Psalm 137

What’s Happening?

In Psalm 137, the psalmist is heartbroken and homesick. He and his community are exiled from Israel, their home with God in Jerusalem, and are prisoners in the foreign land of Babylon. Babylon had razed Jerusalem to the ground and taken its citizens captive. With God’s chosen people now in exile, there seems to be little hope that God will ever rescue his people from their enemies or bring them back home.

Weeping, the psalmist crumbles beside the Babylonian river, filling it with his tears (Psalm 137:1). He and his fellow singers have hung up their instruments on poplars, trees that are as fruitless as their ability to sing in captivity (Psalm 137:2). To sing songs of their beloved home Jerusalem would only aggravate painful memories of its destruction, something the Babylonian captors are eager to provoke (Psalm 137:3). They tauntingly demand them to sing songs about the city they love to the warlords who destroyed it (Psalm 137:4). Though refusing to sing for his captors’ entertainment, the psalmist also vows to never forget and always treasure Jerusalem. The city he lost will always be the city he loves, and the place his heart longs for (Psalm 137:5-6).

Then, from the distant banks of his exile, the psalmist cries out to God to remember what his enemies have done. He begs God to call to account the animosity of the Edomites. The Edomites were Israel’s neighbors and relatives who betrayed them in their hour of destruction (Psalm 137:7). Far from helping Israel in their crisis, Edom gloated over Jerusalem’s burning. The psalmist entrusts traitorous Edom into God’s hands as he remembers their hateful taunts, celebrating the city’s downfall.

Then, finally, the heartsick psalmist does find words to sing to Babylon. And he calls her doomed (Psalm 137:8). He pulls strength from God’s most ancient promise to Israel’s ancestor, Abraham. Back when Abraham lived in Babylon, God promised Abraham that he would have many descendants. His descendants would bless all nations. Those who blessed his descendants would be blessed, those who cursed his descendants would be cursed (Genesis 12:2-3). With this ancient promise in mind, the psalmist confidently calls Babylon doomed. They have cursed Abraham’s descendants, and so they will be cursed. They have destroyed Abraham’s descendants, so their descendants will come to destruction. The psalmist blesses the one who will do to his enemies what his enemies have done to his people (Psalm 137:8-9). The one who curses those who curse is called blessed. 

Where is the Gospel?

Jesus is the blessed one the psalmist hoped for. Jesus is Abraham’s greatest descendant, the one in whom the promises of blessing and cursing culminate (Matthew 1:17).

Jesus entered into his people’s exile, suffered alongside them so that he might heal them. Like the psalmist, Jesus wept over Jerusalem, the city he loved. He wept, knowing it would be razed to the ground by the oppressors of Rome. He knew he would be cursed and betrayed by his fellow exiles, whom he had come to bless (Matthew 23:37-39). On the cross, Jesus died under the brutality of Rome’s cruel empire and the taunts of his own people. They tauntingly demanded that Jesus perform for them as he hung on a fruitless tree like Israel’s harps (Mark 15:29-32).  

But Jesus’ exile in death did not last. Three days later, his resurrection announced a homecoming from the grave. Rising above the ultimate tyrant and captor of humanity, death itself, Jesus draws people from all nations into a home with God, where there is no longer separation from him. Jesus, the ultimate Son of Abraham, is the one all blessing and cursing hang on. Those who bless Jesus will be blessed, and those who curse Jesus will be cursed. 

The psalmist’s good news is ours too. Jesus, who joined us in our exile, knows our tears and heartache. And one day, Jesus will destroy all evil powers, the daughters of Babylon. Jesus will crush all Babylon’s tyranny and permanently end the spread of evil (Psalm 2:9-12; Revelation 18:21). Jesus will bring all his exiled children home to live with him in a New Jerusalem that will never be threatened by tyranny (Revelation 21:11-15). Jesus, the Blessed One, will wipe away the rivers of his people’s tears, and there will be no more crying (Revelation 21:4). He will fill their mouths with songs and their arms with the children they had lost.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God who remembers and knows our pain. And may you see Jesus as the one who destroys the enemy of death and gives his exiled people a home with him forever.