By Rivers of Babylon

Narrator: If you've ever looked back on a particularly painful period in your life, you'll have some idea how the Israelites felt as they reflected on their exile to a city alien to all they held dear. A city in which God was unknown.
Narrator: Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and Internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.
Dr. James Boice: Psalm 137 is a reflection on the time of exile, a particularly painful period when hope was almost gone and all seemed nearly lost. But distress is not despair. The people of God didn't destroy their harps but hung them on trees by the river to be played again when hope had been restored. Join Dr. Boice as he explores this psalm, which communicates a grief that had been unspeakable and shows us that even in the worst of times, we can put our trust in a sovereign God.
Dr. James Boice: The Bible is filled with contrasts that lend substance and life to its teaching. One of these great contrasts is between Babylon, which stands for the world and its culture, and Jerusalem, which stands for God's kingdom. This contrast is both literal and figurative. Literal because there was a literal earthly Babylon that destroyed a literal earthly Jerusalem. It happened in 586 BC. But also figurative, because the Bible, toward the end, speaks of mystery Babylon in Revelation 18 and 19. That symbolizes all of the world's kingdoms and their passing glory and heavenly Jerusalem, described in Revelation 20 and 21, which has a glory that will endure forever.
Dr. James Boice: It was a recognition of this contrast that led Saint Augustine to write what became the most important and most influential book throughout the Middle Ages. It's called The City of God in which he traces what he calls two cities or two societies or two kingdoms from their origins in the very beginnings of the history of the race, all the way down through history to the final judgment.
Dr. James Boice: Perhaps the second best-known words of Saint Augustine are found in that book about the cities. He said, “Two cities have been formed by two loves. The earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God, and the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”
Dr. James Boice: Because that theme is so important and so pervasive in Scripture, we might have expected it to be prominent in the Psalms, especially those Psalms that were written after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, and the deportation, and the exile, and even the return of the people to their own land. But that is not the case. It's somewhat striking to look for the word Babylon in the Psalms and find that the word itself, Babylon, the reference to that city and kingdom only occurs twice in two different Psalms.
Dr. James Boice: One is Psalm 87. It's probably the best known because it's the Psalm John Newton used as the basis for a great hymn, which we sing frequently, “Glorious things of you are spoken, Zion, city of our God.”
Dr. James Boice: The other Psalm is the Psalm we come to now, Psalm 137. Now, this is a powerful, plaintive Psalm, and it's also a hard Psalm to read and handle, and for several reasons. It's hard because of its place in the Psalter. You may recall that when I began to speak about the collection of Psalms that we have in this final portion of the Book of Psalms, I said that these are chiefly Psalms of praise. And indeed, they are. They have been calling on the people of God to praise him in all circumstances, and they will do that. But here in Psalm 137, we come to a Psalm that is speaking of a time and a place, circumstances in which the praise of God was emotionally impossible.
Dr. James Boice: Moreover, along with these plaintive words that are there at the beginning in the first portion of the Psalm, there is also at the end of the Psalm words that are harsh and angry. As the Psalmist bursts out against those who were responsible for the destruction of the city and who even boasted and took joy in the suffering of the people when the city fell. So, it's not an easy Psalm to handle.
Dr. James Boice: It is moving, however. Eric Kidner wrote, “Every line of it is alive with pain, whose intensity grows with each strofe to the appalling climax.”
Dr. James Boice: Now, we can tell something of where it was written. Verses 1 to 3 indicate that the exile is in the past because the people are looking back to something that was true and is no longer true. And yet, it's not very far in the past. So, it's not so hard to date the Psalm. This is a Psalm that was written not long after the return of the people from Babylon.
Dr. James Boice: Now, let's begin with the pathos because that's what the Psalm's opening stanza contains. Here are the Jews who have returned from exile, but who remember a particularly painful moment when they were there in Babylon. They had had some time off apparently from their hard labor as slaves, which they were when they were first taken to the capital.
Dr. James Boice: They had found their way to the rivers of Babylon, referring not to the Euphrates and the Tigris themselves, but to the many canals and tributaries that connected them and watered this great plain. And there they were asked by their captors to sing one of the songs of Zion.
