Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 137:5
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget [her cunning].
5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem ] To have consented would have seemed an act of unfaithfulness to Zion. Some of the exiles did forget the “holy mountain” (Isa 65:11). For the imprecation as a solemn asseveration cp. Job 31:21-22.
forget her cunning] So the aposiopesis is admirably completed in the Great Bible of 1540. Less forcibly the LXX and Jer. read the verb as a passive, ‘Let my right hand be forgotten,’ which is the rendering of Coverdale (1535), retained in the first edition of the Great Bible.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem – The meaning here is, that to sing in such circumstances would seem to imply that they had forgotten Jerusalem; that they were unmindful of its sorrows, and cared not that it was desolate. The remembrance of its calamities pressed hard upon them, and they could not do anything which would seem to imply that they had become unmindful of the sufferings that had come upon their nation. One will not make merry when a wife or child lies dying – or on the day of the funeral – or over the grave of a mother. A joyous and brilliant party, accompanied with music, feasting, dancing, when a friend has been just laid in the grave, when the calamities of war are abroad, when the pestilence is raging in a city, we feel to be untimely, unseemly, and incongruous. So these captives said it would be if they should make merry while their temple was in ruins; while their city was desolate; while their people were captives in a foreign land.
Let my right hand forget her cunning – Let my right hand forget its skill in music – all its skill. If I should now play on the harp – as indicative of joy – let the hand which would be employed in sweeping over its strings become paralyzed and powerless. Let the punishment come where it would seem to be deserved – on the hand which could play at such a time. So Cranmer held the hand which had been employed in signing a recantation of his faith in the fire, until it was burned off, and dropped in the flames.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 137:5-6
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Recollection and preference of the Church of Christ
I. The object of recollection and preference by the Christian. The Church of Jesus Christ–the universal Church, consisting of all, throughout the world, who believe and obey the Gospel.
1. The Church of Jesus Christ is the dwelling-place of God.
2. It is the light of the world.
3. It is the depository of ordinances and truths requisite for the weal of the human race.
4. It is the sanctuary of salvation.
5. It is a type of the Church in heaven.
II. The emphasis with which the Christian expresses his recollection of, and preference for, the Church of Jesus Christ.
1. Because of its wonderful revelations.
2. Because of its sacred exercises.
3. Because of its ennobling associations.
4. Because of its momentous interests–truth, righteousness, joy. (P. J. Wright.)
Religious public-spiritedness
I. What it is. It is love to the Church of Christ, regulated by knowledge, and prompting to zealous and steady activity in advancing the Churchs interests. It is in the kingdom of God on earth what patriotism is in the body politic. It directs and rules him; he lives for the Church; he consecrates to her welfare all that he is, and all that he has.
II. How it is to be exemplified.
1. By self-denial for the sake of the Church. This includes a disposition to forego everything, however innocent and lawful in itself, which we cannot enjoy without doing less than we ought to do for the interests of religion.
2. By identifying ourselves with the interests of the Church.
3. By promoting the purity of the Church. Not only is the Church of Christ a holy community, but holiness is the very thing which distinguishes it from the world.
4. By strenuously maintaining the integrity of the Church. It is not a mutilated, vitiated Christianity that is to convert the nations. It is when the Church goes forth in all the might of her Divine simplicity and integrity that she will take the world captive to Christ.
5. By labouring for the extension of the Church.
III. What are the considerations which should stimulate, the operation of a religious public spirit?
1. Consider what is due to God. Is obedience due to Him? Well, cherish and exemplify public-spiritedness in religion, for God requires it of every one of you. Is gratitude due to God? due to Him more especially as the God of the Church? Cherish and exemplify public-spiritedness in religion: there is no sacrifice of praise more pleasing to the Lord.
2. Consider what is due to Jesus Christ.
3. Consider what is due to the Church.
4. Consider what is due to a perishing world. Will you not pity it, pray for it, do all you can to reclaim it? (D. Young, D. D.)
Patriotism
I. Some of its characteristic features.
1. A spirit of enterprise in behalf of religion. The Jew professed his religion in Babylon; he did not merge his Judaism in Babylonianism. He stood out in Babylon a Jew. Why not stand out a Christian? I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, says one. You are not to blow the trumpet; but there is another thing you are not to do–you are not to hide the light; you are not to place it under a bed, or under a bushel, or hide it in a cupboard.
2. A lively sympathy with the state of the Church.
3. Zeal for the Churchs purity. This must be tempered with prudence and steeped in charity.
4. Prayer and effort for the Churchs prosperity.
II. Some of its leading principles. They are to be found in the Bible.
1. The love of God. This love has prompted the noblest exertions. Shall I take you over the traces where this public spirit has displayed itself? shall I take you to the spots where apostles suffered, where martyrs bled, where confessors were burnt,? Shall I take you to Smithfield and its fires, or the Grass Market in Edinburgh and its martyrs fires? What prompted men to such a nobility? It was this mighty principle–the love of God, the love of Christ.
