Psalms 137:2-9

2 We had hung up our lyres on the willows that were there,

3 when those who had taken us captive asked us to sing them a song; our tormentors demanded joy from us -"Sing us one of the songs from Tziyon!"

4 How can we sing a song about ADONAI here on foreign soil?

5 If I forget you, Yerushalayim, may my right hand wither away!

6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I fail to remember you, if I fail to count Yerushalayim the greatest of all my joys.

7 Remember, ADONAI, against the people of Edom the day of Yerushalayim's fall, how they cried, "Tear it down! Tear it down! Raze it to the ground!"

8 Daughter of Bavel, you will be destroyed! A blessing on anyone who pays you back for the way you treated us!

9 A blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and smashes them against a rock!

Psalms 137:2-9 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.