Psalms 137
The AIT Bible
A Lament by Babylon’s Rivers
1By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; we also wept when we remembered Zion.
2On the poplars in its midst we hung up our lyres.
3For there our captors asked us for words of song, and our tormentors for mirth: ‘Sing for us one of the songs of Zion!’
4How can we sing the song of Yahweh on foreign soil?
5If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget.
6Let my tongue cling to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
7Remember, Yahweh, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem — those who said, ‘Strip her bare! Strip her bare, down to her foundation!’
8O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one — blessed is the one who repays you the recompense you dealt out to us!
9Blessed is the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock.
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Cross-references in this chapter
Where this passage connects across Scripture — each link typed and reasoned, part of the AIT Bible Nexus Chart.
A Lament by Babylon’s Rivers
- echoed in Ezekiel 3:22 — The image of the tongue clinging to the roof of the mouth is shared exilic imagery of enforced silence.
- echoed in Luke 19:41 — 'You and your children within you' being dashed to the ground echoes the language of the city's destruction.
- allusion Revelation 18:6 — Revelation's call to repay Babylon double for her deeds echoes the lex talionis wish to repay Babylon her recompense.
- thematic Ezekiel 25:12 — Both call for divine retribution against Edom for its hostility toward Judah at Jerusalem's fall.
- thematic Ezekiel 35:1 — Both recall Edom's hostility on the day of Jerusalem's downfall.
- thematic Isaiah 13:16 — Both depict the dashing of Babylon's children as part of the judgment on Babylon.
- thematic Jeremiah 51:24 — Both invoke recompense against Babylon for what it dealt out to Zion.
- thematic Lamentations 1:1 — Both mourn the fall of Zion/Jerusalem and the sorrow of exile after Babylon's conquest.
- thematic Lamentations 4:21 — Edom's complicity in Jerusalem's destruction becoming grounds for its own judgment.
- thematic Nahum 3:10 — Both describe infants dashed to pieces as the horror inflicted on a conquered city.
- thematic Nahum 3:8 — Shared brutal image of infants dashed to pieces as the fate of a conquered city.
- thematic Obadiah 1:10 — Both denounce Edom for gloating over and participating in Jerusalem's destruction on the day of its calamity.