Psalm 137
Longing for Zion in a Foreign Land
LONGING FOR ZION
MY NOTES
Psalm 137 is one of the most emotionally raw passages in Scripture. It was written when God’s people were exiles in Babylon—far from home, far from the temple, far from everything familiar. Their captors mocked them, their city lay in ruins, and their hearts were heavy with grief.
This psalm is not polite. It is not sanitized. It is the cry of a people who have lost everything except their memory of God’s presence in Zion.
And that memory is enough to make them weep.
Imagine sitting on a riverbank. Usually, that’s the definition of a peaceful afternoon. But for the people of Israel in Babylon, the sound of the water was just a background track to their grief. They weren’t tourists; they were captives. Their city was in ruins, their Temple was a memory, and their identity felt like it was slipping through their fingers.
In this “mournful psalm,” we see a raw, unfiltered look at what it means to be displaced. The Babylonians—the very people who destroyed their lives—had the audacity to ask them for a “happy song.” They wanted a performance. But the captives did something brave: they hung their harps on the willow trees. They refused to pretend.
The Sympathy of the Saints
One of the most beautiful insights in this text is the idea of “spiritual sympathy.” When one part of the Church suffers, the whole body should feel it. Think of it like two strings on a harp tuned to the same note: if you pluck one, the other starts to vibrate.
We see this in Queen Esther, who had every luxury of the palace but couldn’t enjoy her “house of cedar” while her people were under a death warrant. We see it in the early church. If you find yourself grieving over the state of the world or the suffering of fellow believers, don’t suppress that. It’s a sign that your heart is tuned to the heart of God.
This psalm teaches us something vital:
God welcomes honest lament.
He is not offended by our tears, our longing, or even our cries for justice.
He meets us in exile, in sorrow, in the places where joy feels impossible.
And like Israel, we too live far from our true home.
We long for a better Jerusalem—a heavenly one.
If the exiles wept for the earthly Zion, how much more should we ache for the presence of God in its fullness.
Dealing with the “Burning Indignation”
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the end of this Psalm gets intense. There is talk of ruin and retaliation. It’s easy to judge these verses from the comfort of a padded pew, but as the commentary reminds us, these were people who had seen their families torn apart and their homes burned.
Their “burning indignation” wasn’t just blind rage; it was a desperate cry for justice to a God who hears. It reminds us that we don’t have to be “velvet-mouthed” with God. He can handle our rawest, most jagged emotions. He knows that our ultimate longing isn’t just for an earthly city, but for a “New Jerusalem” where no arrows are shot and no war trumpets sound.
Key Takeaways
- Honesty over Performance: It is okay to not have a “song” when you are in a season of lament. God values your truth more than a forced performance.
- The Power of Memory: Remembering “Zion” (God’s presence and His promises) is what kept the captives from blending into Babylonian culture. Your memory of God’s goodness is your anchor in exile.
- Shared Sorrow: We are called to have “spiritual sympathy.” If a brother or sister is hurting, we don’t just “wish them well”—we feel the vibration of their pain.
- The Heavenly Home: Every earthly “Babylon” is temporary. Our deep longing for “home” is actually a homing beacon for heaven.
Cross References (NKJV)
Lamentations 2:11
“My eyes fail with tears, my heart is troubled; my bile is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and the infants faint in the streets of the city.”
Nehemiah 1:3–4
“And they said to me, ‘The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.’ So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
Hebrews 11:13
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
Revelation 21:2
“Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
Prayer
Abba, sometimes I feel like I’m sitting by the rivers of a world that doesn’t know You, feeling the weight of things that are broken. Thank You that I don’t have to perform for You or pretend I’m okay when I’m not. Give me a heart of sympathy for those who are suffering today. Help me to keep my “harp” ready for the day I reach my true home, and until then, keep the memory of Your goodness alive in my soul. I ask You for this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Things to Think About:
- What “Babylon” are you currently walking through? (A difficult workplace, a season of grief, or a feeling of being misunderstood?) How can you bring your honest feelings to God today?
- Think of a fellow believer or a group of people who are currently in “ruins.” How can you practice “spiritual sympathy” for them this week?
