Deeper Commentary

 

Psa 137:1

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, and yes, we wept when we remembered Zion-

We must note that the Psalm isn't describing what was happening at the time it was written. The perfect verb forms are clear that this is a recollection of the past. It is a 'look back in anger', recalling what had happened in Babylon; possibly a reference to the exiles being forced into slave labour digging the canals of Babylon. Ezekiel was by the river Chebar in Babylon, but Chebar was a man made canal. Hence "there" rather than "here" in :1,3. It would be most appropriate to the thoughts of someone who had been in exile in Babylon and had now returned. Some of the returned exiles were sad on their return (they wept at the small size of the rebuilt temple, Ezra 3:12). It is not a psalm of faith but rather of bitterness and regret; the good news of the restored Kingdom had failed to register with the author and there is no looking forward to the restored Kingdom. The only hope for the future appears to be in the final verses- hoping for judgment upon their abusers and not at all looking forward to future salvation. There is no gratitude for the grace of the restoration; the bitterness about the past has swamped any gratitude or praise. The exiles returned to Zion by grace alone, and were intended to return with joy and re-establish God's Kingdom. But here we have an example of where a past trauma or hurt is so great that no matter how blessed a person is, they remain angry and bitter. In contrast, Ps. 126 describes the joy of some who did return from Babylon: "When Yahweh brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing... Yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad... Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, will certainly come again with joy carrying his sheaves". And so there is a choice- to let God's grace psychologically transform us and to accept the prospect of eternity offered us, or to remain playing the tape of the past to the point that not even the offer of restoration and life eternal will change us. If we want to remain rooted in the past, we will remain there even if God has moved us on. Ps. 137 is preceded by the Songs of Ascents, intended to be sung by the joyful, faithful exiles as they returned to Zion. I suggest Ps. 137 is inserted and inspired at this point to show that in fact this wasn't the case, and some [the majority, probably] returned in the grateful spirit of Ps. 137 rather than Ps. 126. Indeed all the songs of ascents have the element of worship and thanksgiving. Ps. 137 has no gratitude, the only joy being to fantasize about bashing the brains out of a child of one of those who had verbally abused the Jews in Babylon. This violent revenge fantasy is far out of proportion to the abuse suffered, which was verbal and not physical. It is the fantasy of someone embittered and distorted in their thinking, uninfluenced by God's grace. See on :8. Ezekiel saw the cherubim glory of Yahweh above the Chebar canal, with the implication it was going to return from there to Zion. This psalmist is ignorant of that and sees only bitter memories of words and actions, lost in himself rather than seeing the higher hand of God, working in glory towards the salvation and restoration of His people. Daniel likewise saw visions of Israel's final salvation and the destruction of her oppressors by a river of Babylon, the Ulai (Dan. 8:2).

Jer. 17:4 had prophesied that Judah would serve their enemies in a foreign land, with Babylon clearly in view. But having said that, Jer. 17:8 goes on to say that "They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit". This was what should have been happening spiritually by the rivers of Babylon. The psalmist precludes that by being so caught up in bitterness.

Prayer was made by the Jews by rivers (Acts 16:13) and synagogues in the diaspora were often built by rivers- the water was needed for the purification rituals. The memory is of a prayer and worship service that was disrupted by mocking locals. And it was a worship service that never happened because they hung up their harps and couldn't sing or worship. Their weeping was because they failed to perceive that they didn't in fact need "Zion", the temple, to worship God. The Boney M upbeat version of this Psalm has perhaps become a major barrier to its' correct popular interpretation.

Psalm 137 speaks of Judah in captivity, apparently initially as a result of Sennacherib’s invasion as recorded in 2 Kings 18:13. And yet it seems to have been re-written with reference to Judah’s captivity at the hands of the Babylonians some years later. This sort of thing would’ve happened with whole books. J.W.Thirtle claims that the original manuscripts of most Old Testament books were sealed with Hezekiah’s seal, as they had been re-written and edited during his time (J.W. Thirtle, Old Testament Problems (Printland Publishers reprint, 2004 facsimile of the 1914 edition) p. 301). Scripture itself testifies to him and his men re-organizing the writings of David. Isaiah, with its initial application to Hezekiah, and then its obvious reference to the captivity and restoration, is another example.

