Psalm 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. 2 We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it. 3 For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, and those who plundered us requested mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How shall we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. 6 If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth— if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. 7 Remember, O Yahweh, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, “Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!” 8 O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us! 9 Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!
The author is uncertain, perhaps it was David based on the prophesies concerning the coming captivity of Judah. Anyway, the poet “was a Jew to the heart‘s core; an ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews;’ embodying and expressing in this short psalm all that there was which was special in Hebrew feeling, patriotism, devotion.” (Albert Barnes) It was not the remnant couldn’t sing, for this— the refusal to sing a joyous song— was a song. They just couldn’t sing one of Yahweh’s song of Zion with harp because of the Captivity. “The LXX. prefix a curious title ‘To David of Jeremiah;’ Vulg., ‘Psalmus David Jeremias,’ which has been explained ‘a David-like song by Jeremiah.’” (C. J. Ellicott) Perhaps it was a psalm of David influenced by Jeremiah: “Thus says Yahweh of hosts: Because you have not heard My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north… and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment… Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” (Jeremiah 25:1-11) In this state of exisitence: “Ordinances, means of grace, and the enjoyment of sabbaths, would be painful subjects of recollection, if the Lord, for the sin of a land, were to remove the candlestick out of its place.” (Robert Hawker) Find the history of fulfillment in 2 Chronicles 36:14-20 of the sacred Writ.
“’By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down— denoting “a continued period of captivity, that they were not only torn from the sight of their native country, but in a manner buried and entombed.” (John Calvin)— ’yea, we’— a faithful remnant of the Levites— ‘wept when we remembered Zion.’ (1) The former solemnities, the present desolations.” (Trapp) “Many of their friends had been slain by the sword—the house of God was burned—the walls of Jerusalem were broken down—and they themselves were captives in a foreign land. No wonder that they sat down and wept when they remembered Zion.” (Robert Murray M'Cheyne) "'We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof’ - in the midst of the land of Babylon. We no longer could use our harps, which are the accompaniment of joyous song (Genesis 31:27; 2 Samuel 6:5). For we were away from Zion, where God reveals His presence, and therefore away from all joy (Job 30:31; Isaiah 24:8; Revelation 18:22).” (A. R. Jamieson) “Is it asked how they had carried their harps with them so far from their native land, we have in this another proof mentioned by the Psalmist of their faith and fervent piety, for the Levites when stripped of all their fortunes had preserved their harps at least as a piece of precious furniture, to be devoted to a former use when opportunity presented itself. We may suppose that those who truly feared God put a high value upon the relics of his worship, and showed the greatest care in preserving them, till the period of their restoration.” (John Calvin)
“‘For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song,’… in disdain and derision of our religion; q.d. Will ye sing no more holy songs in honour of your God?... So Belshazzar abused the bowls of the sanctuary. So the bloody persecutors at Orleans, as they murdercd the Protestants, required them to sing.” (John Trapp) These are “indeed a remnant of true Israelites, the faithful believers in God, among the multitudes of the Babylonian captives. These were the `righteous remnant' spoken of by Isaiah.” (Coffman Commentary)—> “‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem' and sing and play as if nothing is amiss- this would be “a concession that we were pleased with our captivity, and could profane holy ordinances by using them as means of sport or pastime to the heathen. No: Jerusalem! [No joyous song until the proper season.] We remember thee and thy Divine ordinances: and especially thy King and our God, whose indignation we must bear, because we have sinned against Him.” (Adam Clarke)—"'Let my right hand [which plays the harp] forget its skill…. Let my tongue [which sings a joyous note] cling to the roof of my mouth'— The poet promised to remember Jerusalem forever. He called down imprecations on himself if he ever were to forget the city that had been the scene of so much joyful worship in the past. The hand and tongue stand for all action and speech (by synecdoche). One reason the Israelites loved Jerusalem so much, was that it was the site of their annual festivals-that were mainly joyous occasions of praise and fellowship (cf. Lamentations 1-2).” (Thomas B. Constable)
And thus it is when a soul leave Zion- the place where God makes himself known. "When a poor awakened sinner is brought to know the Saviour, and to enter through the rent veil into the holiest of all, then he becomes one of the people of Zion: "A day in thy courts is better than a thousand." He dwells in Zion; and the people that dwell therein are forgiven their iniquity. But when a believer falls into sin he falls into darkness—he is carried a captive away from Zion. No more does he find entrance within the veil; no more is he glad when they say to him, ‘Let us go up to the house of the Lord.’ He sits down and weeps when he remembers Zion.” (Robert Murray M'Cheyne) Joy “cannot be drawn forth from the soul on which the load of God’s displeasure, real or imagined, is still lying, or which is still powerless to apprehend the grace and the life for sinners, which is in Christ Jesus. And again, there is a land yet more strange and foreign to the Lord’s song, even than the land of unforgiven guilt, and that is the land of unforsaken sin.’ (2) ‘Are you in a strange land? Have you been carried away into captivity by your sins? I do not wonder that of late the Lord’s song has died down within your soul, and that His praise is unaccustomed. You cannot forget the past. But ask God to restore it to you, and you to it, that again the old gladness may be yours.’” (James Nisbet)
"Remember, O Yahweh, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, 'Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!' (7) It was very wicked of them to rejoice at the fall of Jerusalem, "for they were of one blood: and it was not more than five years before the Chaldeans inflicted the same calamity upon them.” (Sutcliffe)— “most barbarous and unchristian.” (Edward Marbury) “Edom's hatred was the hatred with which the carnal mind in its natural enmity against God always regards whatever is the elect object of His favour. Jerusalem was the city of God.” (Arthur Pridham) Edom has cast its lot with Babylon.—“O daughter of Babylon,’ etc. who art by God’s righteous and irrevocable sentence devoted to certain destruction. — ‘happy the one ’; as being God’s instrument to vindicate His honour, and execute His just judgments, and fulfil His counsel and word; which Cyrus was to his own great glory and advantage, as appears both from sacred and profane history— ‘who repays you as you have served us!’; that shall use thee with equal cruelty.” (Poole) “Edom shall be remembered for the mischievous counsel he; and the daughter of Babylon shall be forever razed out of memory for razing Jerusalem to the ground.” (Daniel Featley)
“’Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!’ (9) “These prophetic declarations contain no excitement to any person or persons to commit acts of cruelty and barbarity; but are simply declarative of what would take place in the order of the retributive providence and justice of God, and the general opinion that should in consequence be expressed on the subject; therefore praying for the destruction of our enemies is totally out of the question.” (Adam Clarke) "But these prophecies have not yet been fulfilled in every particular, and remain to be accomplished in mystic Babylon, when the dominion of Antichrist shall be forever swept away, and the true church introduced into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, at the appearing of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His own kingdom.” (William Wilson) “And let all the secret and open enemies of God's church take heed how they employ their tongues and hands against God's secret ones: they that presume to do either may here read their fatal doom written in the dust of Edom, and in the ashes of Babylon. (Daniel Featley) ”The fate of the final Babylon as given in Isaiah 13:16 corresponds with the last verse of this Psalm— ‘Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.’” (Gaebelein)