The Muted Harps of Babylon Text: Psalm 137:1-4
Introduction: A Geography of the Heart
There are some psalms that are difficult for modern Christians to sing. We live in a therapeutic age, an age that has mistaken niceness for righteousness and sentimentalism for piety. And so when we come to a psalm like this one, a psalm that ends with a terrible and glorious curse, we tend to avert our eyes. But this psalm, like all of Scripture, is given for our instruction, and it is a psalm that is acutely relevant for Christians living in the collapsing ruins of what was once Christendom. We too are in exile. We too live by the rivers of Babylon.
This psalm is a lament, a raw and honest cry from the heart of a people who have lost everything. Jerusalem has been sacked, the Temple of God has been reduced to rubble, and the best and brightest of Judah have been deported to the heart of the pagan empire. This is not just a geographical displacement; it is a theological crisis. Their entire world, the world of covenant, sacrifice, and the tangible presence of God in the Temple, has been obliterated. They are surrounded by a triumphant, idolatrous culture that sees their defeat as proof of the weakness of their God, Yahweh. And in this context of profound grief and cultural pressure, their captors come with a mocking request: sing for us.
The question this psalm forces upon us is this: what do you do when the world has taken your home, your heritage, and your freedom, and then demands that you provide the soundtrack for its victory party? What do you do when the very culture that seeks to devour you asks you to be entertaining? This is a question about the nature of true worship, the meaning of memory, and the proper place of grief. It teaches us that there is a time to hang up the harp. It teaches us that some songs cannot be sung in a foreign land, not because God is absent, but because the meaning of the song is bound up with a loyalty that the foreign land despises.
We must understand that Babylon is not just a place on a map. Babylon is a spiritual reality. It is the city of man, set up in opposition to the city of God. And we are all, in some sense, living by its rivers. This psalm, then, is our psalm. It gives us a script for how to navigate our own cultural captivity with integrity, with honest grief, and with an unyielding loyalty to a city that our captors cannot see.
The Text
By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat and also wept, When we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it We hung our lyres. For there our captors asked us about the words of a song, And our tormentors asked joyfully, saying, "Sing for us one of the songs of Zion." How can we sing a song of Yahweh In a foreign land?
(Psalm 137:1-4 LSB)
Grief by the River (v. 1)
The psalm opens with a scene of profound sorrow and remembrance.
"By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat and also wept, When we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1)
The setting is significant. The "rivers of Babylon" were the Tigris and the Euphrates, the lifeblood of this pagan empire. They were impressive feats of engineering, symbols of Babylonian power and prosperity. But for the exiles, they are a place of grief. They are not their rivers. They are a constant, flowing reminder that they are not home. They sit down, a posture of mourning and defeat. And they weep.
This is not a quiet, dignified tear. This is the weeping of profound loss. But notice what triggers the weeping: "When we remembered Zion." The memory is the dagger. What is Zion? Zion is not just the city of Jerusalem. In the Bible, Zion is the epicenter of God's saving rule on earth. It is the place where God chose to put His name, the location of His temple, the seat of His anointed king. Zion represents the covenant, the presence of God, the order of true worship, and the hope of the world. To remember Zion is to remember the entire world that God had built for them, a world that was now in ashes.
This act of remembering is an act of spiritual warfare. In a hostile culture that wants you to forget, that wants you to assimilate and adopt its story, the most rebellious thing you can do is remember. The exiles are not weeping because they miss their houses or their businesses. They are weeping because they miss the house of God. Their grief is not sentimental nostalgia; it is theological. It is a grief born of loyalty. Their sorrow is a testament to the fact that their hearts are still calibrated to God's city, even while their bodies are held captive in man's city.
The Silent Instruments (v. 2)
The grief is so profound that it leads to a deliberate act of renunciation.
"Upon the willows in the midst of it We hung our lyres." (Psalm 137:2 LSB)
The lyre, or harp, was the instrument of praise, of joy, of worship in the Temple. It was the instrument that accompanied the singing of the Psalms. To hang up the lyre is a dramatic, symbolic act. It is to say, "The music has stopped." This is not a fit of pique. This is a principled silence. They are not saying they will never sing again. They are saying they cannot sing these songs, here.
The willows, fittingly, are often associated with mourning. By hanging their instruments on these trees, they are effectively putting their joy into storage. They are consecrating their silence. This is a form of fasting. Just as a man might fast from food to express deep spiritual hunger, these exiles are fasting from music to express their deep spiritual sorrow and their longing for home. They are refusing to pretend that everything is fine. Their silence is a louder testimony against Babylon than any song they could have sung at that moment.