- The Israelites refused to forget Jerusalem. What is one specific “Zion memory” (a time God came through for you) that you need to hold onto right now?
Proverb for Today
A man’s pride will bring him low, But the humble in spirit will retain honor. Proverbs 29:23 NKJV
Daily Scripture
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14 NKJV
Bill
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Summary of Commentaries:
Psalm 137 is a heartfelt lament from Babylonian captivity, expressing deep patriotism and grief. Commentators highlight the exiles’ refusal to sing for oppressors, hanging their harps in “righteous indignation.” Beyond historical sorrow, the psalm illustrates “spiritual sympathy”—how believers should ache for the suffering church. Ultimately, it directs our longing away from the temporary “waters of Babylon” (earthly pleasures) toward our eternal home in the heavenly Jerusalem, where all sorrow finally ceases.
Commentaries:
Charles Spurgeon
This plaintive ode is one of the most charming compositions in the whole Book of Psalms for its poetic power. If it were not inspired, it would nevertheless occupy a high place in poesy, especially the former portion of it, which is tender and patriotic to the highest degree. In the later verses (Psa 137:7-9), we have utterances of burning indignation against the chief adversaries of Israel,—an indignation as righteous as it was fervent. Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and after children slain; they might not, perhaps, be quite so velvet-mouthed if they had suffered after this fashion. It is one thing to talk of the bitter feeling which moved captive Israelites in Babylon, and quite another thing to be captives ourselves under a savage and remorseless power, which knew not how to show mercy, but delighted in barbarities to the defenseless. The song is such as might fitly be sung in the Jews’ wailing place. It is a fruit of the Captivity in Babylon, and often has it furnished expression for sorrows which else had been unutterable. It is an opalescent Psalm within whose mild radiance there glows afire, which strikes the beholder with wonder.
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Enduring Word
Because this psalm is a remembrance of Babylon, many commentators believe it was written after the return from exile. It may also have been written many years into the exile.
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Albert Barnes
Though there is no title prefixed to this beautiful psalm, and no direct intimation as to the occasion on which it was composed, yet there can be no doubt as to the circumstances in which it was written. There is, indeed, no mention of the name of the author, and no possibility of recovering that name now, but there can be no doubt that it was composed by one of the exiles in Babylon – one who had witnessed and shared the sufferings of the exiles there, and who had also a lively recollection of the wrongs done to Jerusalem when it was attacked and destroyed by its foes. The writer was a Jew to the heart’s core; an “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” embodying and expressing in this short psalm all that there was which was special in Hebrew feeling, patriotism, devotion. Nowhere else in a short compass is so much Judaism – so much Jewish piety – to be found concentrated as in this psalm. There is grief at their lonely and desolate condition in Babylon; profound and submissive silence in the midst of their troubles; indignation that they should be taunted and derided by their captors; a strong – earnest – supreme love for their native land; deep resentment at the remembrance of the many wrongs done to Jerusalem when it was destroyed; and an earliest invocation to God that he would remember those wrongs alike in relation to Edom and Babylon, and treat those wrong-doers as they deserved. It would seem most probable that the psalm was composed soon after the return from Babylon, and before the temple was finished, while the ruins of the city caused by the Edomites and Babylonians were visible everywhere. The combined remembrance of the insults in Babylon, and of the wrong done to the city at its capture, animates the poet and fills his mind with this deep and burning indignation.
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John Gill
The occasion of this psalm was the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and the treatment they met with there; either as foreseen, or as now endured. Aben Ezra ascribes this psalm to David; and so the Syriac version, which calls it, “a psalm of David; the words of the saints, who were carried captive into Babylon.” The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Ethiopic versions, make it to be David’s, and yet add the name of Jeremiah; and the Arabic version calls it David’s, concerning Jeremiah: but, as Theodoret observes, Jeremiah was not carried into Babylon, but, after some short stay in or near Jerusalem, was forced away into Egypt; and could neither be the writer nor subject of this psalm: and though it might be written by David under a spirit of prophecy; who thereby might foresee and foretell the Babylonish captivity, and what the Jews would suffer in it; as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah did, many years before it came to pass; yet it seems rather to have been written by one of the captivity, either while in it, or immediately after it.
