D. Scott Meadows

True saints are marked by union and communion with God through Christ. Our first taste of this eternal life quickens an ever-increasing spiritual thirst. When evil forces keep us from coming together in worship, we lament our deprivation and pray against the enemy.

Psalm 137, a song and prayer written during old Israel’s Babylonian exile, illustrates this. We feel its poignancy even more so now that we have been kept from church meetings about two months so far during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though our circumstances are radically different, our feelings are the same as the godly remnant among the Israelites long ago. Whether the hindrances are goodwill public policy for health or depraved hostility to God and His people or some combination, the Lord knows.

Like many of the psalms, this is a very sad one. Nevertheless, God gave it for singing, even while we are kept from one another physically. We need songs of grief as well as joy because both are always part of the human experience. God’s people are not exempt. Perhaps counterintuitively, lamenting together can console us. It reminds us we do not suffer alone and that our sufferings will end. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psa 30.5). A good cry can help heal the heart.

I. Lamenting (1–4)

Psalm 137 begins with saints in exile lamenting—publicly, movingly.

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept,
When we remembered Zion.
2 We hanged our harps
Upon the willows in the midst thereof.
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
And they that wasted us required of us mirth,
Saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the LORD’s song
In a strange land?

Patience under trial is not stoicism, the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. Trials are sent by God as tests of our trust in the Lord, not of our ability to suffer without grief and crying and reverent complaint. The godly in all ages have wept in the crucible and poured out their sorrowful hearts to the Lord (Job 3; Matt 27.46). We see that righteous response in Psalm 137.

Against their will, these saintly souls were far from the sacred place of worship. They were beside the rivers of Babylon, a land full of idol temples and public depravity. While they sat helpless, fixing their minds upon holy Zion’s hill, the site of the Lord’s Temple and their former public celebrations to His glory, broken hearts gave way to welling eyes. They still remembered the songs. They still had skill to play their holy instruments. Their pagan neighbors—their captors really—even wanted entertainment from them through these foreign musical sounds—especially their songs of mirth or joy. But entertaining them with a happy song was something they could not do. As long as they were imprisoned in a foreign country, and God’s glory was thus obscured, how could they hold back their grief?

Especially in this stretch of no church meetings, how can we not lament our plight? Anyone who can happily dispense with them is surely no Christian at all! Virtual worship online or private worship at home are not acceptable substitutes. At most, they are helps until we can meet again as we were accustomed to do, and of course, private and family worship should continue always. Further, we should not be ashamed to let our unbelieving society know of our profound sadness, as our forefathers in Babylon did long ago.

II. Loving (5, 6)

These saints in exile express their hearts further by publicly declaring their intense love for God and His worship.

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

With exquisite poetic style, the city of Jerusalem is personified and addressed directly as if it could hear. This was the holy city, designated by God from ancient times as nexus of His worship. Three times a year, Jews from throughout Israel streamed there with their tithes and offerings for the feasts of the Lord. The standing Temple was a perpetual symbol of God’s special presence with them. It was the place of hearing God’s Word, atoning for their sins, expressing their gratitude, and singing His praise.

Love for God and His worship is so central to our identification as God’s holy people that losing it is our most grave concern. Suffering, starvation, and slaughter are preferable. The Lord—represented by Jerusalem in this psalm—is His people’s “chief joy.”

These words full of pathos reveal a deep concern about spiritual forgetfulness and coldness while in exile. They amount to a prayer against apostasy during the days of trial. Since the biblical worship of the gathered church is a means of grace and dwelling among pagans a means of temptation, we are justified in this concern. When our church meetings resume, will there be any spiritual casualties? Will we all be present once again with greater love for the Lord and one another, and even more resolute resistance to the perverse allure of sins prevalent among our neighbors? Let us persist in prayer for the whole church of Christ.

III. Longing (7–9)

The saints in exile are clearly longing for a better day. The exile is not the way things ought to be. We yearn for the fullness of freedom and triumph of truth. The zenith of God’s glory only comes through a powerful visitation of the Lord when He completely delivers the righteous through judgment upon the wicked. Intermittent judgments in this life precede and prefigure the Last Judgment. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection are the greatest example of this so far in human history. Therefore, the saints pray daily for the advancement of the kingdom of light through demise of the kingdom of darkness (Eph 5.8; Col 1.13; 1 Pet 2.9). “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt 6.10). Christ’s return will fully grant these petitions.

Such prayers are a battle-cry against the enemies of righteousness. They can be deeply disturbing because they recognize the sovereignty of God Most Holy and the reality of evil in this present age, and that He must and will triumph. Divine wrath and vengeance is shocking. That shocking, Godglorifying judgment is the plea of the last verses of Psalm 137.

7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem;
Who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee
As thou hast served us.
9 Happy shall he be, that taketh
And dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

The literal, historical sense of the words is plain. Rather than taking matters into their own hands, the Jews in exile refuse to avenge themselves, but rather leave it to the wrath of God, for they know that He said, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay” (Rom 12.19; cf. Deut 32.35; Heb 10.30). O Lord, burn down their cities! Destroy their people with violence, even their infants! This would be nothing more than justice for all their malice against You and Your people!

Holy prophecies of future doom for the finally impenitent and holy curses appealing to God are found in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament (e.g., Matt 23; Luke 21.20–28; 1 Cor 16.22; Gal 1.8; 1 Tim 1.19, 20; Rev 6.9, 10; 22.18, 19), so they cannot be judged unChristian. One thing is for sure: they testify to the frighteningly-strong yearning within righteous souls for the Day when all hindrances to the eternal gathering of all the redeemed, glorified together with Christ, will be taken away! This is the blessedness of His Second Coming. The whole Bible ends with a zealous prayer for it. May we add our clamorous voices to the great petition! “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22.20). Ω