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John Gill
INTRODUCTION TO Psalms 137 The occasion of this psalm was the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and the treatment they met with there; either as foreseen, or as now endured. Aben Ezra ascribes this psalm to David; and so the Syriac version, which calls it, "a psalm of David; the words of the saints, who were carried captive into Babylon.'' The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Ethiopic versions,...
John Gill
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,.... This was said by one or everyone of the Levites; or singers, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi; or by the congregation of Israel, as Jarchi; by one of them, in the name of the rest; or by the composer of the psalm. The Targum is, "the voice of the Spirit of God answered and said, "if I forget", c.'' that is, to weep over the calamities of Jerusalem which might be thought,...
Matthew Henry
There are divers psalms which are thought to have been penned in the latter days of the Jewish church, when prophecy was near expiring and the canon of the Old Testament ready to be closed up, but none of them appears so plainly to be of a late date as this, which was penned when the people of God were captives in Babylon, and there insulted over by these proud oppressors; probably it was towards...
Charles H. Spurgeon
How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. “No,” they said, “if we were to make mirth for the Babylonians, we should be doing serious damage to Zion, we should be traitors to Jerusalem;” so the harpers said, “Sooner than we will play a tune to make mirth for you, let our right hands become paralyzed.”