Psalm 137:1–6

Context

Psalm 137 belongs to Book Five of the Psalms (Psalms 107–150) and has no superscription. In the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate it is numbered Psalm 136. In 587 or 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. The psalm voices the lament of the Judeans who were afterward carried into captivity.

In verses 1–4, "we" sit by the rivers of Babylon and weep as they remember Zion. When their captors ask them to "sing us one of the songs of Zion," they hang their harps (small stringed instruments) upon the willows and refuse to sing. In verses 5–6 the voice shifts from "we" to "I." The speaker swears an oath against himself: if he forgets Jerusalem, may his right hand "forget her cunning" and his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth. Because the oath is staked on the hand that plays the harp and the tongue that sings, it connects back to the earlier refusal to sing. The verses that follow, 7–9, call for retribution against Edom and Babylon. On the basis of retrospective language such as "we wept," some scholars hold that the psalm was composed after the return from exile.

Interpretation

• Historical and communal reading: The psalm is read as the song of a community that had lost its nation and its temple and was striving to preserve its religious identity in a foreign land. This reading takes the request for a song as mockery and understands the refusal as an unwillingness to turn sacred song into a spectacle.
• Reading focused on worship: The question "How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?" is read as asking whether worship is possible without the temple. Some connect this with the view that a religious life centered on the Word and prayer developed during the exile.
• Spiritual reading in church tradition: In his expositions of the Psalms, Augustine interpreted Babylon and Jerusalem as the city of this world and the City of God, and regarded believers as pilgrims on earth. The later preaching tradition widely continued to read the psalm as a song of longing for the heavenly homeland.

Debates and Issues

• Translation: In the Hebrew text of verse 5, the verb "forget" has no object. Korean Bible translations, namely the Korean Revised Version (Gaeyeok Hangeul) and the New Korean Revised Version (Gaeyeok Gaejeong), therefore supply the object "its skill," much as the KJV supplies "her cunning." Some scholars instead read the verb as a different, similar-looking verb, yielding "let my right hand wither," and some English translations, such as the NRSV, follow this reading.
• Quotation out of context: Critics have observed that verses 1–6 are often quoted as a tender song of longing, while verses 7–9 of the same psalm, especially the curse in verse 9, are seldom addressed. Psalms containing curses against enemies are commonly called imprecatory psalms, and views differ on how to read them. Some regard them as honest prayers of anguish that leave vengeance to God; others, contrasting them with the New Testament teaching to love one's enemies, see them as reflecting the limitations of the Old Testament era.
• Tension with Jeremiah's letter: Jeremiah 29:4–14 urges the exiles to settle in Babylon and to seek the peace of that city. Some interpreters read the two passages together, seeking a way to hold both to an identity that does not forget home and to a responsibility toward the place where one now lives.

Related Passages

• Psalm 122:1
• Jeremiah 29:4–14
• Lamentations 3:19–26
• Hebrews 11:13–16
• Revelation 18:20–21