Psalm 137

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' " (Psalm 137:1-3).

It starts out where we are—we are in exile. Waiting. Mourning. But it raises our eyes to something above and beyond us, a grief beyond our individual grief. 

The psalm wrestles with the interaction of exiles in an alien land. Is that not what we are? And we are overwhelmed with the grief of that sometimes. This is not our home, and the signs are everywhere: Cancer. Death. I write this as many of my friends are fighting cancer, two dear church members passed away over the past two days, and another is fighting darkness for light. There was just a school shooting in Connecticut. Typhoon in the Philippines. Crisis in Syria. Millions of slaves worldwide. Some may have made this their home; but we in Christ know we are just in exile. Our suffering, the suffering of others, persecution, and the general groaning of the creation remind us of that.

 

"How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?" (Ps. 137:1-4)

Perhaps we try to sing and our own suffering seems to mock us. Perhaps we are tempted to hang up our harps, to cease singing. Or perhaps we feel like we are those harps--the Lord has hung us up, and we are waiting... suspended... our fate unknown, uncertain (1). How can we sing at all? How can we sing of the Lord in the face of suffering and injustice? How can we sing while we are in a strange land?

But our suffering, individual and corporate, speaks of something larger. We tend to read this psalm through me-centered or man-centered eyes. But for the original Jews, to be in exile, to see Jerusalem and Israel destroyed, to see the pagan nations triumphing, raised theodicy questions. Who was Yahweh really? What was religion really? Was Yahweh truly a covenantal God, was he truly powerful and good? Was there still hope for them or had they blown it entirely? Could they still know him outside of the temple? Were the Babylonian gods more powerful? Against-God-forces were seemingly in control. Where was God's reign? Our suffering and the groaning of the world, the seeming power of the world, can raise similar questions as we sit by our own rivers.

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy" (Ps. 137:5-6).

Verses 5-6 answer the question--how can we sing? We sing in remembrance of God's reign. We will not forget. We will not get succumbed in the empty pleasures of life. We will not numb ourselves and cease to hope. If so, we will not be able to sing or play at all--our right hands will forget how to play the harp, the tongue will not be able to speak. We remember our highest joy is not here; it is in God's reign. We move our eyes from our situation, from this world (v. 1-4), and begin to self-talk, to remind ourselves. We remind ourselves of who we are to Christ. We remind ourselves of him. For us after Christ, we have a more solid hope to remind ourselves of. We know God reigns in Christ. We will not forget that and the hope it gives while we wait in exile, suspended like harps. We will continue to sing. We place our entire joy in him and his reign.

"Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. 'Tear it down,' they cried, 'tear it down to its foundations!" O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us--he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Ps. 137:7-9).

We turn from our circumstances, to talking to ourselves, and now we call upon God. We remember; we ask God to remember. Our remembering causes us to invoke God. The Israelites did not stuff their pain; they cried out for what they truly longed for, justice. So, too, we pray for justice--which comes with the reign of God. "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne" (Ps. 97:2). We pray for the down throw of our enemies--be it cancer, death, sin, Satan, human traffickers, persecutors, those opposed to the kingdom of God. We pray for his glory, that he is recognized as God above Gods. This justice can come through the salvation of our human enemies--their recognizing that their due punishment is paid in the death of Christ. God's justice has been poured out, on his Son. Yet if they refuse it, they will stand and face his judgment when he comes in glory; and he will receive glory. So we ultimately leave it in God's hands, trusting.

“Psalm 137 is not the song of people who have the power to effect a violent change in their situation of suffering, nor is it the battle cry of terrorists. Instead, it is an attempt to cling to one’s historical identity even when everything is against it. Still more, it is an attempt, in the face of the most profound humiliation and helplessness, to suppress the primitive human lust for violence in one’s own heart, by surrendering everything to God—a God whose word of judgment is presumed to be so universally just that even those who pray the psalm submit themselves to it." (2)

Wherever we are, in waiting or suffering, or in joy and favor, may we not close our hearts to the grief of death and pain, ours or others. It was the tormenting of the oppressors that caused the exiled Israelites to remember Zion and sing in defiance. May our suffering, the groaning of this world, cause us to look past our circumstances, remind ourselves of his reign, can cause us to call upon him on our knees and in song for his kingdom to come. May we always turn to God and ask for what we truly long for—no more death, pain, grief, sorrows.

NOTES
(1) “Hanging up their lyres”, the verb could mean “a suspended judgment, a hanging in the balance. This may foreshadow actual death… a state of uncertainty about one’s fate.... While the sentiments of v. 1 would seem to indicate that the exiles saw their fate as sealed… the continuation of the psalm would support the idea of indefinite suspension awaiting a divine verdict” (George Savran, “’How Can we Sing a Song of the Lord?’ The Strategy of Lament in Psalm 137,” ZAW 112: 43-58, Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 46)
(2) Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance,? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath (Nashville, TN: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).