Dr. James Boice: Now, we don't have to think that that was particularly said in a mocking tone, like this: “Let's hear one of those songs about the land that you're never going to see again.” You don't have to think that it was particularly spoken like that, although the Psalm does speak of their tormentors demanding songs of joy.
Dr. James Boice: But the pathos isn't increased by that kind of speculation, it's painful enough. Here's what they're saying: “We were asked to sing one of the songs of Zion, but how could we do that?” Those songs of Zion are beautiful, joyful things, and singing itself is meant to lift your heart and fill you with joy. So, you were kind of borne up emotionally as you sing. But how could we do that in far-off Babylon?
Dr. James Boice: If we sang songs of Zion, all that would do would be to remind us of our beautiful mountainous homeland, and here we are in these flat, hot, desolate plains. And even more than that, to sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land would seem to be treason to our God.
Dr. James Boice: And so they sum it up in those beautifully poetic lines in verse 4, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?”
Dr. James Boice: Now, that's sad enough. You don't have to say anything to add to that, but there are a number of features here that we ought to look at because they do increase and intensify the pathos somewhat. First of all, there are the poem's sad sounds. It's sad enough in our English translation, but in the Hebrew language there is a nine-fold repetition of a pronoun ending, which is “nu.” It's found, as I say, nine times in the first three verses leading up to the verse I just read, and it sort of has the effect as it's read in Hebrew of what it would be like if we were saying over and over again in the English language, “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” or, “Woah, woah, woah, woah.”
Dr. James Boice: The verses actually have that sound. That intensifies the pathos. And then there is that contrast with the Psalms that have come before. We've already looked at Psalm 135 and 136. Those are Psalms that celebrated the gift of God to his people of the land.
Dr. James Boice: Both of them did it. They did it, as a matter of fact, almost at places in identical words. They speak of God having struck down the firstborn of Egypt, having overthrown Zion, the king of the Amorites, and Og, the king of Bashan, and then of having given the land of these kings as an inheritance to Israel.
Dr. James Boice: And Psalm 135 even ends by calling on all who fear God to praise him from Zion.
Dr. James Boice: And yet in Psalm 137, the people are no longer in Zion and can't sing these songs. And maybe also we ought to just think about the songs of Zion themselves. They are among the most beautiful, touching, poetic Psalms in the entire Psalter. Like Psalm 84 for example. It's the one we know best.
Dr. James Boice: “How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty. My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”
Dr. James Boice: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
Dr. James Boice: Think how painful it would be to sing a song like that when you're a prisoner in Babylon.
Dr. James Boice: Now, at that point, we want to ask whether a Psalm like this has any meaning for us. And of course it does, and we don't have to allegorize it to feel its bearing on our situation. We only need to think how hard it is to sing songs of praise to God in situations where the name of God is denied or where God and the Gospel are unknown.
Dr. James Boice: Sometimes that's in the world. Sometimes it's even in the church. I have been in churches that are so liberal and the Gospel so basically denied that it seems a travesty to sit there and sing some of the hymns.
Dr. James Boice: The great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, must have experienced things like that because he wrote these lines: “Even thus do true believers mourn when they see the church despoiled and find themselves unable to help her. We could bear anything better than this, and these are times, the Babylon of error ravages the city of God and the hearts of the faithful are wounded as they see truth fallen in the streets and unbelief rampant among the professed servants of the Lord.”
Dr. James Boice: And yet we've got to say, don't we, that distress is not despair? And when we read this Psalm, for all its pain, we nevertheless at the same time are aware of its faith. Or just to use the imagery of the Psalm, it is true that although the exiles were unable to sing their songs in far-off Babylon, they did not take their harps and break them or throw them in the stream.
Dr. James Boice: What the Psalm tells us instead is that they hung them on the poplars, presumably saving them for what they knew would surely be a better day. And that's what we pick up in the next section, beginning with verse 5. It is faith that is determined never to forget Jerusalem. You see it there. “If I forget you, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.” This man's faith is still alive.