2. A consideration of the connection subsisting between a Christian and Christ and His Church. No Christian lives to himself. The Christian is no isolated man; he is no solitary soldier. He feels himself one of a brotherhood; one of a great fellowship.
3. In proportion as we feel not only for our own things, but for the things of others, and especially for the things of grace, and Christ Jesus, just in that proportion do we most promote our own honour and our own happiness. God, in constructing the human heart, putting it together–putting his labours together, and lacing them together, has so adjusted the chemistry of the heart, the mechanism of the heart, that, if you do good to anybody–either to the body or soul of a man, especially the latter–if you do good, a feeling of pleasure will weave all around the pulsation of your heart; for it is your law, your constitution. God has made you all, so that you cannot do good and not promote your own happiness and your own honour. (J. Beaumont, M. D.)
How to preserve and increase patriotism
By keeping in remembrance the virtues and principles of the noble and patriotic men who laid the foundations of this republic. While the memory of the immortal Washington and his co-patriots is green, and the principles of his Farewell Address are cherished by us, we are safe.
2. By honouring with suitable memorial services those who have sacrificed ease and fortune and life itself at their countrys call, in behalf of liberty, principle, the right.
3. By the enactment of wise and equitable laws, and a faithful and impartial execution of them. Never was the necessity of this greater or more imperative than now.
4. By elevating patriotism into a Christian virtue. Patriotism without piety; patriotism divorced from Christianity and the institutions of religion; the State, civil society, politics, given over to infidelity, to ungodliness, to the tyranny of human passions and selfish seeking, cannot be long maintained. And here is our greatest danger to-day. (Homiletic Review.)
Religious attachments
Do cultivate religious attachments. Do not let all things be equally common: do let us have a little enthusiasm about some men, and some places, and some books, and some scenes. Oh, it is not living to live with a person to whom all places are alike,–who does not know what he is eating, whether it is the very best or the worst. There is no comfort in living with such an individual, on whom the best of your things are wasted. There is no comfort in living with an individual to whom all systems, and all churches, and all rituals are alike. Do have your preferences,–not that you may antagonize the preferences of other people, and make yourself unpleasant to those who may differ from you; but do get to love some particular seat in the church–some particular corner. A man cannot go slick down to hell, surely, if he loves one little bit of the sanctuary better than he loves any place else on the earth. Oh, we can surely get hold of him there: we can surely touch him through that one little preference. It is a very poor hold to have upon him, but it is better than nothing. Do you mourn your distance from Zion, and are you unable to sing when you are in far-off Babylon? There is hope for you. One day the Jew that hung his harp upon the willow shall take it down. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem] Such conduct would be, in effect, a renunciation of our land a tacit acknowledgment that we were reconciled to our bondage; 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! 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.
Let my right hand forget] Let me forget the use of my right hand. Let me forget that which is dearest and most profitable to me; and let me lose my skill in the management of my harp, if I ever prostitute it to please the ungodly multitude or the enemies of my Creator!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
If I forget thee; if I do not retain a deep and sorrowful sense of thy ruin and misery, or if I indulge myself in mirth and jollity, as if I had forgotten thee.
Right hand; the chief instrument of playing upon musical instruments and of other actions.
Forget her cunning, i.e. lose its skill of playing. In the Hebrew it is only forget, without expressing what, to intimate the extent and generality of this wish; Let it forget or be disenabled not only for playing, but for every action in which it was formerly used.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5, 6. For joyful songs wouldimply forgetfulness of their desolated homes and fallen Church. Thesolemn imprecations on the hand and tongue, if thusforgetful, relate to the cunning or skill in playing, and the powerof singing.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
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, if the songs of Zion were sung; or to pray for the restoration of her prosperity and peace; as the church of Christ may be said to be forgotten, when men forget to mourn over its breaches, and show no concern for the reparation of them; or at the death of principal persons, which they lay not to heart; or at the great decay of religion in those that survive; or at the sins of professors, and their disregard to the word and ordinances: also when they forget to pray for her happiness in general; for the good of her members in particular; and especially for her ministers, that they may have assistance and success; and for a blessing on the word and ordinances, and for the conversion of sinners; and when they forget the worship of the Lord in it, and forsake the assembling of themselves together;
let my right hand forget [her cunning]; her skill in music, particularly in playing on the harp; see 1Sa 16:16; the harp was held in the left hand, and struck with the right; and that more softly or hardly, as the note required, in which was the skill or cunning of using it. Or let this befall me, should I so far forget Jerusalem as to strike the harp to one of the songs of Zion in a strange land: or let it forget any of its works; let it be disabled from working at all; let it be dry and withered, which, Aben Ezra says, is the sense of the word according to some; and Schultens d, from the use of it in Arabic, renders it, let it be “disjointed”, or the nerve loosened; see
Job 31:22. Or the sense is, let everything that is as dear as my right hand he taken from me: or, as it may be rendered, “my right hand [is] forgotten” e; that is, should I forget Jerusalem, it would; for that is as my right hand; so Arama. Some choose to translate the words thus, “may thou (O God) forget my right hand” f; that is, to be at my right hand; to be a present help to me in time of need; to hold me by it, and to be the shade of it.
