Psalms 137King James Version
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. The psalm ends with a terrible curse against Babylon.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps on the willows. Those who carried us away captive required a song; our tormentors required mirth. How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? If I forget Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. The psalm ends with two hard verses: blessed shall he be who rewards Babylon as she served us, and blessed who dashes her little ones against the stones.
Exile destroys the capacity for song; the refusal to sing in Babylon is not defiance but loyalty to a memory that cannot be performed on demand for the entertainment of captors.
verse: "How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?" The question is theological, not rhetorical: worship requires a context of belonging that exile has destroyed.
No superscription. The only psalm set in Babylon. The rivers (Chebar, Tigris tributaries) were the gathering places of exilic Jewish communities (see Ezek 1:1). The historical setting is 597-539 BC. The final verse about dashing infants reflects both the memory of what Babylon did to Jerusalem and the specific curse-formula of ancient Near Eastern warfare poetry.
The exilic congregation as the weeping singers; the Babylonian captors who demanded songs; the remembered Jerusalem; Edom who said 'rase it' when Jerusalem fell; Babylon addressed at the close; the implied sufferers of Babylon's violence.
Psalm 137 is the most politically honest psalm in the Psalter. The final verse (v9: 'happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones') is the hardest imprecation in Scripture. It reflects the atrocity of Babylon's treatment of Jerusalem's children (2 Kings 25:7) and should not be sanitized. It names the full grief and the full rage without pretending either is not present.
For the experience of being required to perform joy or normalcy while in grief. The psalm refuses. The harps stay on the willows. That is the faithful response.
1By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
2We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
5If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
8O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
9Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.