This weeping for Zion may have been intended to be in the spirit of Is. 30:19, where the weepers for Zion are to be restored to her. To "remember Zion" could mean that they were seeking to bring Zion to God's memory, in the spirit of Is. 62:6,7, so that He would fulfil the promises of her restoration.

Psa 137:2

On the willows in its midst we hung up our harps-
Their weeping was therefore not at the prison camps by the Chebar river, where Ezekiel was, but at the rivers in the midst of Babylon (:1). However it seems that the Psalmist is recalling two incidents- by the canals they were digging, and then in the midst of Babylon where there were also canals dug by the Jewish exiles. Perhaps they chose the willows in allusion to Is. 44:4, which predicted that the revived exiles would spring up like willows next to water. For these willows were next to the rivers of Babylon (:1). However, willows didn't grow in Babylon, and the only trees by the waters of Babylon appear to have been palms. Perhaps they are described as willows especially in order to highlight the connection with Is. 44:4. 

The hanging up of harps was "for" or because they had been asked to sing the songs of Zion (:3). It speaks of a refusal to sing when asked. But they had harps with them and were possibly singing the songs of Zion as part of the weeping by the rivers in :1. But when asked to sing when mocked by their captors, they hung up their harps. However the fact they had their harps with them means they had been singing them. So this falsifies their excuse that they couldn't sing such songs on Gentile soil, "in a foreign land". Likewise the Psalmist on one hand refuses to sing, but then curses himself with being unable to sing and play the harp if he will forget Zion. The curse implies he is able to sing and play the harp and does so and will continue doing so, for Zion's sake. All this isn't the only hint within the Psalm that the author is not of complete integrity.

Psa 137:3

For there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. Those who tormented us demanded us songs of joy: Sing us one of the songs of Zion!-

As discussed on :1 and :6, the Psalmist is remembering words spoken and endlessly rehearsing them in his mind, even making up this song about them. And he came to exaggerate the dimensions of that verbal abuse. For he speaks of being "tormented", made to howl, tortured, by what perhaps only one person had said. For there is no evidence the Babylonians abused the Jews in captivity, indeed we see that they soon rose to power in Babylon and then Persia [think of Esther, Mordecai, Daniel and his three friends, Ezra, Nehemiah]. It was their prosperity in Babylon which meant they were generally unresponsive to Cyrus' encouragement to return to Zion.

Most of the Jews were also idol worshippers, that was why they were in captivity. So it is somewhat hypocritical to so bitterly object to being mocked about the songs of Zion. And [s]he ought to have realized that the exile was deserved- Judah had sinned deeply against God with multiple chances to repent but had refused. As Ezra and Nehemiah reflected, they had been punished less than their iniquities deserved. The prophets had said that a sword would chase them into captivity and devour them there; but God relented and was so gracious to them. Indeed they were told to accept the 70 years captivity, “build houses and live in them, plant vineyards and eat their fruits” (Jer. 29:5). The Biblical picture of the exiles in captivity is not at all of torture and abuse, rather of quick prosperity. But the psalmist, like many today, picks upon one isolated, out of character incident, dwells upon, ignores God's huge grace, goes on to connect it with another abuse incident in the past [the words of the Edomites, :7) and becomes obsessed with the narrative, refusing to move on from it and dwelling upon it, even though he is apparently now back in Jerusalem.

What were the "songs of Zion"? Maybe the songs of ascents in the psalms preceding Ps. 137, that spoke of the exiles returning to Zion with joy. That return with joy seemed impossible of fulfilment as they slogged away digging the Chebar canal. Instead of looking forward in faith to that day when the exiles would return, this Psalmist is bitter. He will sing them, he refuses to not play his harp, but he does so with such bitterness. Just as we may pay lip service to the message of the restored Kingdom, but our bitterness is too great to feel the joy.

