Psalm 137: A Difficult Passage

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry & Bluemont Churches
October 5, 2025
Psalm 137

At the beginning of worship:

All of us have probably harbored feelings of revenge. But it’s not healthy. The desire for revenge also makes reconciliation an impossibility. 

Philip Yancey wrote a valuable book, which I highly recommend, titled, What’s So Amazing About Grace? In it he writes: “The strongest argument for grace is the alternative, a permanent state of ungrace. The strongest argument for forgiveness is the alternative, a permanent state of unforgiveness.”^[1] We wouldn’t want to live in such a state, would we? But many people do live their lives in such a fashion. 

Yancey went on to quote Lance Morrow who linked unforgiveness to Newtonian physics. “For every atrocity there must be an equal and opposite atrocity.”^[2] And then there was Ghandi who said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”^[3]

Today, we’ll look at a passage of scripture which seems void of grace. But before we go there, I want you to not forget that message of grace and love and forgiveness which runs through 95% of the Bible. And to understand the passage, we must place it in context, which I’ll try to do. 

Before reading the scripture:

Many of the Psalms are void of any direct historical connection. We understand the feelings of the Psalmist without a knowledge of what led to such emotions. Some Psalms are joyous, other sad. At times, the Psalmist feels threatened or angry. But we often don’t know what actions led to such feelings. Was it because of an abundant crop or military victory? Or did the feelings come from a war or pestilence in the lands or being double-crossed? 

The Psalms don’t generally provide a clue as to what led the Psalmist to have a particular feeling to bring forth to God. And this okay, for it means we can apply the same Psalm for many situations. 

Today, we’re looking at the 137th Psalm and this one is different. We are given a setting. This Psalm was written after Jerusalem fell to Babylon. Her people, now in exile, attempts to maintain their identity. This becomes a hard task, because the Babylonians taunt them.

An important step in interpretation of any scripture is to place ourselves in the position of those who first read or heard the passage. This step is especially needed to understand this Psalm, for it seems to go against teachings of much of the Bible. 

The people of Jerusalem exiled to Babylon after the city’s fall in 587 BC had lived through terrible times. Not only had their army been beaten and the city destroyed, but the defeat also involved a long siege in which the people locked behind the city walls experienced starvation. Hungry, they lived through the dread of what might happen when the Babylonians breach the walls. 

And when the unthinkable happened, things got worse. Babylonians and their allied armies raped, pillaged, looted, and killed the Hebrew people. Furthermore, the people felt abandoned by their God. Why were they not saved, they wondered, as the attacking armies tore down and burned Solomon’s temple. Those who survived the attack were hauled away to Babylon as captivities, where they lived with the shame of defeat and a feeling of abandonment. 

But the people for whom the Psalmist’s speaks in today’s text, the pain goes deeper. Think of how the Armenians felt after the Turkish genocide at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Or how the people of Gaza feel today, after the ongoing assault on the whole society, not just those responsible for attacking Israel in October 2023. And we can see such feelings in Ukraine for how Russia and the Soviets treated them in the 1930s, when up to four million Ukrainians starved. 

We even see this in our own country, with a race of people having been slaves. And after “freedom,” found themselves continuing to live in a society stacked against them, as was the Jim Crow South.  If we want to understand this Psalm, we must place ourselves in such situations. The Psalm, which sounds harsh to our ears, desperately pleas to God for redress.

Read Psalm 137

One of the themes we’ve seen in the Psalms we’ve explored over the past few months is how honest the Psalmists can be toward God. Today, the honesty seems almost obscene. Would we talk with God like this? This is a painfully difficult passage to handle, which is partly why I have avoided preaching it until now. 

The late Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, wrote, “I am not sure how such a psalm fits with Christian faith.”^[4] He’s honest. The Jewish scholar, Robert Alter, wrote “no moral justification can be offered for this notorious concluding line.”^[5]There you have it. A Jewish and Christian scholar admitting to the difficulty of this psalm.

So how might we understand these harsh words. One way is to avoid the Psalm, but that is not being truthful to the entirety of scripture. We’re given the 66 books of the Old and New Testament. And if you study these books closely, you’ll find things with which to struggle and Psalm 137 will probably be near the top of your list. But because life can be difficult, we shouldn’t just skip over such passages. 

