Psalms 137:4

How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? HOW SHALL WE SING THE LORD'S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND? To do so would be virtually to renounce Zion, our native city and spiritual home. How can we sang the joyful song of the Lord in the land of the stranger, where we ought rather to weep?...

4._How shall we sing, etc_. The Psalmist puts a lofty and magnanimous answer into the mouth of the Lord’s people to their insolent reproach, which is this, that they abstained from their songs, as from their legal sacrifices, because the land where they now were was polluted. The Chaldeans thought the Jews were bound down permanently to this place of their exile; the Psalmist, when he calls it _a foreign land, _suggests that it was but the place of their temporary stay. But the main idea is, that Chaldea was not worthy of the honor of having God’s praises sung in it. No doubt the children of God wherever they have lived have always been strangers and foreigners in the world, but the land of Canaan was the sacred rest provided for them, and the Psalmist well describes them as being foreigners and sojourners when they were in other climes. He would in this way have them to be always ready...

1-4 Their enemies had carried the Jews captive from their own land. To complete their woes, they insulted over them; they required of them mirth and a song. This was very barbarous; also profane, for no songs would serve but the songs of Zion. Scoffers are not to be compiled with. They do not say, How shall we sing, when we are so much in sorrow? but, It is the Lord's song, therefore we dare not sing it among idolaters....

Verse Psalms 137:4. _HOW SHALL WE SING THE LORD'S SONG_] איך נשיר _eich!_ _nashir; O, we sing_! Who does not hear the _deep sigh_ in the strongly guttural sound of the original איך _eich_! wrung, as it were, from the bottom of the heart? _Can_ WE, in this state of _slavery_, - WE, _exiles_, from our _country_, - WE, _stripped_ of all our _property_, - WE, reduced to _contempt_ by our _strong enemy_, - WE, _deprived_ of our _religious privileges_, - WE, _insulted_ by our _oppressors_, - WE, in the land of _heathens_, - WE _sing_, or be _mirthful_ in these _circumstances_? No: God does not expect it; man should not wish it; and it is base in our enemies to require it....

HOW SHALL WE SING THE LORD’S SONG - The song designed to celebrate his praise; that is, appropriate to the worship of Yahweh. IN A STRANGE LAND - Far from our home; far from the temple; exiles; captives: how can we find spirit in such circumstances to sing? How can we do that which would be indicative of what we do not feel, and cannot feel - joy and happiness! The idea is not that those psalms or songs would be profaned by being sung there, or that there would be anything improper in itself in singing them, but that it would be misplaced and incongruous to sing them in their circumstances. It would be doing violence to their own feelings; their feelings would not allow them to do it. There are states of mind when the language of joy is appropriate and natural; there are states where the heart is so sad that it cannot sing....

EXPOSITION "THE most direct and striking reminiscence of the Babylonish exile in the whole Psalter" (Professor Alexander). The psalm divides into two parts. First, we are given a picture of the unhappy condition of the exiles, drawn so evidently from the life, that almost every commentator has felt it must have been painted by one of those who had experienced the reality (Psalms 137:1). Then the writer lays bare to us the predominant feelings of his own heart. These are two—intense love for Jerusalem (Psalms 137:5, Psalms 137:6); and intense hatred of Israel's and Jehovah's principal foes, Edom and Babylon ...

HOW SHALL WE SING THE LORD'S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND?] This is the answer returned by the Jews to the above request or demand; it may be, particularly, by the Levites, whose business it was to sing these songs: so the Targum, "immediately the Levites said, how shall we sing the hymns of the Lord in a strange land?'' This they said, not merely on account of their unsuitable circumstances, being in distress and affliction, and so not disposed for such work; nor as if unlawful to them, being forbidden: for, though sacrifices were not to be offered but at Jerusalem, yet songs of praise might be sung elsewhere, on proper occasions, as David did, Psalms 18:49; but as wondering at their insolence, and complaining of their cruelty and inhumanity, thus to insult them and jeer at them: or rather, because it was "the Lord's song" they required, and so sacred, and n

Psalms 137:1. _By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof._ Babylon was full of canals and rivers; the captive Israelites sought out lonely places where they might be away front their oppressors, and might in the company of their countrymen pour out the sad stream of their griefs and sorrows. «The rivers of Babylon» seemed congenial to them, and they mingled their tears with the flowing waters. They «sat down» as if they felt they were to be there a long while, and were not soon to go back to their own land; and they «wept « not simply because of their banishment and their woes, but also because of the mournful condition of their beloved Zion, which had been ravaged by the Chaldeans, ploughed as a field, and given over to desolation. Some of these poor captives had been singers in

Psalms 137 Remembering the Exile This Psalm is in remembrance of the Babylonian captivity written by an unknown person. Some have named Jeremiah, but he was not in Babylon. The Psalm expresseth the never dying love for Zion in the heart of Israel. The same love is alive today after an exile of almost two thousand years. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.” But this Psalm also looks forward to the day when divine retribution will be measured out to the daughter of Babylon, when Israel's enemies will be punished for their sins committed against His people. The fate of the final Babylon as given in Isaiah 13:16 corresponds with the last verse of this Ps

CXXXVII. THE BITTER MEMORY OF BABYLON. The vivid picture of the exiles in their home-sickness, the mockery of their foreign masters, their love for Zion, the mention of Edom, and the savage thirst for vengeance, all go far to justify the supposition that the Ps. was written not very long after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586. PSALMS 137:1. The day's work being over, the Jews sit by one of the many canals between the Tigris and Euphrates. Fain would they play and sing but they cannot, and they hang their harps on the poplar-trees (_Populus euphratica)._ In vain their oppressors ask them for a song of Zion. They cannot sing Yahweh's songs in a land which is not Yahweh's. They cannot forget they are Jews: sooner may their right hand wither (Psalms 137:5 emended) than