Another view is that the "songs of joy" were "Yahweh's song" (:4), the songs sung at the time of "the day of your gladness" (Num. 10:10; Ezra 6:22 s.w. "joy"). The exiles were unable to keep the feasts and so they didn't use these songs any more. But we may well enquire how their Babylonian captors knew about these songs. The prophets repeatedly point out that Israel prostituted Yahweh's religion with that of the gods of Babylon. This would explain why the Babylonians now mocked the Jews' religion.

Reasoning back from the addresses to the captives in later Isaiah, it appears they thought that Yahweh was a God who just operated in the land of Israel. The captives felt they couldn’t sing the songs of Yahweh in a Gentile land (Ps. 137). They thought that now they were outside His land and far from His temple, they were forgotten by Him (Is. 49:14,15), their cause ignored by Him (Is. 40:27) and they were “cast off” from relationship with Him (Is. 41:9). Hence Isaiah emphasizes that Yahweh is the creator and the God of the whole planet, and His presence is literally planet-wide.

"Tormented" is literally 'to make to howl'. But this kind of abuse was only on their initial reception in Babylon. By Esther's time, the Jews were a respected and prosperous community. "They that rule over them make them to howl" (Is. 52:5 s.w.). But the redemption was to be through the suffering servant which Is. 52 goes on to speak of. But this didn't happen. The soft life in Babylon meant that the exiles no longer wanted to be redeemed from it. Just prior to the captivity, the people had been asked to howl in repentance (s.w. Jer. 4:8; 25:34; Ez. 21:12; 30:2). They hadn't, and now they were made to howl in Babylon; but the intention was that they would do so in repentance, which would end the captivity.

"Joy" is the word used in :6 of how Jerusalem is his greatest "joy". And yet as noted on :6 the joy of the Psalmist is then sarcastically stated to be the smashing out of the brains of the children of those who asked for these songs.

 

Psa 137:4

How could we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?-
The Babylonians taunted the captive Jews with requests to sing them the temple songs, "Yahweh's song" (Ps. 137:3,4).   This conscious mocking of Yahweh-worship shows how the Babylonians conceived of the conflict with Israel in terms of their gods being opposed to Yahweh, whom they claimed to have vanquished. Today's latter day Babylonians see their struggle within the similar construct of Mohammed against Israel's God, Yahweh.

The Jews seem to have believed that Yahweh was only active in the territory of Israel, and had failed to grasp the repeated teaching of the Psalms that Israel's God has universal power. So their refusal to sing Yahweh's song outside of the land reflected a serious lack of comprehension of His power and presence.

Again the arrogance and hypocrisy of the psalmist comes out in arguing that they cannot sing Yahweh's songs outside of Israel because they are in an unclean land. It was Judah's sins that had made them unclean, not their geographical location. Isaiah recognized he lived "in the midst of a people of unclean lips" (Is. 6:5), and God Himself spoke of them being "a polluted land". Haggai clearly states that the returned exiles were unclean and offered unclean offerings. So the psalmist is simply failing to accept the consequences of his own and his peoples' sinfulness.

Psa 137:5

If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill-
The truth was that the exiles had 'forgotten' Zion in that they had adopted the local gods. Hence Is. 65:11: "You who forsake Yahweh, who forget My holy mountain". The Psalmist insists that he has not forgotten Zion. The attitude of the exiles was that God had forgotten Zion, although He protests that despite the 70 year exile, He has not done so (Is. 49:14,15; Lam. 5:20 s.w.). So this protestation that they had not forgotten Zion could be taken as implying they were more passionate than God for the restoration. The reality was that the exiles forgot their God (s.w. Is. 51:13; Jer. 2:32; 13:25; 18:15; 23:27; Ez. 23:35; Hos. 2:13), but not the external trappings of their religion, epitomized in Zion. This difference between religion and true spirituality remains an ever abiding issue for us all.  

