Psalms 137

Israel’s minstrels were silent in the land of exile, when they were tauntingly bidden to display their skill for the amusement of their captors (Psalms 137:1-3). How could they sing Jehovah’s songs in a heathen land? how forget Jerusalem (Psalms 137:4-6)? Perish the enemies that had wrought her ruin and rejoiced at her fall (Psalms 137:7-9)! The tender pathos of the opening verses enlists our sympathy; the crash of bitter denunciation in the closing stanza shocks and repels. But implacable hatred of Zion’s foes was in those days the inevitable correlative to intense love for her. The new law, “Thou shalt love thine enemy,” had not yet taken the place of the old maxim, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.” The law of stern retribution for cruel wrong seems to the Psalmist only just, and the peculiarly barbarous form in which he expresses his desire for the extermination of the destroyer of his country is only such as was familiar to his age. The Psalm is generally thought to have been written soon after the Return from Babylon in b.c. 537, while Babylon, though it had lost its independence, still enjoyed a large measure of prosperity under the mild rule of Cyrus. The past tenses of Psa 137:1-3 seem to imply that the writer and his companions are no longer in exile, while from Psalms 137:7-9 it appears that the wrongs of Israel have not yet been fully avenged on Babylon. A date before the close of the Exile is not indeed impossible. At first sight Psalms 137:4-6 read like the words of those who are still in exile; Psalms 137:7-9 seem to anticipate a judgement still wholly future; the tenses in Psalms 137:1-3 might be taken as perfects (‘have we sat down’ &c.), describing a state of things still existing; and the denunciation of Babylon in Jeremiah 51, which probably belongs to the closing years of the Exile (Driver, Lit. of O.T.6, p. 268), breathes a very similar spirit to that of the Psalm. These reasons, however, are not conclusive. Psalms 137:4-6 can be understood as dramatically expressing the feelings of the exiles in the actual words which they might have used at the time; Babylon was not destroyed by Cyrus, and its capture must have seemed a very imperfect measure of retribution; there in Psalms 137:1; Psalms 137:3 points decidedly to Babylon from a distance; and a date immediately after the return from Babylon is the most probable. The first sight of the ruins of the city and Temple might well have moved the Psalmist to recall his faithfulness to Zion in the distant land of exile, and to give utterance to his longing for vengeance upon those who had wrought this havoc and rejoiced at the sight of it. The author may have been a Levite, who had taken part or looked forward to taking part in the Temple music, and returned in extreme old age to Jerusalem; one possibly of those whose regrets for past glories overwhelmed them at the laying of the foundation of the Temple (Ezra 3:12). That the Psalm is, as Professor Cheyne thinks (Origin of the Psalter, p. 69 f.), “a dramatic lyric,” written in the time of Simon the Maccabee, four hundred years after the Return, is in the highest degree unlikely. The title in the LXX, τῷΔαυὶδἹερεμίου or διὰἹ. (‘Of David; Jeremiah’s, or ‘by Jeremiah’), appears to represent two views as to its origin. In style it may have been thought to resemble Davidic Psalms, and in tone the writings of Jeremiah; but as Jeremiah never was in Babylon the ascription of the Psalm to him is out of the question.

Psalms 137:1-3

1–3. The silence of sacred song in the sorrow of exile.

Psalms 137:2

2. Upon the willows in the midst thereof, We hung out harps. the willows] Cp. Isaiah 44:4. The tree meant, however, was probably not the weeping willow, but the populus Euphratica.

Psalms 137:3

3. For there &c.] The reason why their harps were silent. It might have been expected that they would soothe their sorrow with plaintive music; but the heartless demand of their captors made it impossible. asked of us songs] Lit. words of song. they that wasted us] The exact meaning is doubtful. The A.V. marg. ‘Heb. laid us on heaps’ rests on an impossible derivation, and the R.V. marg. our tormentors on an improbable one. Perhaps with the change of a single letter shτlelηnu, ‘our spoilers,’should be read instead of the obscure tτlβlηnu. Coverdale’s rendering in the P.B.V., and melody in our heaviness, comes from Luther, ‘und in unserm Heulen ein frφhlich Gesang.’ one of the songs of Zion] Or, some of the songs. As these songs are called in the next verse Jehovah’s songs, it is clear that it is not secular songs that are meant, but the sacred hymns of the Temple worship (2 Chronicles 29:27). To sing these for the amusement of their conquerors would have been the grossest profanation of all that they held most dear; an act comparable to Belshazzar’s use of the consecrated vessels at his feast (Daniel 5:2). Cp. Matthew 7:6.

Psalms 137:4-6

4–6. The exiles indignantly repudiate the idea of doing what would be treason to the memories of Zion. The protest is dramatically expressed in the words which they would have used at the time.

Psalms 137:5

5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem] To have consented would have seemed an act of unfaithfulness to Zion. Some of the exiles did forget the “holy mountain” (Isaiah 65:11). For the imprecation as a solemn asseveration cp. Job 31:21-22. forget her cunning] So the aposiopesis is admirably completed in the Great Bible of 1540. Less forcibly the LXX and Jer. read the verb as a passive, ‘Let my right hand be forgotten,’ which is the rendering of Coverdale (1535), retained in the first edition of the Great Bible.

Psalms 137:6

6. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, If I remember thee not (R.V.). Let all power of speech and song desert me. Cp. Job 29:10. if I prefer not &c.] Lit. if I exalt not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy: i.e. if I do not regard J. as dearer to me than aught else.

Psalms 137:7-9

7–9. The Psalmist’s love for Jerusalem leads him to invoke vengeance on her enemies: upon Edom for the unbrotherly spite which rejoiced at her destruction; upon Babylon, for having accomplished that destruction

Psalms 137:8

8. O daughter of Babylon] The city of Babylon personified. who art to be destroyed] The most obvious translation is that of R.V. marg., that art laid waste. So Aq. and Jerome, vastata. But the following clauses apparently imply that Babylon has not been destroyed, and the participle may be ‘prophetic,’ that art doomed to be laid waste[84]. Delitzsch quotes examples of a similar idiom in Arabic. ‘The stricken one,’=‘one who is doomed to be stricken.’ So Theodotion, ἡδιαρπασθησομένη. Some of the Ancient Versions, however (Symm., Syr., Targ.), render thou waster, a rendering which only requires a slight change of the text, and is adopted by many critics. [84] Coverdale and the Great Bible of 1539 have, thou shalt come to misery thy self, from Zόrich Bible, und du Babel, wirst auch ellend werden. The P.B.V. wasted with misery, from the Great Bible of 1540, may have been suggested by Mόnster’s devastata and the Vulg. misera.

Psalms 137:9

9. The barbarous customs of Oriental warfare spared neither women nor children in a war of extermination. Cp. Isaiah 13:16; Hosea 10:14; Hosea 13:16; Nahum 3:10; 2 Kings 8:12; Hom. Il. xxii. 63. The stern law of retaliation demanded that Babylon should be treated as she had treated Jerusalem. Cp. Isaiah 47:1-9; Jeremiah 51:24; Jeremiah 51:56. the stones] The rock or crag.