Psalms 137:8

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. O DAUGHTER OF BABYLON, WHO ART TO BE DESTROYED - literally, 'who art destroyed.;' i:e., who art surely doomed to destruction (cf. the same idiom, ). Orosius said, 'It seemed almost incredible to mortals that Babylon could have been built by human toil, or, that it could be destroyed by human valour.' Yet so it came to pass, because God had said it. "Daughter of Babylon" (cf. ). Cities are often represented as virgins. HAPPY (SHALL HE BE) THAT REWARDETH THEE AS THOU HAST SERVED US - literally, 'that shall repay to thee thy deed which thou didst to us' (cf. )....

8._O daughter of Babylon _(187) _laid waste! _The Psalmist discerns the coming judgment of God, though not yet apparent, by the eye of faith, as the Apostle well calls faith “the beholding of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1.) Incredible as it might appear that any calamity should overtake so mighty an empire as Babylon then was, and impregnable as it was generally considered to be, he sees in the glass of the Word its destruction and overthrow. He calls upon all God’s people to do the same, and by faith from the elevation of heaven’s oracles, to despise the pride of that abandoned city. If the divine promises inspire us with hope and confidence, and God’s Spirit attemper our afflictions to the rule of his own uprightness, we shall lift up our heads in the lowest depths of affliction to which we may be east down, and glory in the fact that it is

5-9 What we love, we love to think of. Those that rejoice in God, for his sake make Jerusalem their joy. They stedfastly resolved to keep up this affection. When suffering, we should recollect with godly sorrow our forfeited mercies, and our sins by which we lost them. If temporal advantages ever render a profession, the worst calamity has befallen him. Far be it from us to avenge ourselves; we will leave it to Him who has said, Vengeance is mine. Those that are glad at calamities, especially at the calamities of Jerusalem, shall not go unpunished. We cannot pray for promised success to the church of God without looking to, though we do not utter a prayer for, the ruin of her enemies. But let us call to mind to whose grace and finished salvation alone it is, that we have any hopes of being brought home to the heavenly Jerusalem...

Verse Psalms 137:8. _O DAUGHTER OF BABYLON, WHO ART TO BE DESTROYED_] Or, _O_ _thou daughter of Babylon the destroyer_, or, _who art to be ruined_. In being reduced under the empire of the Persians, Babylon was already greatly humbled and brought low from what it was in the days of Nebuchadnezzar; but it was afterwards so totally ruined that not a vestige of it remains. After its capture by Cyrus, A.M. 3468, it could never be considered a capital city; but it appeared to follow the fortunes of its various conquerors till it was, as a city, finally destroyed. _REWARDETH THEE AS THOU HAST SERVED US._] This was Cyrus, who was chosen of God to do this work, and is therefore called _happy_, as being God's agent in its destruction. Greater desolations were afterwards brought upon it by _Darius Hystaspes_, who took this city after it had r

O DAUGHTER OF BABYLON - That is, Babylon itself; the city of Babylon. On the word “daughter” as thus used, see the notes at Isaiah 1:8. WHO ART TO BE DESTROYED - Certainly to be destroyed; of whose destruction there are fixed and absolute prophecies. See the notes at Isaiah 13:19. HAPPY SHALL HE BE THAT REWARDETH THEE AS THOU HAST SERVED US - Margin, that recompenseth unto thee thy deed which thou didst to us. Literally, “Happy shall he be who shall repay to thee the recompence which thou hast recompensed unto us.” The idea is, who shall repay thee for thy treatment of us; or, as we should say in common language, “Who shall pay thee back?” That is, he will be esteemed a fortunate man who is mad

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 ...

O DAUGHTER OF BABYLON, WHO ART TO BE DESTROYED,.... By the determinate counsel and decree of God, and according to divine predictions; see Jeremiah 50:1; so mystical Babylon, antichrist, and the man of sin, who therefore is called the son of perdition, 2 Thessalonians 2:3; because appointed to destruction, and shall certainly go into it, Revelation 17:8; or "O thou destroyer", as the Targum, which paraphrases it thus, "Gabriel, the prince of Zion, said to the Babylonish nation that spoileth or destroyeth;'' which is true of literal Babylon, called the destroying mountain,...

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