Psalms 137

Which worship songs are based on Psalms 137?

  1. Babylon — Adam Again (2013) Psalms 137:1

    The song closely adapts the verse's distinctive scene of communal weeping beside Babylon's waterways while remembering Zion. Its repeated remembrance and overlapping voices sustain this specific exilic lament.

  2. Bye Bye Babylon — Elevation Worship (2022) Psalms 137:1-4

    The Babylonian setting, willow tree, suspended harp, and recovery of Zion’s songs unmistakably reverse Psalm 137’s scene of exiles silenced by grief.

  3. Where I Belong — Switchfoot (2011) Psalms 137:1-4

    The chorus places singing beside Babylon's waters amid homesickness, unmistakably invoking this psalm's setting and predicament. It reworks the exiles' difficulty singing into a determination to continue.

  4. Bring Us Back — Joshua Aaron (2018) Psalms 137:1-4

    The verses closely reproduce the psalm's setting and details: exiles mourning beside Babylon's waterways, instruments suspended from trees, captors demanding songs of Zion, and the difficulty of sacred singing outside the land.

  5. Jesus Is A Love Song - Live — The Clark Sisters (2013) Psalms 137:4

    The song closely adapts the exiles' question about singing sacred music in a foreign land. It reframes their dilemma as encouragement to sustain worship amid disorienting personal circumstances.

Psalms 137 (King James Version)

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.