Israel’s minstrels were silent in the land of exile, when they were tauntingly bidden to display their skill for the amusement of their captors (Psalm 137:1-3). How could they sing Jehovah’s songs in a heathen land? how forget Jerusalem (Psalm 137:4-6)? Perish the enemies that had wrought her ruin and rejoiced at her fall (Psalm 137:7-9)!

The tender pathos of the opening verses enlists our sympathy; the crash of bitter denunciation in the closing stanza shocks and repels. But implacable hatred of Zion’s foes was in those days the inevitable correlative to intense love for her. The new law, “Thou shalt love thine enemy,” had not yet taken the place of the old maxim, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.” The law of stern retribution for cruel wrong seems to the Psalmist only just, and the peculiarly barbarous form in which he expresses his desire for the extermination of the destroyer of his country is only such as was familiar to his age.

The Psalm is generally thought to have been written soon after the Return from Babylon in b.c. 537, while Babylon, though it had lost its independence, still enjoyed a large measure of prosperity under the mild rule of Cyrus. The past tenses of Psalm 137:1-3 seem to imply that the writer and his companions are no longer in exile, while from Psalm 137:7-9 it appears that the wrongs of Israel have not yet been fully avenged on Babylon.

A date before the close of the Exile is not indeed impossible. At first sight Psalm 137:4-6 read like the words of those who are still in exile; Psalm 137:7-9 seem to anticipate a judgement still wholly future; the tenses in Psalm 137:1-3 might be taken as perfects (‘have we sat down’ &c.), describing a state of things still existing; and the denunciation of Babylon in Jeremiah 51, which probably belongs to the closing years of the Exile (Driver, Lit. of O.T.6, p. 268), breathes a very similar spirit to that of the Psalm.

These reasons, however, are not conclusive. Psalm 137:4-6 can be understood as dramatically expressing the feelings of the exiles in the actual words which they might have used at the time; Babylon was not destroyed by Cyrus, and its capture must have seemed a very imperfect measure of retribution; there in Psalm 137:1; Psalm 137:3 points decidedly to Babylon from a distance; and a date immediately after the return from Babylon is the most probable. The first sight of the ruins of the city and Temple might well have moved the Psalmist to recall his faithfulness to Zion in the distant land of exile, and to give utterance to his longing for vengeance upon those who had wrought this havoc and rejoiced at the sight of it. The author may have been a Levite, who had taken part or looked forward to taking part in the Temple music, and returned in extreme old age to Jerusalem; one possibly of those whose regrets for past glories overwhelmed them at the laying of the foundation of the Temple (Ezra 3:12).

That the Psalm is, as Professor Cheyne thinks (Origin of the Psalter, p. 69 f.), “a dramatic lyric,” written in the time of Simon the Maccabee, four hundred years after the Return, is in the highest degree unlikely.

The title in the LXX, τῷ Δαυὶδ Ἱερεμίου or διὰ Ἱ. (‘Of David; Jeremiah’s, or ‘by Jeremiah’), appears to represent two views as to its origin. In style it may have been thought to resemble Davidic Psalms, and in tone the writings of Jeremiah; but as Jeremiah never was in Babylon the ascription of the Psalm to him is out of the question.

1. the rivers of Babylon] Not only the Euphrates and its tributaries, such as the Chebar (Ezekiel 1:1; Ezekiel 3:15), but the numerous canals with which the country was intersected. Babylonia was characteristically a land of streams, as Palestine was a land of hills; it was the feature of the country which would impress itself upon the mind of the exiles. Cp. Jeremiah 51:13. They may have resorted to the banks of the rivers and canals to mourn; partly for the sake of the shade of the trees which grew there, partly because such places were suitable to melancholy meditation.

It is hardly likely that there is any reference to places of prayer chosen near water for the sake of ceremonial lustrations (Acts 16:13).

sat down] As mourners. Cp. Isaiah 47:1; Isaiah 47:5.

Zion] The name is chosen specially to suggest the sacred memories of the city.

1–3. The silence of sacred song in the sorrow of exile.

2. Upon the willows in the midst thereof,

We hung out harps.

the willows] Cp. Isaiah 44:4. The tree meant, however, was probably not the weeping willow, but the populus Euphratica.

