1By Babylon’s streams,
there we sat, oh we wept,
when we recalled Zion.
2On the poplars there
3For there our captors had asked of us
words of song,
4How can we sing a song of the LORD
on foreign soil?
5Should I forget you, Jerusalem,
6May my tongue cleave to my palate
if I do not recall
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my chief joy.
7Recall, O LORD, the Edomites,
on the day of Jerusalem, saying:
“Raze it, raze it,
to its foundation!”
8Daughter of Babylon the despoiler,
happy who pays you back in kind,
for what you did to us.
9Happy who seizes and smashes
your infants against the rock.
PSALM 137 NOTES
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1. By Babylon’s streams, / there we sat, oh we wept. This psalm was almost certainly composed shortly after the deportation of the Judahites by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.—the experience of exile is fresh and acutely painful. Scholars committed to seeing a ritual setting for virtually every psalm have proposed a rite of lamentation among the exiles, but there is no persuasive evidence for that in the text, and such a view underestimates the use of the psalm form as a vehicle for the expression of spontaneous emotion—in this case, collective emotion. The first Hebrew noun, neharot, generally means “rivers,” but because the more probable reference is to the network of canals that connected the Tigris and the Euphrates, “streams” is a preferable translation here. It should be noted that, in keeping with the evolution of Hebrew poetry in the Late Biblical period, semantic parallelism within the lines in this poem is weak, an absence occasionally compensated for by interlinear parallelism.
2. On the poplars there. The literal sense of the Hebrew behind “there” is, as the King James Version has it, “in the midst thereof.” But that is confusing because it is not clear what the “thereof” refers to (presumably the land of Babylon). In any case, sham, “there,” is twice repeated, expressing the alienation of the collective speakers from the place they find themselves, which, logically, should be “here” rather than “there.”
we hung up our lyres. This would seem to be a gesture of renunciation of their use, though some commentators have imagined that the exiles are hiding their lyres in the foliage.
3. our plunderers. The Hebrew tolaleinu is anomalous but is probably a variant form of the familiar term for plunderers, sholaleinu, perhaps encouraged—as the Israeli scholar Meir Gruber has proposed—by the opportunity for sound-play with talinu, “we hung up,” at the end of the preceding line.
Sing us from Zion’s songs. The assumption is that the singers of the Jerusalem Temple were known for the beauty of their music, and their captors want to be entertained by them. A bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh actually shows three prisoners carrying lyres marching under the surveillance of an Assyrian soldier. “Zion’s songs” would be any of the songs sung in the Temple and not necessarily the special category of psalm we now call “psalms of Zion,” which celebrate the city.
4. a song of the LORD. This should not be thought of as a technical category of “Yahweh songs” (Hans-Joachim Kraus), for almost all the psalms are in one way or another directed to the God of Israel and invoke Him. Meir Gruber aptly observes that from the Babylonian perspective, what their captives sing are national songs, “Zion’s songs,” whereas the Judahites themselves view them as sacred music, “a song of the LORD.”
5. may my right hand wither. The Masoretic Text reads “may my right hand forget [tishkaḥ].” This is problematic because there is no evidence elsewhere for an intransitive use of the verb “to forget”—hence the strategy of desperation of the King James Version in adding, in italics, an object to the verb, “her cunning.” But a simple reversal of consonants yields tikhḥash, “wither.” The loss of capacity of hand and tongue is linked with the refusal of song, for the right hand is needed to pluck the lyre and the tongue to sing the song.
7. Recall, O LORD, the Edomites. After the solemn vow never to forget the longed-for Jerusalem, the poem moves into a second angry phase that follows the sorrow of the first: a flashback to the terrible moment when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians with the gleeful encouragement of their Edomite allies. Obadiah 1:8–15 provides a vivid picture of the appalling actions of the Edomites at this historical moment.
on the day of Jerusalem. This phrase means the day of the destruction or conquest of Jerusalem, but the painful noun of destruction is suppressed, as though it stuck in the throat of the poet.
8. Babylon the despoiler. The Masoretic Text shows hashedudah, “the despoiled,” a reading that can be saved only by an exegetical contortion in which the passive form of the verb is understood to mean “about to become despoiled.” An adjustment of vocalization yields hashodeidah, “the despoiler.”
9. Happy who seizes and smashes / your infants against the rock. No moral justification can be offered for this notorious concluding line. All one can do is to recall the background of outraged feeling that triggers the conclusion: the Babylonians have laid waste to Jerusalem, exiled much of its population, looted and massacred; the powerless captives, ordered—perhaps mockingly—to sing their Zion songs, respond instead with a lament that is not really a song and ends with this bloodcurdling curse pronounced on their captors, who, fortunately, do not understand the Hebrew in which it is pronounced.