A Mocking Request (v. 3)
The reason for this musical fast becomes clear in the next verse. Their grief is interrupted by the demand of their enemies.
"For there our captors asked us about the words of a song, And our tormentors asked joyfully, saying, 'Sing for us one of the songs of Zion.'" (Psalm 137:3 LSB)
Notice the language. They are "captors" and "tormentors." And their request is made "joyfully," which is to say, mockingly. This is not a genuine interest in their culture. This is the gloating of a conqueror. They want to be entertained. They want the court musicians of a defeated king to perform for them. They want to hear the famous "songs of Zion" as a form of cultural plunder, to trivialize them, to turn them into background music for a Babylonian banquet.
The request is for "one of the songs of Zion." These were not just folk tunes. The songs of Zion were the psalms of ascent, the hymns that celebrated Yahweh's kingship, His deliverance of His people, and His glorious presence in the Temple. To sing these songs in this context would be a profound act of blasphemy. It would be to take the holy things of God and cast them before the dogs. It would be to treat the worship of the one true God as a cultural artifact, a quaint ethnic performance for the amusement of pagans.
This is a profound temptation that the church in every age faces. The world is always asking us to sing one of the songs of Zion, but on its terms. It wants our morality without our Christ. It wants our sense of community without our commitment to the truth. It wants the emotional uplift of our hymns without the submission to the Lord they proclaim. The world wants to be entertained by our faith, not converted by it. And the psalmist's response teaches us that the faithful answer must sometimes be a resolute and principled refusal.
A Question of Loyalty (v. 4)
The psalmists answer their tormentors with a question, but it is a question that is really a declaration.
"How can we sing a song of Yahweh In a foreign land?" (Psalm 137:4 LSB)
This is not a question of ability. Of course they could physically sing the songs. They had not forgotten the words or the melodies. This is a question of propriety, of loyalty, of theological integrity. "How can we?" means "It is impossible for us to." It is a moral and spiritual impossibility.
Why is it impossible? Because a "song of Yahweh" is not a neutral performance. It is an act of worship. It is a declaration of allegiance. It is a confession of faith in Yahweh as King and in Zion as His city. To sing such a song at the gleeful command of those who had just destroyed that city and blasphemed that King would be to participate in their mockery. It would be to agree that Yahweh's songs are just like the songs of any other pagan god, something to be trotted out for a command performance.
They are in a "foreign land." This is not just about geography. It is a land that is spiritually hostile. It is a land where Yahweh is not honored, where His law is not respected, and where His people are in bondage. To sing the songs of redemption in a land of captivity, for the entertainment of the captors, is a contradiction in terms. It would be a lie. The joy of the songs of Zion is predicated on the reality of Zion. Since that reality is, for the moment, gone, the songs must fall silent. Their refusal to sing is an act of profound faith. It is a declaration that their songs mean something, that their God is real, and that their loyalty belongs to Him and to His city alone, even if that city is currently a pile of rocks.
Conclusion: The Un-hung Harps of the New Covenant
So what are we to do with this? We who live in the new covenant, are we also to hang up our harps? The answer is both no, and yes. On the one hand, we have a song that can and must be sung in any and every foreign land. The gospel is for the nations. We are commanded to go into the heart of Babylon and sing of a greater Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and of a greater King, Jesus Christ.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus, our Zion can never be reduced to rubble. Our King can never be defeated. Our High Priest has entered the true temple, heaven itself. Therefore, we have a joy that the Babylonians cannot touch and a song that they cannot silence. We are to be like Paul and Silas, singing hymns in the Philippian jail at midnight. Our songs are declarations of the victory of Jesus Christ over the very powers that think they hold us captive.
And yet, there is a sense in which we must still understand the psalmist's refusal. We must refuse to sing the Lord's song on the world's terms. We must refuse to cheapen the gospel, to turn it into a therapeutic jingle for the amusement of our captors. We must refuse to perform our faith as a way of gaining cultural approval. When the world demands that we sing a song of joy about its rebellion, about its redefinitions of marriage, or gender, or justice, we must be willing to hang up our harps and say, "How can we sing the Lord's song in this key?"
Our grief over the sin of our culture, our lament over the brokenness of our world, is a form of loyalty to our true home. We weep when we remember Zion, the heavenly city. But unlike the exiles of old, our weeping is not without a certain and triumphant hope. Our King is not in exile. He is on the throne. And He has commanded us to sing His song in this foreign land, not as a performance for our captors, but as a summons to them. We sing a song of a coming Kingdom, a song of repentance and forgiveness, a song that invites the citizens of Babylon to lay down their arms and become citizens of the New Jerusalem. We sing, not because we have forgotten our exile, but because we remember our King.