Commentary - Psalms 137:5-6

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 137 is a psalm of lament, a raw and honest cry from the heart of God's people in exile. They are by the rivers of Babylon, a place of sorrow and weeping, a long way from home. Their captors, in a moment of cruel mockery, demand a song, one of the songs of Zion. But how can they sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? This is the backdrop for the fierce oath taken in our text. Verses 5 and 6 are the pivot point of the psalm. The lament over what has been lost transitions into a solemn vow of remembrance, which in turn sets up the shocking imprecation that follows. This oath is not a sentimental expression of homesickness; it is a declaration of ultimate loyalty. It establishes the central importance of God's city, God's people, and God's worship in the heart of the believer. To forget Jerusalem is to forget God's covenant promises, and to forget those is to lose one's very identity.

The psalmist invokes a self-malediction, a curse upon himself, should he ever fail in this loyalty. This is not hyperbole. It is a deadly serious commitment. He is saying that his very ability to function, to play an instrument or to speak, is secondary to his covenantal faithfulness. Jerusalem must be his "chief joy." This sets a collision course with every other claimant to that title. In the new covenant, this Jerusalem is the heavenly one, the mother of us all, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our loyalty, therefore, is to Christ and His body. This passage forces us to ask what our chief joy is. Is it the church, the bride of Christ, or is it some lesser, fleeting pleasure of this world?

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 137 is one of the psalms of exile. It follows a series of psalms celebrating the law and God's faithfulness to Zion (e.g., Psalms 119, 122, 132). The jarring shift in tone and location to the rivers of Babylon highlights the catastrophe of the exile. The temple is destroyed, the king is deposed, and the people are captives. This is what disobedience to the covenant brings. Yet, even in the depths of despair, the psalms do not abandon hope. This particular psalm, while ending with a fierce cry for justice, is rooted in a profound love for God's chosen city. The oath in verses 5-6 is a testament to the enduring nature of God's covenant promises, even when all physical evidence seems to suggest they have failed. It is a refusal to assimilate, a refusal to let the sorrow of exile extinguish the fire of covenant loyalty.

Key Issues

Verse by Verse Commentary

v. 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill.

The psalmist begins with a hypothetical condition, but it is a condition he views with utter horror. "If I forget you, O Jerusalem." To forget Jerusalem is not a simple lapse of memory. In Hebrew thought, to forget is to act as though something does not matter, to ignore its claims, to be disloyal. And Jerusalem is not just a collection of stones and mortar. Jerusalem, or Zion, is the place where God chose to put His name. It is the center of worship, the seat of the Davidic king, and the symbol of the covenant people of God. In short, to forget Jerusalem is to forget God's entire redemptive plan as it had been revealed to that point. It is to abandon the covenant.

The consequence he invokes upon himself is fitting. "May my right hand forget her skill." The right hand was the hand of skill, of strength, of action. For a musician, whose harp now hangs silently on a willow tree (v. 2), this would mean the loss of his art, his livelihood, his very identity as a musician. He is saying, "If I abandon my loyalty to God's city, then let me lose the very thing that defines my craft." The punishment is tailored to the crime. A faithless heart ought not to be able to produce beautiful music. A hand that will not serve God's people should be rendered useless. This is a principle that runs throughout Scripture: our abilities and gifts are from God and for God. When we turn them to other purposes, we forfeit our right to them.

v. 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth If I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy.

The oath continues, intensifying the first part. "May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth." This is a prayer for paralysis of speech. Just as the hand is for doing, the tongue is for speaking, for singing, for praising. The captors had demanded a song (v. 3), and here the psalmist says that if he were ever to forget Jerusalem, he would rather be struck dumb than sing another note. He would rather be silent forever than sing a song of Zion with a treacherous heart. This is a profound statement about the integrity of worship. Worship must be sincere. To sing praise to God while your heart's ultimate allegiance is elsewhere is a blasphemous lie, and the psalmist wants no part of it.

He then states the condition in positive terms. "If I do not remember you." This is the flip side of forgetting. To remember is to be loyal, to act on behalf of, to keep the covenant. And then he gives the ultimate measure of this loyalty: "If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy." This is the heart of the matter. Jerusalem, the city of God, the people of God, the worship of God, must be the highest, greatest, most ultimate joy in the believer's life. It cannot be one joy among many. It cannot be second place. It must be the "chief joy." Any joy that rivals it is an idol. Any pleasure that displaces it is a traitor. The psalmist is setting up a clear hierarchy of affections. All our other joys, our creature comforts, our family, our work, our art, must be subordinated to this one great joy: the glory of God in the midst of His people. When the church is not our chief joy, we have committed idolatry, and our right hand and our tongue are in jeopardy.

The Chief Joy

What does it mean for Jerusalem to be our "chief joy"? For the exiles, Jerusalem was a tangible place, the center of their national and spiritual life. But the New Testament expands our understanding. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that we have not come to a physical mountain, but to "Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" (Heb. 12:22). Paul tells us that the "Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother" (Gal. 4:26). John sees the "New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Rev. 21:2).

This Jerusalem is the Church, the bride of Christ, the assembly of the saints. Therefore, for a new covenant believer, the oath of Psalm 137 is an oath of ultimate loyalty to Christ and His Church. The Church must be our chief joy. This does not mean we cannot find joy in other things, a good meal, a beautiful sunset, the love of a spouse. But all these lesser joys must find their proper place under the great, overarching joy of fellowship with God and His people. When the health, purity, and mission of the Church become secondary to our personal peace and affluence, we have forgotten Jerusalem. When we would rather be anywhere else on a Sunday morning than with the gathered saints, our tongue ought to stick to the roof of our mouth. This psalm is a bracing corrective to our trivial, self-centered, consumeristic approach to church. The Church is not a vendor of religious goods and services. She is our mother, the bride of our King, and she must be our chief joy.

Application

First, this passage demands that we examine our loyalties. What is your chief joy? Be honest. If you were in exile, what would you miss the most? Your comfortable chair? Your favorite television shows? Or would you weep when you remembered Zion? Our affections are a true gauge of our spiritual state. What we love most is what we worship. If the Church is not our chief joy, we are idolaters, plain and simple. We must repent of this and ask God to reorder our loves, to place love for Christ and His Body at the absolute center of our hearts.

Second, we must understand the seriousness of covenant faithfulness. The psalmist was willing to call down a curse on himself. This is not the language of casual commitment. Our membership in the church is a covenantal bond, sealed with the blood of Christ. We have sworn allegiance to Him as our King. To treat this commitment lightly, to neglect the gathering of the saints, to sow discord, or to live in a way that brings reproach upon the name of Christ is to forget Jerusalem. We should tremble at the thought. Let us pray that our hands would never forget their skill in serving the saints and our tongues would never be silenced from singing His praise, because we have remembered our covenant and exalted the Church as our chief joy.