Psalms 137

1. By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion.2 Upon the willows in the midst thereof We hanged up our harps.3 For there they that led us captive required of us songs, And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.4 How shall we sing the LORD’s song In a strange land ?5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget her cunning.6 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,

If I remember thee not ; If I prefer not Jerusalem Above my chief joy.

7. Remember, O LORD, against the children of Edom The day of Jerusalem ; Who said, Rase it, rase it, Even to the foundation thereof.8 O daughter of Babylon, that art to be de- stroyed ; Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee As thou hast served us.9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.

AFTER the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving we have a subdued and plaintive melody relating to the time when Zion lay in ruins, and the cheerful songs of the Levite choir were hushed. It is the reminiscence of one who had recently returned from the captivity, recalling the taunts of the oppressor. It is beautiful in expression, and although tender and elegiac, especially at the opening, is spirited and pictorial, and becomes at last almost terrible. De Witt.

The one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm for tenderness and poetic beauty is hardly excelled by any composition in the entire collection. The reader is introduced at once into the midst of the sad scenes of the exile, and can almost look upon the neglected harp and hear the wailing lamentations. The Psalm was evidently composed subsequently to the return of the Jews from Babylon, yet not long after that event. It is not to be regarded simply as an expression of the feelings of which any captive Jew, endued with quick sensibilities, might be conscious, or as an outburst of patriotism ; it is a record of the fervent desires of the poor exiles that they might see the city of their solemnities again, and join in the worship which had once been paid to their fathers’ God. They would rather be door-keepers in their national house of prayer than live amid all the sensual delights of Babylon. The Psalm is naturally divided into three strophes. Vs. 1-3 express the sorrow of the exiles in their remembrance of Zion. It would be doing violence to their most sacred feelings to comply with the demand of their proud oppressors to sing to them the songs of Zion. Vs. 4-6 give utterance to the passionate determination of the exiles never to profane the Lord’s songs by signing them in a foreign land, and never to forget their beloved city. Vs. 7-9 invoke destruction upon the Edomites for their cruel conduct at the time Jerusalem was destroyed, and also upon the Babylonians for their oppressive acts. The destruction of the children of the Babylonians is a just recompense for their cruelties toward the Jews. He who finds fault with the spirit of these verses, and denounces it as a relic of a barbarous age, has very inadequate or erroneous views both of the principles of the Divine government and of the deeper necessities of his own moral nature. When outrageous cruelty or wickedness of any kind meets with retribution, we feel that it is condign, just, deserved, and this feeling is consistent with the tenderest compassion. B. B. Edwards.

This is the most direct and striking reminiscence of the Babylonish Exile in the whole collection, and could scarcely have been written but by one who had partaken of its trials. A.—The writer begins by telling in language of pathetic beauty the tale of his captivity. He draws first the picture of the land—so unlike his own mountain land—the broad plain watered by the Euphrates and intersected by its canals, their banks fringed with willows, with no purple peak, no deep, cool glen to break the vast, weary, monotonous expanse; and then he draws the figure of the captives in their deep despondency, a despondency so deep that it could find no solace even in those sacred melodies which were dear to them as life—“As for our harps, we hanged them up on the willows by the water-side.” Next, his verse tells of the mocking taunt of their captors, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion;” and the half-sad, half-proud answer of the heart, strong in its faith and unconquerable in its patriotism, “How shall we sing Jehovah’s song in a strange land?” It were a profanation, it were a treachery. Sooner let the tongue fail to sing than sing to make the heathen mirth; sooner let the hand lose her cunning than tune the harp to please the stranger.

No wonder that then, brooding over the memory of the past, brooding over his wrongs, and seeing around him in blackened ruins and wasted fields the footsteps of the invader, the poet should utter his wrath. No wonder that the Psalm concludes with that fierce outburst of natural resentment, a resentment which borrows almost a grandeur from the religious fervor, the devoted patriotism, whence it springs. Terrible have been the wrongs of Jerusalem; let the revenge be terrible. Woe to those who in the day of her fall took part with her enemies and rejoiced in her overthrow, when they ought rather to have come to her aid! Woe to the proud oppressors who have so long held her children captive, and made their hearts bitter with insult and wrong! P.—We note in the closing verses a loftier than poetic inspiration. The pen, and harp, and voice that swept on in these stirring measures were those of a prophet. What stands before his illuminated vision is not a personified principle, incarnations wrought by poetic fancy, to be dissipated presently into thin air. They are indeed persons, yet not as known individuals of our race, each standing for himself, against whom for personal wrong his darker human passions are roused; but impersonations, standing for men always and everywhere, who crush innocent lives under their iron heel, who know neither pity nor kindness, justice nor truth, but with determined will identify themselves with evil of devilish stamp, hating men and defying God. It is no base human passion, but impassioned prophecy, in the name of Him to whom vengeance belongs, that calls down upon them a doom from which, if they repent not, there is no escape. And with whatever sadness, yet with firmness unflinching, let all people that are loyal to God pronounce their Amen! De Witt.

