What does Psalm 137 mean?

What does “By the rivers of Babylon” mean?

In Psalm 137:1, “By the rivers of Babylon” names Babylon’s irrigation canals, where the exiles from Judah sat down and wept. Jerusalem had been destroyed in 587 BCE, and the psalm speaks out of the trauma of the exile that followed. Zion, the city the exiles remembered, probably means Jerusalem and its temple.¹

Conquering kings took musicians from the peoples they conquered. The Assyrian king Sennacherib left his own account of his siege of Jerusalem. In it, King Hezekiah of Judah sends him male and female musicians as tribute. Daniel Simango suggests the psalmist shared a fate like theirs, a temple musician carried off to entertain.¹

In verse 2, hanging up the harps means the musicians put their instruments away and stopped playing. The musicians stand for the whole community in exile. The request in verse 3, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” was mockery. The songs of Zion praised God’s protection of a city that Babylon had just destroyed.¹ Y. Steenkamp reads the demand as an attempt to shame the captives and their God still further.³

A Jewish commentary on the Psalms, Midrash Tehillim, said the exiles wept because the water of the Euphrates poisoned them and their children. In the Parma Psalter of about 1280, two weeping figures draw water from the river, framed by willow leaves hung with lyres.²

What does “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land” mean?

In Psalm 137:4, which reads “How can we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?” on this page, the exiles refuse to perform for their captors’ amusement. Daniel Simango reports that most scholars divide the psalm into three stanzas: verses 1 to 4, 5 to 6 and 7 to 9. The question in verse 4 closes the first of them, the only part in which the exiles speak as “we”.¹

The Targum of Psalms is an Aramaic version of about the sixth century CE. The Targum tells of Levites, the temple’s singers, who maimed their own hands rather than sing for their captors.²

William Whittingham composed his version of the psalm in Geneva, in exile during the reign of Queen Mary I of England. Miles Coverdale made his English psalter in the 1530s, with the threat of exile never far away. Coverdale’s psalter is still used in the Book of Common Prayer. The Melodians made verse 1 a reggae song in 1969, drawing on the Rastafarian use of the psalm.²

What does “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem” mean?

In Psalm 137:5, which reads “If I forget you, Jerusalem” on this page, the speaker takes an oath and calls a curse on himself. The curse asks for a right hand that cannot play and a tongue that cannot sing.¹ The self-curse names the two things a musician needs, the hand and the tongue.³ Daniel Simango reads love of Zion, Jerusalem and its temple, as inseparable from love of God.¹

The speaker changes from “we” in verses 1 to 4 to “I” in verses 5 and 6. In verse 7 the speaker turns to address God.¹ Susan Gillingham reads the whole psalm as a drama in three parts. The call to remember in verses 1, 6 and 7 holds the parts together.²

Jewish custom built on the oath. Midrash Tehillim is a Jewish commentary on the Psalms. The commentary taught that a man plastering his house must leave a small patch bare in memory of Jerusalem. A bridegroom recites verse 6 at his wedding with ashes on his head. The same verse is part of a grace after meals. Marc Chagall’s mosaic of verses 1 and 5 in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is six meters high.²

What does Psalm 137:9 mean?

In Psalm 137:9, the wish that someone “dashes your little ones against the rock” asks that Babylon suffer what it did to Judah. Y. Steenkamp reads the wish as the principle of an eye for an eye. Verse 9 uses the ordinary language of war in its time.³

Victorious armies in the ancient Near East commonly killed the children of the conquered. The Babylonians had probably done so in Jerusalem.¹ Killing children was often a military policy meant to wipe out a whole nation. Steenkamp also reports a reading in which infant princes stood for a dynasty’s power, so their death meant the dynasty’s end.³

Edom is named in verse 7 because the Edomites joined in the plunder after Babylon took Jerusalem in 587 BCE.¹ Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, used Edomite mercenaries.³ The psalm names Babylon at its start and at its end, with the roles reversed. Babylon is first the captor, and at the last the “Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction”.¹ The word “happy” in verses 8 and 9 borrows a blessing form and turns it into a curse.³ Isaiah 13:16 promises Babylon the same fate. Blessing O. Boloje reads the killing of children as war on the next generation, aimed at wiping a people out.⁴

The prayer leaves the vengeance to God, and the psalmist does not take it himself. Daniel Simango suggests verse 9 may be hyperbole, a picture of the cruelty of ancient warfare. Christian songs and services normally leave out the last verses.¹

Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, read the little ones as sins to be dashed against the Rock, which is Christ. Augustine preached on the psalm in Carthage on 31 December 412.²

When was Psalm 137 written?

Psalm 137 was probably composed in the early years after the return from exile, between about 537 and 515 BCE.¹ Y. Steenkamp also finds the early years of the return the most likely time.³ The first deportation to Babylon came in 597 BCE. Jerusalem’s final destruction and exile came in 587 BCE. Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BCE. The exiles’ return began in 538 BCE. Daniel Simango’s case includes the word “there” in verses 1 and 3, which looks back on Babylon from somewhere else.¹ Susan Gillingham points to a time after 538 BCE: the psalm prays for Babylon’s fall but never for Jerusalem’s rebuilding.²

Not everyone agrees. An earlier dating placed the psalm before 538 BCE, because Babylon still stands in it. Steenkamp argues that this earlier dating rests on a change to the text that the manuscripts do not support.³

The author is unknown by name. Daniel Simango suggests a member of the Levitical guilds, the temple’s musicians.¹ The rabbis credited the psalm to Levitical singers, back home after 538 BCE. Later Greek versions sometimes credited it to Jeremiah.²

Psalm 137 is a communal lament that ends in a curse on Israel’s enemies.¹ Steenkamp describes the psalm as a mixed form that moves from lament to self-curse to curse.³ Psalm 137 sits in Book 5 of the Psalms. There, Psalms 135 to 137 form a group after the Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 134.¹