Lift Every Voice and Sing
Why Should I Keep On Singing?
This corporate lament psalm (meant for group settings) depicts Israel’s despair during the Babylonian exile (ca. 586–539 BC). The psalmist focuses on the destruction of Jerusalem (586 BC)
The spirituals of African-American music have tremendous power born of suffering. This appears clearly in gospel music, which sings of the glory of heaven and contrasts it with the hell of earth. The longing for freedom, ultimately, is the longing to go home to the Lord. A more secular form of the Black experience of suffering and slavery is the blues. In it there is a soulful anguish, usually on a more personal theme, such as “My man left me.” Songs of hope and songs of suffering are appropriate in their context. It is inappropriate, however, to sing songs of joy and triumph in the midst of loss and sorrow.
By way of allegory, Babylon refers to the disturbances of life and the harps are people’s bodies that must be restrained and disciplined so that they overcome or resist the temptations of the world (METHODIUS).
A. Singing Reminds Us Where We Been (Ps. 137:1)
137:1 By the rivers of Babylon This places readers in the midst of the sorrow of the Israelites who have been deported. The destruction of Jerusalem struck at the heart of everything that the ancient Israelites believed about God and themselves.
137:2 On the willows The musicians have hung up their instruments on trees and are not singing to God.
137:1. The psalmist recalled that the exiles in Babylon … sat down and wept over the destruction of Zion (Jerusalem). The rivers refer to the Euphrates and the canals and waterways stemming from it.
137:1–4 Babylon was one of the great empires in world history. When this psalm was written, the Jews were living there in involuntary exile. we wept: The emotions of the psalm are clearly indicated. The memory of Zion was painful for those in a foreign land (42:1–3)
The captives lament because they have “remembered Zion” (the mountain upon which Jerusalem was built, see
There we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. The exiles had their leisure hours—they were not kept by their masters at hard work continually. During these leisure hours they naturally “sat down” by the rivers of Babylon, as the most pleasant and attractive places. They brought their harps with them (ver. 2), with some idea, perhaps, of indulging in mournful strains. Grief, however, over-powered them—Zion came to their recollection—and they could do nothing but weep.
1. Rivers of Babylon. Babylon was known as the land of “many waters” (
The first strophe (137:1–4) is a communal lament. It is clear from the past tenses (e.g., “there we wept”) that we are dealing with a retrospective look at the situation of the Judean exiles during their sojourn in Babylon
The poet transports his readers to the situation of the exiles by putting the words of the lament in their mouths in the first person plural.
B. Signing Reminds Us That God Can Give Joy in the Midst of Tribulation (Ps. 137:3)
3, 4. Whether the request was in curiosity or derision, the answer intimates that a compliance was incongruous with their mournful feelings (
5, 6. For joyful songs would imply forgetfulness of their desolated homes and fallen Church. The solemn imprecations on the hand and tongue, if thus forgetful, relate to the cunning or skill in playing, and the power of singing.
137:3 our captors asked of us words of a song While this seems to imply little more than a request for amusement, the request seems to transform into mocking as the psalmist continues.
137:2–4. So great was the exiles’ grief that even the singers were silent. The exiles hung their harps on poplar trees (v. 2) for they could not sing their songs about their homeland when their oppressors taunted them to sing of glorious Zion (v. 3), as the Israelites were in a hostile foreign land (v. 4).
hung our harps: Making joyful music to the Lord in a foreign land was so difficult that the captives refused to make music at all. They took the words of their captors as taunts.
Their captives, however, demand a “song” (literally, “the words of a song”). The psalmist adds: “And those who plundered us requested mirth [‘gladness, exultation’], / Saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ ” (v. 3). The singers, however, are weeping (v. 1). There will be no cultural event in Babylon, no folk festival of old Hebrew tunes. In exile there is no song.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; literally, words of song. The oppressors break into the retired gathering of their captives, and “require of them a song”—demand roughly and rudely to be entertained with the foreign music, which is perhaps sweeter than their own, or at any rate more of a novelty. And they that wasted us required of us mirth. Not only was “a song” wanted, but a joyous song—one that would wake feelings of mirth and gladness in those who heard it.
Songs of Zion. Their masters were deriding them and asking them to sing one of their sacred melodies.
137:3 By asking the community to sing songs of Zion, Israel’s captors were tormenting and mocking them (42:3, 10; 79:10).
The sorrow of the exiles is aggravated by the fact that their captors force them to sing a song of joy when they have no reason to rejoice. The exiles refuse to sing a song of Zion when ordered to do so by their captors because this would mean mocking and making a caricature of the LORD.
137:4 in a foreign land The Israelites’ vision of God’s plan for them included their continued presence in the land that was given to them by God.
