Psalm 137:1-7

How Shall We Sing the Lord’s Song?

1 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 On the willows^[a] there we hung up our lyres.

3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion! ”

4 ¹How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, ²let my right hand forget its skill!

6 Let my ³tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O Lord, against the ⁴Edomites ⁵the day of Jerusalem, how they said, ⁶“Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations! ”

Psalm 137:1-7 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.

Cross References

• 1. 137:4 [Neh. 2:3]
• 2. 137:5 [Ps. 76:5]
• 3. 137:6 Job 29:10; Ezek. 3:26
• 4. 137:7 Isa. 34:5, 6; Lam. 4:21, 22; Ezek. 35:2; [Amos 1:11, 12]; See Jer. 49:7-22; Ezek. 25:12-14; Obad. 8-14
• 5. 137:7 See Job 18:20
• 6. 137:7 Hab. 3:13; Zeph. 2:14

Footnotes

• [a] 137:2 Or 'poplars'