1. By the rivers. Euphrates, Tigris, Chaboras, and the canals which intersected the country. The exiles would naturally resort to the banks of the streams as shady, cool and retired spots, where they could indulge in their sorrowful remembrances. The prophets of the exile saw their visions by the river (Ezek. 1:1; Dan. 8:2). Bib. Saera.

Nothing could present a more striking contrast to their native country than the region into which the Hebrews were transplanted. Instead of their irregular and picturesque mountain city, crowning its unequal heights, and looking down into its deep and precipitous ravines, through one of which a scanty stream wound along, they entered the vast, square, and level city of Babylon, occupying both sides of the broad Euphrates; while all around spread immense plains, which were intersected by long, straight canals, bordered by rows of willows. How unlike their national temple—a small but highly finished and richly adorned fabric, standing in the midst of its courts on the brow of a lofty precipice—the colossal temple of the Chaldean Bel, rising from the plain, with its eight stupendous stories or towers, one above the other, to the perpendicular height of a furlong! The palace of the Babylonian kings was more than twice the size of their whole city; it covered eight miles, with its hanging gardens built on arched terraces, each rising above the other, and rich in all the luxuriance of artificial cultivation. How different from the sunny cliffs of their own land, where the olive and the vine grew spontaneously, and the cool, shady, and secluded valleys, where they could always find shelter from the heat of the burning noon! No wonder then that, in the pathetic words of their own hymn, “by the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept, when they remembered Zion.” Of their general treatment as captives we know little. The Psalm seems to intimate that the Babylonians had taste enough to appreciate the poetical and musical talent of the exiles, and that they were summoned occasionally to amuse the banquets of their masters, though it was much against their will that they sang the songs of Zion in a strange land. In general it seems that the Jewish exiles were allowed to dwell together in considerable bodies. They were colonists rather than captives, and became by degrees possessed of considerable property. They had taken the advice of the Prophet Jeremiah

(who gave them no hopes of speedy return to their homes); they had built houses, planted gardens, married and brought up children, submitted themselves as peaceful subjects to the local authorities—all which implies a certain freedom, a certain degree of prosperity and comfort. They had free enjoyment of their religion, such at least as adhered faithfully to their belief in Jehovah. We hear of no special and general religious persecution. Milman.

4. How shall we sing the song of Jehovah on a foreign soil?** These are the words with which the invitation was or might have been rejected at the time. The question implies a moral impossibility. The idea is not that the Psalms themselves would be profaned by being sung there, but that the expression of religious joy would be misplaced and incongruous, implying an oblivion of the sanctuary and its forfeited advantages. A.—Why could they not sing? In most touching words they answer, “How shall we sing the songs of our Jehovah in a strange land?” Every strain would seem in its echo to mock our grief, telling us that He is our faithful God no longer! Ah! can we forget Jerusalem? To sing in tones of mirth as they demand would imply it. C.

5. Let my right hand forget her cunning.** There is a striking and appropriate point in this, which has been overlooked. It is that, as it is customary for people in the East to swear by their professions, so one who has no profession—who is poor and destitute, and has nothing of recognized value in the world—swears by his right hand, which is his sole stake in society, and by the “cunning” of which he earns his daily bread. Modern translators substitute “skill;” but perhaps a term still more general would be better, such as, “May my right hand lose its power.” Kitto.

