What does Psalms Chapter 136 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Remembered Sion accompanies weeping and suspended instruments. The song question precedes conditional remembrance requests. Repayment statements and spiritual interpretation remain distinct.

Chapter breakdown

Super flumina is the incipit and the heading names Babylonian captivity lament. The inscription is a psalm of David for Jeremias, with a separate note explaining the time of Jeremias and Babylon captivity.

The speakers sat and wept beside Babylon’s rivers remembering Sion and hung instruments on willows. Captors required song words and a Sion hymn; the speakers ask how to sing the Lord’s song in strange land. Instruments are not newly identified as harps, and the text supplies no mocking entertainment or spirit-breaking motive.

The speaker asks his right hand forgotten if he forgets Jerusalem and tongue cleaving to jaws if he fails remembrance or making Jerusalem joy’s beginning. Lost instrumental skill and an achieved refusal preserving memory are not added. He asks the Lord to remember Edom’s children on Jerusalem’s day, who said to raze to foundations.

He calls Babylon’s daughter miserable and pronounces blessed the one who shall repay her payment and the one who shall take and dash her little ones on rock. Future repayment is not a witnessed outcome. A separate edition note gives the spiritual sense as mortifying passions and stifling first motions by speedy recourse to Christ the rock. That attributed interpretation stays distinct from the severe words it explains.

The story inside

Opening: Remembered Sion accompanies weeping and suspended instruments. Development: The song question precedes conditional remembrance requests. Conclusion: Repayment statements and spiritual interpretation remain distinct.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Remembered Sion accompanies weeping and suspended instruments.
2
The song question precedes conditional remembrance requests.
3
Repayment statements and spiritual interpretation remain distinct.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 66520–66521
For Jeremias.... For the time of Jeremias, and the captivity of Babylon.
Lines 66523–66532
136:1. Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion: 136:2. On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. 136:3. For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs. And they that carried us away, said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion. 136:4. How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?
Lines 66534–66537
136:5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. 136:6. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.
Lines 66548–66551
Dash thy little ones, etc.... In the spiritual sense, we dash the little ones of Babylon against the rock, when we mortify our passions, and stifle the first motions of them, by a speedy recourse to the rock which is Christ.