464 Ramantswana, “Reading of Psalm 137,” OTE 32/2 (2019): 464-490 Song(s) of Struggle: A Decolonial Reading of Psalm 137 in Light of South Africa’s Struggle Songs HULISANI RAMANTSWANA (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA) ABSTRACT This article engages in a decolonial reading of Ps 137 in light of South African songs of struggle. In this reading, Ps 137 is regarded as an epic song which combines struggle songs which originated within the golah community in response to the colonial relations between the oppressor and the oppressed. The songs of struggle then gained new life during the post-exilic period as a result of the new colonial relation between the Yehud community and the Persian Empire. Therefore, Ps 137 should be viewed as not a mere song, but an anthology of songs of struggle: a protest song (vv. 1-4), a sorrow song (vv. 5-6), and a war song (vv. 7- 9). KEYWORDS: Psalm 137, Songs of Struggle, protest song, sorrow song, war song, exile, Babylon, post-exilic, Persian Empire. A INTRODUCTION Bob Becking, in a paper entitled “Does Exile Equal Suffering? A Fresh Look at Psalm 137,” 1 argues that exile and diaspora for the exiles who were in Babylon did not so much amount to things such as hunger and oppression or economic hardship; instead, it was more a feeling of alienation which resulted in the longing to return to Zion. Becking’s interpretation of Ps 137 tends to minimise the colonial dynamics involved in the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, the coloniser and the colonised, which continually pushes the oppressed into the zone of nonbeing. Berquist, in his study entitled “Psalms, Postcolonialism, and the Construction of the Self,” argues that the psalms were part of the empire’s control of the region through its ideological, social control of persons and lives. … Psalms offer words and social spaces that shape individual experiences and emotions into * Article Submitted: submitted: 2019/03/04; peer reviewed: 2019/05/18; accepted: 2019/07/16. Hulisani Ramantswana, “Song(s) of Struggle: A Decolonial Reading of Psalm 137 in Light of South Africa’s Struggle Songs,” OTE 32 no. 2 (2019): 464-490. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a12. 1 Bob Becking, “Does Exile Equal Suffering? A Fresh Look at Psalm 137,” in Exile and Suffering: A Selection of Papers Read at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Old Testament Society of South Africa OTWSA/OTSSA Pretoria, August 2007 (ed. Bob Becking and Dirk Human; OTS 50; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 181-202.