Psalm 137--How Shall We Sing the LORD's Song?

Psalm 137
English Standard Version

How Shall We Sing the Lord's Song?
137 By the waters of Babylon,
    there we sat down and wept,
    when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
    we hung up our lyres.
3 For there our captors
    required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song
    in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand forget its skill!
6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
    down to its foundations!”
8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
    blessed shall he be who repays you
    with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
    and dashes them against the rock!

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This is the song of sorrow of the Exiles in Babylon.  They are too sad to sing the psalms that are happy and upbeat.  They are too sad to play their musical instruments, even though the Babylonians mock them and tell them to play them something from where they came from.  Instead, they hung up their harps and lyres and they mourned and sang a song of sadness with much weeping for Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Promised Land that they were separated from.

The psalm asks rhetorically, "How shall we sing the LORD's song?" under such circumstances?  They are greatly troubled in their heart and the thing that is their greatest joy is Jerusalem, and they are separated from it.  They are in a place that is culturally different, and they are no surrounded by pagan people who worship idols and practice sorcery, witchcraft, astrology, and all other kinds of Magic and The Arts which Babylon was known for among the ancient peoples.  It was painful in its own way for them to have to live among a people so rebellious to God, yet God promised that judgment would come on Babylon for their wickedness, yet He would still use this wicked nation to bring judgment on Israel, His people--to correct them once again.

The psalmist asks the LORD to remember the descendants of Esau (the Edomites) that turned against their "brothers" (Israel were the descendants of Jacob who was the brother of Esau) in their day of need.  They assisted those who came to attack the city, captured those trying to flee, and sold the fugitive Israelites to the Babylonians for a price (they acted as bounty hunters for the Babylonians).  Edom imagined with the Israelites gone that they would get the birthright and blessing that Esau had forfeited back from the descendants of Jacob and that the Promised Land would be given to them.

We see how the LORD answers the prayer of His people here for judgment against Babylon if we read books like Daniel (and other prophets) and we see that God was still working in the midst of the Exile to save His people (Esther) and help restore them as a nation (Nehemiah) and spiritually (Ezra).  While the people may have walked away from God and felt like God walked away from them, He had not.  They still had much to sing about, even though they couldn't see it and didn't feel like it in the moment.  All of us have these times, but let's not let our feeling be the thing that we look to in order to define truth and reality.  We can (and should) sing to the LORD for what we know to be true despite how things look or feel.  That is one of the main themes of the book of Psalms.