Psalm 137

¹ By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
² There on the poplars we hung our harps,
³ for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
⁴ How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
⁶ May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
⁷ Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
⁸ O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us
⁹ he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Read Isaiah chapter 13 and 14 to fully understand this psalm.

This is a Psalm written after the fall of Judah.

Judah as a nation rejected God.

Oh, the judgement they faced.

Even those that had not forsaken God were taken away with the rest of their brethren.

Living a life that rejects God’s way leads to God stepping aside.

This Psalms reminds me of the story I read about Robert Robinson, the author of the hymn “Come Thou Fount”, of his latter days in life.   It is told that a young lady ask him what he though of the hymn.  His answer to her was “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

1. Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.

2. Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

3. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

As you reflect on your life is it a life that Judah reflected back on what they lost when they rejected God, or is it a reflection of Christ living in you and bringing blessings to everyone around you.