The skill of the right hand may be an allusion to the harp playing of :2. Hence GNB "May I never be able to play the harp again if I forget you, Jerusalem!". The connection is perhaps with how the other Jews had hung up their harps (:2). The psalmist however refuses to hang up his harp. He differs from the rest of God's people in refusing to hang up his harp, because he took that as a sign of forgetting Zion. The others didn't forget Zion, but hung up their harps. He says he will only hang up his harp if he forgets Zion. So despite his bitterness, he has hope for restoration and perhaps believes that in fact worship is still possible even without Zion. The take away is quite simply that even if the rest of God's people mope and give up, we are to stand with our back to the world and to the brotherhood if necessary, and retain our hope.

Psa 137:6

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don’t remember you; if I don’t prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy-
Following on from :5, the Psalmist is cursing himself with the inability to play the harp and also to sing- were he to forget Zion. To be struck with dumbness was a curse for disobedience, experienced on behalf of the exiles by Ezekiel. The implication would then be that the psalmist felt personally innocent and undeserving of any curse. And this was the problem with the exiles; we compare this attitude with that of Nehemiah and Daniel, who fully accepted their personal part in the guilt of God's people. But as noted on :5, the context may still be that of worship and singing in :2,3. Although the captives refused to perform their songs for their captors, the psalmist implies he will continue praising God with the songs of Zion privately. hence GNB "May I never be able to sing again if I do not remember you".

This Psalm may well have originated in something David wrote about Jerusalem, perhaps whilst in exile from her at the time of Absalom's rebellion. I noted on Ps. 15:1 that "Yahweh, who shall dwell in Your sanctuary? Who shall live on Your holy hill?" was written before David took the hill of Zion from the Jebusites. He felt they shouldn't be living there because of how they lived so immorally, and was eager to make it his own inheritance by conquest; and it seems from Ps. 16:5,6 that David considered Zion his personal inheritance where he was to live. He considered Zion his great joy (Ps. 137:6), the ultimately pleasant place (Ps. 48:2).

On one hand, the Psalmist is right to long for Jerusalem above all, seeing that many of his brethren were caught up in love for Babylon and chose to remain there even after Cyrus commanded and enabled them to return. But the Psalmist mentions another joy- the happiness of smashing the brains out of the little children of the Babylonians and Edomites (:9). Here we see spiritual schizophrenia. Rejoicing in both the right thing and in the wrong thing. The call of the Father and Son is to wholehearted devotion to Him. And yet we are surrounded by examples of people who on one hand have great devotion to Him and yet in other sectors of their lives are devoted to what is wrong and evil. And we all have that tendency. The thoughts of this anonymous author are recorded here for our learning.

Psa 137:7

Remember, Yahweh, against the children of Edom, the day of Jerusalem; who said, Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!-
"Remember" means to remember at the day of judgment in Neh. 6:14; 13:29. The Psalmist is playing the tape of the hard words that had been said to him whilst working in forced labour on an irrigation canal. But he also recites to himself the words of the Edomites, as they urged the Babylonian soldiers to remove even the foundation stones of the buildings in Jerusalem. Only the gift of a new spirit, a new heart, can remove this tendency to play the tape of others' hurtful words. And this psalmist demands an out of proportion punishment for these words.  Perhaps Boney M got it right when they add to this Psalm the exhortation: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my mouth be acceptable in Thy sight". Get a grip on our thinking and replace bitterness with spirituality.

On one hand, the Psalmist is obsessed with the words of the Edomites, urging the Babylonians to raze Jerusalem to tis foundations. And his desire to smash the brains out of their little children is a response that is not proportionate. And yet Obadiah 10-13 describes God's anger with Edom as being more because of their mental attitudes and sins of omission, which He describes as their "violence", rather than for what they actually did: "For the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame will cover you... In the day that you stood on the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his substance, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots for Jerusalem, even you were like one of them. But don’t look down on your brother in the day of his disaster, and don’t rejoice over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction. Don’t speak proudly in the day of distress. Don’t enter into the gate of My people in the day of their calamity. Don’t look down on their affliction in the day of their calamity".