3. For there &c.] The reason why their harps were silent. It might have been expected that they would soothe their sorrow with plaintive music; but the heartless demand of their captors made it impossible.

asked of us songs] Lit. words of song.

they that wasted us] The exact meaning is doubtful. The A.V. marg. ‘Heb. laid us on heaps’ rests on an impossible derivation, and the R.V. marg. our tormentors on an improbable one. Perhaps with the change of a single letter shôlelçnu, ‘our spoilers,’should be read instead of the obscure tôlâlçnu.

Coverdale’s rendering in the P.B.V., and melody in our heaviness, comes from Luther, ‘und in unserm Heulen ein fröhlich Gesang.’

one of the songs of Zion] Or, some of the songs. As these songs are called in the next verse Jehovah’s songs, it is clear that it is not secular songs that are meant, but the sacred hymns of the Temple worship (2 Chronicles 29:27). To sing these for the amusement of their conquerors would have been the grossest profanation of all that they held most dear; an act comparable to Belshazzar’s use of the consecrated vessels at his feast (Daniel 5:2). Cp. Matthew 7:6.

4–6. The exiles indignantly repudiate the idea of doing what would be treason to the memories of Zion. The protest is dramatically expressed in the words which they would have used at the time.

5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem] To have consented would have seemed an act of unfaithfulness to Zion. Some of the exiles did forget the “holy mountain” (Isaiah 65:11). For the imprecation as a solemn asseveration cp. Job 31:21-22.

forget her cunning] So the aposiopesis is admirably completed in the Great Bible of 1540. Less forcibly the LXX and Jer. read the verb as a passive, ‘Let my right hand be forgotten,’ which is the rendering of Coverdale (1535), retained in the first edition of the Great Bible.

6. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,

If I remember thee not (R.V.).

Let all power of speech and song desert me. Cp. Job 29:10.

if I prefer not &c.] Lit. if I exalt not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy: i.e. if I do not regard J. as dearer to me than aught else.

7. Remember, Jehovah, against the children of Edom the day of Jerusalem] Remember and punish the conduct of the Edomites in the fatal day of Jerusalem’s fall. For this sense of ‘remember’ cp. Nehemiah 6:14; Nehemiah 13:29; and for ‘day’ cp. Obadiah 1:12; Psalm 37:13. The hostility of the Edomites to Israel was of long standing, and it was aggravated by the fact of their relationship through their descent from Esau and Jacob. They are repeatedly denounced for it by the prophets, and threatened with vengeance. See Amos 1:11; Obadiah 1:10 ff.; Joel 3:19; Jeremiah 49:7 ff.; Lamentations 4:21 f.; Ezekiel 25:12 ff; Ezekiel 35:2 ff.; Isaiah 34; Isaiah 63:1 ff. Rase it] Lit. lay (it) bare.

7–9. The Psalmist’s love for Jerusalem leads him to invoke vengeance on her enemies: upon Edom for the unbrotherly spite which rejoiced at her destruction; upon Babylon, for having accomplished that destruction

8. O daughter of Babylon] The city of Babylon personified.

who art to be destroyed] The most obvious translation is that of R.V. marg., that art laid waste. So Aq. and Jerome, vastata. But the following clauses apparently imply that Babylon has not been destroyed, and the participle may be ‘prophetic,’ that art doomed to be laid waste[84]. Delitzsch quotes examples of a similar idiom in Arabic. ‘The stricken one,’=‘one who is doomed to be stricken.’ So Theodotion, ἡ διαρπασθησομένη. Some of the Ancient Versions, however (Symm., Syr., Targ.), render thou waster, a rendering which only requires a slight change of the text, and is adopted by many critics.

[84] Coverdale and the Great Bible of 1539 have, thou shalt come to misery thy self, from Zürich Bible, und du Babel, wirst auch ellend werden. The P.B.V. wasted with misery, from the Great Bible of 1540, may have been suggested by Münster’s devastata and the Vulg. misera.

9. The barbarous customs of Oriental warfare spared neither women nor children in a war of extermination. Cp. Isaiah 13:16; Hosea 10:14; Hosea 13:16; Nahum 3:10; 2 Kings 8:12; Hom. Il. xxii. 63. The stern law of retaliation demanded that Babylon should be treated as she had treated Jerusalem. Cp. Isaiah 47:1-9; Jeremiah 51:24; Jeremiah 51:56.

the stones] The rock or crag.