Dr. James Boice: Why the reference to the Psalmist's right hand? Well, for a right-handed person that would be a symbol for his greatest strength and skill. And yet I think in this context it probably means something else because the right hand presumably would be the hand with which he would play the harp.
Dr. James Boice: And in the same way with the tongue. The tongue in this context would be used to sing the songs of Zion. He's not playing that music and he's not singing those songs, but he anticipates a day when he will do it again. And in the meantime, the faith that expresses itself in the songs of Zion is still alive.
Dr. James Boice: I want you to notice one other thing there. This is the stanza where the pronouns turn from the plural to the singular. It starts out plural, talking about us and we and our experience, but here it turns to I. I think that's a way of saying that suffering may be shared, and it often is, but a determination to remember God and walk in his ways is something that each of us has to do individually.
Dr. James Boice: And so we have to say, “I must do it. You must do it.” And that's what the Psalmist is talking about when we begin to apply it to ourselves. What about the future here? Is the Psalmist sure or expecting to be delivered from this present evil state and one day be able to sing the songs of Zion again in Jerusalem? Now, it's hard to say what was in the heart of any individual Israelite in that far-off time. Some of them probably despaired, others had hope, but it is significant, isn't it, that God did eventually bring the people back to their land.
Dr. James Boice: And as a matter of fact, this Psalm was composed by one who had been brought back to Jerusalem and it was sung for the first time, with all its pathos and pain, not in Babylon, but in the city of God.
Dr. James Boice: Now, Christians also endure bad times, but we don't despair in our bad times, because we know that they're temporary and that our God is a good God and powerful, indeed sovereign, and that one day, regardless of what pain we may have here, he will bring us through it. And if not here, he will certainly bring us through it for that day when we will sit with the saints around the throne of his grace in heaven.
Dr. James Boice: Now, we come to the last section. That's hardest in some ways. Let me introduce it this way. The word remember occurs three times in this Psalm. You find it, first of all, in verse 1 where the poet says that he and the other captives remembered Zion, even while they were in Babylon.
Dr. James Boice: And then you find it again in verse 6, where he pronounces a judgment against himself if he should fail to remember Zion. But then, in verse 7, as we enter into the last section of this, he calls on God to remember as he remembered and apply an appropriate judgment to those who destroyed the holy city.
Dr. James Boice: The problem with us, of course, is in this last section because here you get into one of those portions of the Psalms in which there seems to be a particularly unforgiving and vicious spirit. Just look at those last words, “Oh, daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us, he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
Dr. James Boice: Now, Christians have been taught to forgive their enemies, of course, and we should do that. But here are these words in Scripture spoken by one who just lines before was speaking in such a powerful and plaintive way that we would say, “Oh, this is certainly the word of God. Is not this the word of God too?”
Dr. James Boice: We tend to be self-righteous at this point, and we ought not to be. Just listen to what Spurgeon wrote about this. He calls us up short a little bit on that kind of a judgment. “Let those find fault with it,” he says, “who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain. They might not perhaps be so velvet-mouthed if they had suffered after this fashion.”
Dr. James Boice: It's one thing to talk of the bitter feeling which moved captive Israelites in Babylon, and quite another thing to be captives ourselves under a strange and remorseless power, which knew not how to show mercy, but delighted in barbarities to the defenseless. Psalm 137 is a fruit of the captivity in Babylon and often has furnished expression for sorrows which otherwise had been unutterable.
Dr. James Boice: Well, that helps a bit. And yet to explain it doesn't make it right. And we look at these words and we say, “Well, how are we to understand them?” Let me suggest a number of things. I've talked about it before because there are other Psalms like this, and I've had to deal with it there. But let me just call your attention to a few important things.
Dr. James Boice: First of all, the words are an appeal to God for justice, as in all of the imprecatory Psalms. The Psalmist is not saying that he's going to take judgment into his own hands. He's not saying, “God, give me the opportunity to slaughter people who have been angry and mean to my people.”
Dr. James Boice: He's not doing that at all. He is calling God's attention to the injustice and saying, “God, you are the judge, and justice should be done.” Secondly, these judgments are only what God himself decrees in other places, particularly against Edom, which is mentioned there in verses 7 and 8, which I didn't even read.