We can divide this psalm into three parts. The first part deals with Babylon. The second part recalls the people’s the memory of Jerusalem. And the final section addresses God.^[6]  

The Psalm begins with an idyllic setting of Babylon, where people gather around the rivers (or maybe the canals running off the river), in the city.^[7] We are not told why they gather at the river, but we know that without a synagogue, the Jewish people would often gather by water for worship. 

When the Apostle Paul found himself on the Sabbath in Philippi, with the absence of a synagogue, he headed to the river where he found Lydia and a group of women believers who gathered on the Sabbath.^[8] Perhaps this is why the people  gather around the river. 

Although this is a desert city, the water provide growth to trees. Most versions refer to the trees as willows, but the word might be better translated as “poplar.”^[9] What’s important is the shade provided on a hot summer day. We can add to this image the cooling breeze coming off the water. 

But the moaning and crying disturbs the idyllic setting. While they have instruments for music, no one wants to sing. Instead, they hang up their harps in the trees. Furthermore, the Babylonians demand they sing a “Song of Zion,” not out of worship or respect but for entertainment. This the people won’t do. They won’t sing the joyous songs of their past for the listening pleasure of their captors. 

The mention of Zion brings to their minds Jerusalem, God’s holy city. In verses 4-6, the Psalm focuses on the Jerusalem, as the people declare their loyalty to it. They are exiled in Babylon. They have seen their city destroyed and their friends and family slaughtered by the Babylonians. But now, in a strange and foreign land, they will remain loyal to their former home. 

Bringing up Jerusalem and the past causes the blood of the Psalmist to boil. Starting in verse 7, the Psalm now addresses God. They recall the taunting of their neighboring enemies from Edom, who supported the Babylonians as their city fell. Their neighbors shouted, “tear it down” and the people of Jerusalem want God to remember these cries and to punish them. 

Those reciting the Psalm save their most heinous hopes for the Babylonians, who devasted the city. Two blessings (or beatitudes) are sought for those who pay Babylonian back including the horrific closing line, those who dash the heads of the infants of the Babylonians against rocks. 

We only understand this last line if we can grasp that it’s cited by those whose grief is so great they’re out of their minds. This cry comes from those who have lost everything including hope. But note this, they cry out such pain, but don’t instigate such action. They leave any action up to God. They don’t rile up the crowds into a frenzy so they might take it upon themselves to carry out such an attack. Perhaps they recall the Old Testament law which restrains revenge by proclaiming “vengeance belongs to the Lord.”^[10]

As Christians, who strive to follow the Prince of Peace, we must understand Psalm 137 as an extreme cry of pain. We shouldn’t take the Psalm as an endorsement of how to handle enemies. For that, we must go to the words of our Savior, who calls us to bless and love our enemies. But we should also understand that at times the pain can be so strong that we cry out uncontrollable. This Psalm reminds us of such times and shows it’s okay to bring such cries to God. Hopefully, when the grief subsides, we can then, as another Psalm calls us, sing a new song to the Lord.^[11]

As followers of Jesus, this passage not only encourages us to be honest with God, but it also warns us of what happens when we refuse to see the image of God in others. When people, like the Psalmist find themselves in such a situation, they have nothing to lose. Such treatment leaves those we see as enemies with feelings which prevents the possibility of peace. Such situation benefits no one. May we be better. Amen.

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^[1] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 114. 

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] I’m quoting for memory. The first time I heard this quote was in the movie, “Ghandi.”

^[4] Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 75.

^[5] Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms:  Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2007), 475.

^[6] James L. May, Psalms: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: JKP, 1994), 422-423.

^[7] Alter, 473. 

^[8] Acts 16:13.

^[9] Most translations use “willow” as a translation. See ESV, KJV, ESV, and NRSV. A few use “trees” as in the CEB and NLB. The CSB and NIV translates it as “poplar.” 

^[10] Deuteronomy 32:35. See also Leviticus 26:25, Romans 12:19, and Hebrews 10:30. 

^[11] Psalm 96.