"Raze it!" is literally to make naked, to denude. But this is the word used of how God would do this to His people, because they had made themselves naked to the nations around them and their gods, acting as a prostitute: "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will lay bare [s.w. "raze", to reveal, make naked, expose] their secret parts" (Is. 3:16,17). The Psalmist should have recognized that wrong as the Edomites were, this was all part of God's just judgment of His people's sin. But the psalmist fails to see that sin has consequence, that Divine judgment is legitimate, and focuses solely on the consequences as it this is somehow unspeakably unfair.

As a bitter man does, the psalmist's mind went from one hurt to another. He remembered how when Babylon had invaded, the Edomites hadn’t helped their Hebrew brethren (Obadiah 11,12). They had egged on the Babylonian soldiers in ripping down the temple, shouting [in a chorus?] “Raze it, raze it, even to its foundation”. The Edomite mercenaries were not a major part of the Babylonian confederacy which sacked Jerusalem, but they are singled out for particular condemnation because "Esau is Edom", they were Jacob's brother. God particularly judges unbrotherly behaviour; we have a special responsibility to our brethren in the body of God's people. Any nastiness against them is especially culpable.

Psa 137:8

Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, he will be happy who rewards you as you have served us-
The exiles were reminded that the Babylon where they lived had wasted God's people, and thus she was to be wasted (Ps. 137:3,8 AVmg.). But human beings are so fickle. Because life was easy there, the captives came to prefer Babylon to the distant Zion, and by the time of Esther they were a prosperous, comfortable community. And the majority therefore didn't return to the land and rebuild it even when given every encouragement by Cyrus.

They wept, initially, when they remembered Zion- and yet according to Ez. 8, back there in Zion there were awful abominations and idolatry being committed in the temple of Zion. Their weeping was mere nostalgia; their refusal to sing the temple songs was mere stubbornness, there was no genuine commitment to Yahweh's way. And it was because of this that God confirmed them in their desire to stay in Babylon. He had elsewhere predicted that He would stop them returning "to the land whereunto their soul longeth to return" (Jer. 22:27 RV). And He did this by confirming them in their desire to remain in Babylon. These prophecies of the destruction of Babylon therefore didn't come true as was potentially possible. Because Judah didn't want to judge Babylon. And so the language of Babylon's judgment is reapplied in Revelation to the destruction of latter day Babylon.

Psa 137:9

Happy shall he be, who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock-
The idea may be Happy / blessed is the one who... and the Psalmist has in view Yahweh. The construction is similar to Ps. 135:8,10 "The one who [Yahweh] struck the firstborn; the one who [Yahweh] struck the great nation"; and Ps. 136:23 "The one who [Yahweh] remembers us in our lowly state". Indeed God had said that He would punish Babylon and requite what she had done to Jerusalem (Is. 47:1-9; Jer. 51:24,56). Specifically there was the statement that Babylon would suffer "the loss of [her] children" (Is. 47:9). But the Psalmist takes these facts and goes on an immoral rampage of personal hate fantasy in response to words he had heard or which had been reported to him. God takes no joy / pleasure in the death of the wicked, and yet the Psalmist clearly does. He is some kind of a psycho. His psalm is included at the end of the songs of ascents to show the xenophobic mentality prevalent amongst the exiles. The prophecies of the restoration speak of the Gentiles returning with the exiles to Zion, along with their children and infants, to worship Yahweh. The fantasy of this Psalmist is that their little ones are brought to Zion and dashed to death against "the rock", a term used for Mount Zion, the temple mount. He is totally out of step with God's saving Spirit. He eagerly focuses not on the adult offenders and abusers, but upon their infant children. Whilst he proclaims a patriotic love of Zion above his chiefest joy. The Psalm isn't directed to God, it is the Psalmist's own thoughts, only engaging with God to ask Him to judge the Edomites who egged on the Babylonians. Instead of coming "with singing unto Zion" he has only bitter regret because he can't and won't stop the tape playing in his mind of the past words and actions of others; he was for ever re-enacting and re-experiencing the past rather than rejoicing in God's present grace and salvation. All this is so relevant to most humans alive today, for we all tend to do this, remembering and rehearsing over and over every detail of the act of betrayal, how the person was dressed, the smell in the kitchen as it happened, the hard words...

