a crucial caveat. After all, it is doubtful that such a biblically literate audience would not have thought peculiar his omission of the famously difficult verses 7-9. Indeed, his silence on Psalm 137:7-9 is perhaps to the detriment of his oratory, even if for reasons of not wanting to advocate violence. As difficult to swallow as they are, verses 7-9 can be understood as the emotive conscience of a peoples justified reaction to the horrors of exile. Hindsight with the resources of post-modern critical methods substantiates this claim but does not render its methods of literary approach necessary to do so; Douglass neglects a useful literarily sensitivity to poetic lament that might have aided his reading in three ways, all oriented towards an appropriation of his eschatology. First, the verses can be understood as a communal answer to divine silence. As emphasized by the violent revolution of Rastafarian thought in the 1930s, the injustices done to blacks were historically and politically systematized to the point of justifying such anger, aghast at the widespread norms of oppression.41 Such speechlessness is articulated well in verses 7-9. John Ahn argues that as modern interpreters, we should not attempt to alter too quickly the tensions of such laments, because they are the baffled cry of the second group of exiles (587
B.C.E),
42

a people devastated by witnessing their own childrens inhumane death before their

eyes. Verse 7 initiates a new Sitz im Leben, distinct from 137:1-6, which come from the first group of forced migrants (597 B.C.E.). Ahns historical argument here only reinforces the literary !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
38 39

Vincent Harding, There is a River (New York: Vintage, 1983), 200. Noted in Carson, Shaking, 19. Carson, Shaking, 20. 40 James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), n.37, describes the historical role of Negro spirituals in abolitionist insurrection, movements spurred by the strivings for earthly freedom. 41 Murrell, Tuning, http://www.crosscurrents.org/murrell.htm [accessed 15 November 2013]. 42 Ahn, Complex Comunal Laments, 284-287.

! "+! notion that How blessed will be the one who repays you is the cry of a people petitioning Yahweh to remember and act upon the evils done to their children in the wake of Jerusalems destruction (v. 9). The construction of black identity and discourse might have been aided by this articulation. A communal cry to God for retribution is a realization of not being excluded from the cosmic story of redemption. Seeing God on this level of intimate self-identification among the oppressed would empower a community with the strength of an eschatological narrative in which the divine empathizer does not remain silent at the injustices done to his chosen people. Second, verses 7-9 would enable the community to inhabit an ethic of repose in the tension of Gods distance and absence, his promise and its anticipated fulfillment. Federico Villanueva conducts an illuminating study reminding one that it was typical for psalms of communal lament to end without any resolution.43 This simple yet nearly systematic note might have helped Douglass more incisively articulate a vision of black identity within the tensions of historical oppression and the promise of Gods liberation. Finally, omitting verses 7-9 risks depriving the black community of a voice in the sphere of public discourse. As a theological spokesman for his community, Douglass emphatically confesses the status of an exiled people awaiting liberation, yearning for the eschaton. The explicit construction of a different political identity, namely one on whose side God stands, may have served more effectively to unite the lamenting people. As a speech commemorating American independence, it would have had poignant effect to read out the biblically expressed poetic vengeance, an articulation of despair from years of oppression, thereby introducing the black community as a viable and necessary force in the quest for realizing a more perfect political union in the present. While Douglass expresses the dire straights of American slavery well, seen throughout this paper in his rhetorical techniques of distancing and irony by the use of Psalm 137:1-6, the implications of this move might have been more appropriately felt in conjunction with verses 79, a call that would emphasize the eschatological ordering of black liberation in political discourse. On the whole, though, Douglasss reading of the famous psalm is an effective and forceful tributary to the larger currents of abolition and the realization of equality in the tumultuous Western hemisphere of the 19th Century. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
43

Federico G. Villanueva, The Uncertainty of a Hearing: A Study of the Sudden Change of Mood in the Psalms of Lament. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 121 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 217n15 for references.

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PRIMARY SOURCES Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph. Editio quinta emendata opera A. Schenker. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997. Frederick Douglass. Oration Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5th, 1852. Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852. The Holy Bible. Updated New American Standard Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999. SECONDARY SOURCES Ahn, John. Psalm 137: Complex Communal Laments. Journal of Biblical Literature 127.2 (2008): 267-289. Antonio, Edward. Black Theology. Pages 79-104 in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology. Edited by Christopher Rowland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Bormann, Ernest G. Forerunners of Black Power: The Rhetoric of Abolition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Carson, Sharon. Shaking the Foundation: Liberation Theology in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Religion & Literature 24.2 (1992): 19-34 Chesebrough, David B. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Cone, James H. The Content and Method of Black Theology. Journal of Religious Thought 32.2 (1975): 90-103. --. God of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. --. The Spirituals and the Blues. New York: Seabury Press, 1972. Crowell, Bradley L. Postcolonial Studies and the Hebrew Bible. Currents in Biblical Research 7 (2009): 217-244.

! "#! Erskine, Noel Leo. Black theology in Jamaica. Pages 267-277 in The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology. Edited by Dwight N. Hopkins and Edward Antonio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Gillingham, Susan E. One Bible, Many Voices: Different Approaches to Biblical Studies. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998. Harding, Vincent. There is a River. New York: Vintage, 1983. Hays, Christopher B. How Shall We Sing?: Psalm 137 in Historical and Canonical Context. Horizons in Biblical Theology 27 (2005): 35-55 Holladay, William. The Psalms through Three Thousand Years. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996. Legaspi Michael C. The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Leroux, Neil. Frederick Douglass and the Attention Shift. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 21.2 (1991): 36-46. McClure, Kevin R. Frederick Douglass use of Comparison in his Fourth of July Oration: A textual criticism. Western Journal of Communication 64.4 (2000): 425-444. McFeely, William. Frederick Douglass. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991. Murrell, Nathaniel S. Tuning Hebrew Psalms to Reggae Rhythms: Rastas Revolutionary Lamentations for Social Change. Cross Currents 50.4 (2000) [journal online]; http://www.crosscurrents.org/murrell.htm [accessed 15 November 2013]. Ogden, Graham S. Prophetic Oracles Against Foreign Nations and Psalms of Communal Lament: The Relationship of Psalm 137 to Jeremiah 49:7-22 and Obadiah. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 7 (1982): 89-97. Stowe, David W. Babylon Revisited: Psalm 137 as American Protest Song. Black Music Research Journal 32.1 (2012): 95-112. Terrill, Robert E. Irony, Silence, and Time: Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July. Quarterly Journal of Speech 89.3 (2003): 216-234. Villanueva, Federico G. The Uncertainty of a Hearing: A Study of the Sudden Change of Mood in the Psalms of Lament. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 121. Leiden: Brill, 2008. !