Dr. James Boice: And also against Babylon. As far as Edom is concerned, there's a whole book of the Bible that pronounces judgment against Edom and nothing else. It's the book of Obadiah. Granted, it's one of the shortest books in the Bible. It has only one chapter, but it's very fierce in its denunciations.
Dr. James Boice: What this brother nation of Israel seems to have done in the day of the fall of Jerusalem is stand aloof and actually rejoiced in it when they should have sorrowed at the suffering of their friends. And Obadiah describes what they did. They, quote, “stood aloof, they rejoiced, they seized their wealth.” That is, they profited by the other's misfortune, and they even handed over their survivors when they caught them.
Dr. James Boice: And so Obadiah pronounces a judgment upon Edom in the name of God. And you find the same judgment in other passages of the Old Testament. There are judgments in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Joel, and Amos, and for the same sins.
Dr. James Boice: And as far as Babylon is concerned, well, there are extensive prophecies against Babylon in the Old Testament. Earthly Babylon, yes, but above all that mystery Babylon that I mentioned, as coming in again toward the very end of the Bible in Revelation.
Dr. James Boice: And there you find a description of the fall of this great city, and you find the merchants and the kings and the sea captains and the people of the earth all mourning for the city. Even an angel is there, and an angel joins in saying, “With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again.” And the redeemed rejoice in it, saying, “Hallelujah, because justice has been done.”
Dr. James Boice: And then thirdly, let me point out that this is what God has done. God did destroy Edom and Babylon. If you go to Edom today, ancient Petra, you'll find that its mountain fortresses are nothing but ruins. You go to Babylon today, you'll find that it's a desolate waste.
Dr. James Boice: You see, the Bible says, “God will give to each person according to what he has done.” The Bible says, “A man sows what he reaps.” And these ancient cities sowed violence, and they reaped it as well.
Dr. James Boice: Now, where does that leave us? Does it put us in some privileged position? We're not Edomites. We're not Babylonians. Does it just automatically identify us with the people of God? That's not the way Jesus Christ taught us to think. Remember that incident in the 13th chapter of Luke where the people came to Jesus with a moral dilemma. He'd been teaching them about God, being sovereign and presumably loving.
Dr. James Boice: And here they had had a great tragedy in their days. There had been a number of Galileans that had come down to Jerusalem from the north, and they were offering sacrifices. And while they were doing that, for some reason, we don't know why, Herod's soldiers fell upon them and they were killed, presumably when they were in the best possible relationship with God, offering their sacrifices.
Dr. James Boice: And then, in addition, there had been that tower in Siloam that fell over, and when it fell over, it killed a lot of people. And they raised that with Jesus. They were asking this kind of a question. They were saying, “Why did that happen?” Did it happen because God somehow wasn't in control, is he not sovereign, or because he didn't care, he's not loving, or was it perhaps, this is probably what they thought, that God was somehow getting after these very bad people, and he allowed them to get killed in just that way.
Dr. James Boice: And you know what Jesus said? Jesus said, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish.”
Dr. James Boice: You see, Jesus' point is that when we raise a moral question like that, why did God allow bad things to happen to these good people? We're asking the wrong question. Because we're not good people. None of us. We have far more in common with the Edomites and the Babylonians than we do even with the best of the citizens of Zion.
Dr. James Boice: And so the question we should be asking is not, “Why does God allow these good people to perish?” But “Why hasn't God destroyed me this morning before I even woke up? Why am I not in hell this very instant?”
Dr. James Boice: You see, if you're alive at this moment and you have opportunity to hear the Gospel preached, as it is being preached, it's because of the goodness of Almighty God. So, don't say, “Why does God do what he does?” Unless you say, “Thank God he does what he does.”
Dr. James Boice: He gives us a chance to hear the Gospel that we might do what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who knew him perfectly, tells us to do, repent of our sin and turn to him for salvation, because that's the only place it can be found. And when that happens, then we can sing the songs of Zion because we're part of that heavenly city.
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