The Psalmist however has gone on to exaggerate what happened, calling the words 'torture', and his own integrity suffers. Thus he had been singing the "songs of Zion" in Babylon, the songs of ascents, but when asked to do so by his captors, hung up his harp and refused claiming he could not sing such songs in Babylon. His self-curse of not being able to pluck the harp nor sing any more if he forgets Zion implies he was doing those things and would continue... falsifying his claim that he wasn't permitted to sing such songs in a Gentile land. And likewise our own integrity becomes compromised, the envelope expands, we embroider the narrative of what happened, and our response becomes out of proportion [smashing infants' skulls against a rock in response to verbal abuse]. What should the psalmist have done? Recognize like other exiles that he was suffering for his own sins, and rejoicing in God's grace at having restored him.

The question is, 'Whose little ones? Those of Edom or Babylon?'. It could be argued that the Edomites were the daughter of Babylon. Or it could be, as discussed on :1, that the psalmist is so bitter that he refers back to those who mocked him when he was working by an irrigation canal, i.e. the Babylonians. 

"The rock" could refer to Zion. The fantasy is to take the "little ones" of those who mocked them, bring them to Zion, and dash them to death against the foundation stones of the temple. As discussed on :1, if this were written by one of the exiles who returned, we have an insight into their mindset. No surprises that those who returned were filled with xenophobia and anger, rather than a desire to establish a multi-ethnic kingdom of God based upon Zion. By contrast the returned exiles were supposed to be singing Ps. 126:3 "Yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad".

When we feel our enemies are unjust, we can:

1. Seek revenge. But this isn’t a response we can make, Biblically.

2. Deny the feelings of hurt and anger. And yet, they surface somehow. And we join the ranks of the millions of hurt people in this world, who ‘take it out’ in some way on others.

3. Or we can do as David seems to have done. Take these feelings, absolutely as they are, with no rough edges smoothed off them…to God Himself. Pour them all out in prayer and leave Him to resolve the matter. In passing, this fits in with the conclusions of modern psychiatry- that we can’t eliminate our feelings, so we must express them in an appropriate way.

This latter option is how I understand the imprecatory Psalms. Those outpourings of human emotion were read by God as prayers. The writer of Psalm 137, sitting angry and frustrated by a Babylonian riverside, with his harp hanging on a willow branch, being jeered (“tormented” Ps. 137:3 RVmg.)  by the victorious Babylonian soldiers who had led him away captive… he felt so angry with them. Especially when they tried to make him sing one of the temple songs (“sing us one of the songs of Zion”). And, as a bitter man does, his mind went from one hurt to another. He remembered how when Babylon had invaded, the Edomites hadn’t helped their Hebrew brethren (Obadiah 11,12). They had egged on the Babylonian soldiers in ripping down the temple, shouting [in a chorus?] “Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation”. And so in anger and bitterness this Jew prays with tears, as he remembered Zion, “O daughter of Babylon… happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock” (:8,9 RV). God read those angry words as a prayer, and in some sense they will have their fulfilment.  For these words are picked up in Rev. 18:8,21 and applied to what will finally happen to Babylon. Her spiritual children will be dashed against the rock of Christ, the stone of Daniel 2:44, at His return. He will dash in pieces the Babylon-led people that oppose Him.