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Matthew Henry
There are divers psalms which are thought to have been penned in the latter days of the Jewish church, when prophecy was near expiring and the canon of the Old Testament ready to be closed up, but none of them appears so plainly to be of a late date as this, which was penned when the people of God were captives in Babylon, and there insulted over by these proud oppressors; probably it was towards the latter end of their captivity; for now they saw the destruction of Babylon hastening on apace (v. 8), which would be their discharge. It is a mournful psalm, a lamentation; and the Septuagint makes it one of the lamentations of Jeremiah, naming him for the author of it. Here
- I. The melancholy captives cannot enjoy themselves (v. 1, 2).
- II. They cannot humour their proud oppressors (v. 3, 4).
- III. They cannot forget Jerusalem (v. 5, 6).
- IV. They cannot forgive Edom and Babylon (v. 7-9).
In singing this psalm we must be much affected with the concernments of the church, especially that part of it that is in affliction, laying the sorrows of God’s people near our hearts, comforting ourselves in the prospect of the deliverance of the church and the ruin of its enemies, in due time, but carefully avoiding all personal animosities, and not mixing the leaven of malice with our sacrifices.
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Miscellaneous Comments
“By the rivers.” Euphrates, Tigris, Chaboras, etc., 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. Eze 1:1; Dan 8:2; Dan 10:4.
—”Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review,” 1848.
“We wept when we remembered Zion.” A godly man lays to heart the miseries of the church. I have read of certain trees, whose leaves, if cut or touched, the other leaves contract and shrink up themselves, and for a space hang down their heads: such a spiritual sympathy is there among Christians; when oth—arts of God’s church suffer, they feel themselves, as it were, touched in their own persons. Ambrose reports that when Theodosius was sick unto death, he was more troubled about the church of God than about his own sickness. When Æneas would have saved Anchises’ life, saith he, “Far be it from me that I should desire to live when Troy is buried in its ruins.” There are in music two unisons; if you strike one, you shall perceive the other to stir, as if it were affected: when the Lord strikes others, a godly heart is deeply affected, Isa 16:11: “My bowels shall sound like a harp.” Though it be well with a child of God in his own particular, and he dwells in a house of cedar, yet he grieves to see it go ill with the public. Queen Esther enjoyed the king’s favor and all the delights of the court, yet when a bloody warrant was signed for the death of the Jews, she mourns and fasts, and ventures her own life to save theirs.
—Thomas Watson.
Let us weep, because in this life we are forced to sit by the waters of Babylon, and are yet strangers and, as it were, banished and barred from being satisfied with the pleasures of that river which gladdens the city of God. Alas, if we did consider that our country were heaven, and did apprehend this place here below to be our prison, or place of banishment, the least absence from our country would draw tears from our eyes and sighs from our hearts, with David (Psa 120:5): “Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, and am constrained to dwell in the tents of Kedar.”
Do you remember how the Jews behaved themselves in the time of their exile and captivity, while they sat by the rivers and waters of Babylon! They wept, would not be comforted; hanged up their harps and instruments. What are the waters of Babylon but the pleasures and delights of the world, the waters of confusion, as the word signifies! Now when the people of God sit by them, that is to say, do not carelessly, but deliberately, with a settled consideration, see them slide by and pass away, and compare them with Sion, that is to say, with the inconceivable rivers of pleasure, which are permanent in the heavenly Jerusalem; how can they choose but weep, when they see themselves sitting by the one, and sojourning from the other! And it is worthy your observing, that notwithstanding the Jews had many causes of tears, the Chaldeans had robbed them of their goods, honors, countries, liberty, parents, children, friends: the chief thing, for all this, that they mourn for is their absence from Sion,—”We wept when we remembered thee, O Sion.”—for their absence from Jerusalem. What should we then do for our absence from another manner of Jerusalem! Theirs was an earthly, old, robbed, spoiled, burned, sacked Jerusalem; ours a heavenly, new one, into which no arrow can be shot, no noise of the drum heard, nor sound of the trumpet, nor calling unto battle: who would not then weep, to be absent from thence?
—Walter Balcanqual, in “A Sermon Preached at St. Maries Spittle,” 1623.
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