Biblion Bible Commentary
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By the Rivers of Babylon
Psalms 137:1-9
1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion. · WEB
Musicians who will not perform on request, and the most terrible sentence in the Psalter.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion Psalms 137:1.
The only psalm that can be dated to the hour. It is written by someone who was in Babylon , beside the irrigation canals, and the memory is fresh enough to still hurt.
On the willows in that land, we hung up our harps Psalms 137:2.
The instruments are put away rather than broken. They are temple musicians, still carrying the tools of a trade there is no longer any occasion for.
For there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. Those who tormented us demanded songs of joy: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" Psalms 137:3.
The specific cruelty of the psalm. Not violence — a request for entertainment. Their captors want to hear the famous music of the country they have just destroyed, and the psalm calls the request torment.
How can we sing Yahweh's song in a foreign land? Psalms 137:4.
The refusal, and it is not sulking. These songs were liturgy, sung in a building that no longer stood, and performing them as after-dinner music for the men who pulled it down would have emptied them.
If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth Psalms 137:5–6.
A musician's oath, sworn on the two things he needs — the playing hand and the singing tongue.
Remember, Yahweh, against the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who said, "Raze it!" Psalms 137:7.
Edom's crime was cheering. Descendants of Esau, standing outside the city of their relatives, calling for it to be taken down to the foundations.
Happy shall he be, who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock Psalms 137:9.
The most terrible sentence in Scripture, and it should not be explained away. Three things can be said and none of them makes it comfortable.
It describes what the Babylonians had done. This was standard practice in the sack of a city, and the people writing had watched it — the psalm asks for nothing that was not done to their own children first.
It is a prayer, not a plan. Nobody in this psalm is going anywhere near a Babylonian child; they are sitting by a canal with their instruments in a tree.
And it is recorded rather than approved. Scripture preserves what the exiles actually said, at the worst moment of their history, without editing it into something more presentable — and a book that prints this is not flattering the people it is about.
held with reason What this mark means