5,6. It is hard for us to imagine how much the ancient Jews loved their native land. There the ancestral recollections were such as no other nation has ever enjoyed. The founder of the race was the father of the faithful, the friend of God, with whom angels watched in company, and his great-grandson was the prime-minister of Egypt, the saviour alike of his own race and of his adopted country, and whose bones now reposed in the Promised Land, in the field which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. The meek law-giver, too, what reminiscences clustered around his name, whom the Lord knew face to face, who was almost permitted to gaze upon the splendors of the Godhead itself! A series of wondrous miracles had been interwoven into the national history and into the songs of the temple. In the lapse of ages, these hallowed remembrances, these dear and cherished monuments, multiplied on every side, till the very soil became sacred. On this mountain God appeared; under this oak He stood visible; here at this fountain angels talked. In that spot fire descended from heaven. In that valley an army perished when the seals of pestilence were unloosed. Jerusalem, moreover, was the centre and substance of all which was holy and venerable, beautiful for situation, the city of the great king; the temple of burnished gold, crowning its highest summit, no unapt emblem of that new Jerusalem which John saw in apocalyptic vision. How could the pious Jew bear to be exiled from such a country? B. B. Edwards.

Under the reign of King David’s “Greater Son” it is our privilege to live. We have the spiritual church of the Messiah, far more glorious than its ancient type of Zion. Would that our Ark of the Covenant might be as vividly present with us and as personally dear to us as was the golden ark to God’s true people of old, in the tabernacle on Mount Zion and the temple on Mount Moriah! If the ancient Jew “preferred Jerusalem above his chief joy,” shall we not cherish such a devotion to the Church of Christ as shall continually prompt the protestation—

“For her my tears shall fall, For her my prayers ascend, To her my cares and toils be given”? —N. C. Burt.

7-9. The Psalmist prays for vengeance upon Edom and Babylon. How shamefully the Edomites, that brother-people related to Israel by descent and yet pre-eminently hostile to it, behaved at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans as their malicious, rapacious, and barbarous helpers, we see from the prediction of Obadiah, which Jeremiah has taken up again into his prophecies. From the false brethren the imprecation turns to Babylon, the city of the world-kingdom. D.

7. The “day of Jerusalem” was that memorable one when the walls fell, and her enemies rushed in to sack, burn, and destroy. Then the children of Edom, their national cousins, were specially spiteful, revengeful. Wisely, prudentially, they had a common interest with Judah in repelling this Chaldean invasion and in driving this conquering horde back from Western Asia to their home on the Euphrates; but their old antipathy against the Hebrew race blazed forth, an outrage on humanity and a rank offence against the God of heaven! As said here, they shouted, Raze, raze the city to its very foundations; leave not one stone upon another! The Prophet Obadiah (vs. 10-15) charges upon them that they stood on the enemy’s side; looked on joyfully, and spake proudly in the day of their distress; joined in the pillage; intercepted the fugitives and turned them back upon the sword of the conquerors. Amos (1 : 11) gave the reasons for the ruin of Edom, saying: “Because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever.” Was there not a natural fitness in the prayer that God would “remember these children of Edom”? C.

8. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed. In the beginning of the fifth year of Darius happened the revolt of the Babylonians, and he besieged the city with all his forces. As soon as the Babylonians saw themselves begirt by such an army as they could not cope with in the field, they turned their thoughts wholly to the supporting of themselves in the siege; in order where to they took a resolution, the most desperate and barbarous that ever any nation practised; for to make their provisions last the longer, they agreed to cut off all unnecessary mouths among them, and therefore drawing together all the women and children, they strangled them all, whether wives, sisters, daughters, or young children useless for the wars, excepting only that every man was allowed to save one of his wives, which he best loved, and a maid-servant to do the work of the house. Prideaux.

9. The young children are to be dashed in pieces, in order that a new generation may not restore the world-empire that has been cast down. It is zeal for God that puts such words into the poet’s mouth; but they do not suit the mouth of the New Testament Church. In Old Testament times the Church had still the form of a nation, and the longing for a revelation of the Divine righteousness clothed itself accordingly in a martial form. D.—A deeper view of the case will suggest that this idea of retribution, even in its most specific form, was not original with these captives. They must have known the “burden on Babylon” as given by Isaiah (13 : 16, 18). “The children shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes; they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.” Also the words of Jeremiah, sent expressly to them during their captivity: “Take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do unto her. Recompense her according to her works; according to all that she hath done, do unto her” (Jer. 50 : 15, 29). These and other similar prophecies must have taught them unmistakably God’s purpose of retribution upon both Babylon and Edom, and, in fact, must have suggested to them the very ideas which seem to our view most exceptionable. C.

8, 9. Happy. In this place alone the English Bible translates ‘ashrê, happy, as of personal enjoyment, a meaning it never has. It expresses here emphatic approval of divinely ordered retribution. It would apply to a tender-hearted judge, as once seen by the writer, with streaming eyes pronouncing the death penalty on one guilty of brutal murder. De Witt.

