Psalms 137:1-8

1 By the rivers in Babylon we sat and cried when we remembered Jerusalem.

2 On the poplar trees nearby we hung our harps.

3 Those who captured us asked us to sing; our enemies wanted happy songs. They said, "Sing us a song about Jerusalem!"

4 But we cannot sing songs about the Lord while we are in this foreign country!

5 Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand lose its skill.

6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not think about Jerusalem as my greatest joy.

7 Lord, remember what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. They said, "Tear it down! Tear it down to its foundations!"

8 People of Babylon, you will be destroyed. The people who pay you back for what you did to us will be happy.

Psalms 137:1-8 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 137

The occasion of this psalm was the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and the treatment they met with there; either as foreseen, or as now endured. Aben Ezra ascribes this psalm to David; and so the Syriac version, which calls it,

``a psalm of David; the words of the saints, who were carried captive into Babylon.''

The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Ethiopic versions, make it to be David's, and yet add the name of Jeremiah; and the Arabic version calls it David's, concerning Jeremiah: but, as Theodoret observes, Jeremiah was not carried into Babylon, but, after some short stay in or near Jerusalem, was forced away into Egypt; and could neither be the writer nor subject of this psalm: and though it might be written by David under a spirit of prophecy; who thereby might foresee and foretell the Babylonish captivity, and what the Jews would suffer in it; as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah did, many years before it came to pass; yet it seems rather to have been written by one of the captivity, either while in it, or immediately after it.