According to Scripture, evil, in the long course of its development and reproduction, concentrates itself in successive principles, persons, systems, nations; in Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his Lord; in the Jews, who rejected the flower and crown of all their history; in that ordered system of error and persecution, be it what it may, which is called Babylon. No passage in the Psalms has given more offence than that which comes at the close of the tender Super flumina. But for the attentive student, the doom of Babylon hangs in the air of prophecy. We close the Psalter for a time; and after many days, as we draw near to the end of the whole volume of Revelation, we are startled by a new echo of the words of the old one hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm—“Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen. Reward her even as she rewarded you; and double unto her double, according to her works.” Bishop Alexander.

The writer of the Psalm pronounces the Divine judgment against Babylon, the enemy and oppressor of God’s people. But the language is the pictorial, poetic language which that age used, and which alone was then intelligible. In war peoples were exterminated, and even little children were dashed to pieces and destroyed. Of course we are to deny, as God denies, approval to such conduct. “How then can the prophet-Psalmist call men who do such things blessed”? This is our answer. Blessed are they who fulfil the command of God, even in the destruction of those whom He has appointed to destruction. Blessed are they, even though they live in an age of darkness and cruelty, even though their way of doing what God commands be coarse and revolting to the Christian conscience of men to-day. We may be sure it is and ever was more coarse and revolting to God. Herrick.

The Jews were punished for their apostasy by being carried as captives to Babylon, their city and temple being destroyed by fire. A captivity of seventy years cured them of their propensity to idolatry, and caused them to long for the land and the worship of their fathers. Babylon, in turn, was overthrown for her pride, her idolatry, her luxury, and her cruelty. These last two verses of the Psalm shock our Christian sensibilities; yet, when interpreted according to the customs of ancient warfare, they simply express the desire of victory; for, “according to the barbarous usage of those days, the slaughter of infants belonged to the practice of war, when a fortress had been carried by storm. At a much later period, we find that the barbarity of the Greeks was so great that during an insurrection the mob had the children of the rich trampled to death by oxen; and, when the aristocracy had regained their power, they ordered their enemies, along with their wives and children, to be cast into the flames.” Such imprecations in the Psalms should not be judged by that more merciful feeling which Christianity has infused into the code of war: neither should they be taken for the mere cry of personal or national revenge. The Jews had so far identified their capital and kingdom with the kingdom of God upon earth, that an assault upon these was the double crime of sacrilege and rebellion against Jehovah; and hence their patriotism was intensified by their religious faith. This comes out very beautifully and tenderly in the preceding verses of the Psalm. The Jews were then in a land of great beauty and fertility; and, though they were captives, the way to wealth and preferment was open before them, if they should choose to adopt the country and its customs. But they clung to the memory of their beloved Zion. Though Jerusalem had been burned, and its walls razed to their foundations, it was yet to them the most precious spot of earth. No beauty of scenery, no diversion of society, no bribe of pleasure, could cause them to forget the sorrows of the

Lord’s house. So should we set the kingdom of God above all our joys, and account whatever evil befalls that kingdom a personal sorrow and disaster. J. P. T.

The only questions that remain with reference to the Imprecatory Psalms are such as these: What are they to us? Can we use them in our worship without being faithless to the Divine spirit of love that irradiates the Gospel and is sometime to irradiate the world? Am I to unite with the great congregation in uttering these terrible sentences, and what is their meaning as issuing from my lips? Surely we are to use them; but whatever else they mean for us, they cannot mean that we are thus to express our hatred to the enemies of David, or of some unknown writer of sacred song, and to unite with him in praying for their extermination. He and they have passed from the earth long ago, and everything that relates to them is irreversibly settled. They exist here only in the images they suggest to the thoughts of men as shades of the past. Nor does our use of them mean that we are thus to denounce our own enemies. We have no such enemies as these, and they are never to be classed with the facts of our personal life. They stand before us as vivid representations of the hostility to God that is the black curse of the world, and which we, as born of God, must hate and denounce forever. The more I love God, and love my fellow-men in their actual personality, each and all, the more heartily and bitterly I shall detest and curse the principle of evil, incarnate or unincarnate, that, if it could, would blot out the light of the world, and leave us all in the blackness of darkness forever. This is the solution of our paradox. Love, because it is love, must hate evil. And God, because He is love, hates it. And we, if we have the love of God and man in our hearts, always and everywhere must hate it. De Witt.