d Animadv. Philol. p. 181. e “oblita est nostra dextra”, Castalio. f “Oblivisceris (O Domine) dexterae meae”, Gejerus; so some in Michaelis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
5. If I shall forget thee, O Jerusalem! This confirms what was said in the former verse, and leaves us in no difficulty to understand what the Psalmist meant by it. For here God’s people declare, and with the solemnity of an oath, that the remembrance of the holy city would be ever engra-yen upon their hearts, and never, under any circumstances, effaced. Having spoken of song, and of the instruments of music, the Psalmist’s appeal is made in terms which corre-spond — that his hand would forager its cunning, and his tongue cleave to his palate, or the roof of his mouth The meaning’ is, that the Lord’s people, while they mourn under personal trials, should be still more deeply affected by public calamities which befall the Church, it being’ reasonable that the zeal of God’s house should have the highest place in our hearts, and rise above all mere private considerations. The second part of the sixth verse some interpret — If this be not my chief joy to see Jerusalem once more in a flourishing condition. Others — Joy will never enter my heart more, till I be gladdened by the Church’s restoration. Both meanings are in my opinion comprehended in the words of the Psalmist. The one cannot be separated from the other; for if we set Jerusalem above our chiefest joy, the height of this joy must arise from the consideration of its prosperity, and, if this be the case, the grief we feel under its calamities will be such as effectually to shut out all worldly joys.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(5) Her cunningi.e., the skill of playing on the harp. If at such a moment the poet can so far forget the miserable bondage of Jerusalem as to strike the strings in joy, may his hand for ever lose the skill to touch them.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
5, 6. If I forget thee The form of language is that of an oath, and the forfeiture is terrible, (see note on Psa 132:3,) while, as an outburst of patriotism and love for the national religion, it is sublime. The right hand and tongue are mentioned, not only as being chiefly employed in skilful music and song, but as among the distinguishing endowments of our being.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 137:5-6. Let my right hand forget her cunning, &c. There is nothing for her cunning in the original. The plain meaning is, “May my right hand forget to play upon the harp; may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, disenabling me from singing, if I prefer not, or according to the original, if I advance not Jerusalem in the beginning of my joy;” that is, “If again I sing any such festival songs, till that joyful day shall come, when I shall see Jerusalem and her holy solemnities restored.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
I hope the Lord’s Israel at all times feels somewhat of this same spirit. It is blessed to feel the love of Jesus in seasons when Jesus is opposed, and to have this testimony in the worst of times. Peter, though he had been led captive by Satan for the moment, could, and did appeal to Jesus, who knew his heart, that he still did love him, Joh 21:17 . Reader! what saith your heart to this question, Is Jesus precious? To them who believe he is so, 1Pe 2:7 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 137:5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget [her cunning].
Ver. 5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem ] As I might seem to do, should I herein gratify these idolaters; or otherwise obey them, rather than God. The Jews at this day, when they build a house, they are, say the Rabbis, to leave one part of it unfinished and lying rude, in remembrance that Jerusalem and the temple are at present desolate. At least, they use to leave about a yard square of the house unplastered, on which they write, in great letters, this of the psalmist, “If I forget Jerusalem,” &c., or else these words, Zecher leehorban, that is, The memory of the desolation (Leo Modena of the Rites of the Jews).
Let my right hand forget
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
If I forget . . . do not remember. The writer’s then present personal declaration.
Let my right hand forget. Supply “me” for the Ellipsis. Some codices, with Septuagint and Vulgate, read “let my right hand be forgotten”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
I forget: Psa 84:1, Psa 84:2, Psa 84:10, Psa 102:13, Psa 102:14, Psa 122:5-9, Neh 1:2-4, Neh 2:2, Neh 2:3, Isa 62:1, Isa 62:6, Isa 62:7, Jer 51:50, Dan 6:10, Dan 6:11
let my right: Zec 11:17
Reciprocal: Exo 26:31 – cunning work Deu 26:15 – bless thy 1Sa 4:22 – The glory 2Sa 15:14 – and smite Psa 51:18 – Do Psa 122:9 – I will seek Dan 9:20 – for
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 137:5-6. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem If I do not retain a deep and sorrowful sense of thy desolations, though never so far removed from thee; or if I indulge myself in mirth and jollity, as if I had forgotten thee; let my right hand The hand chiefly used in playing on musical instruments, and in all other actions; forget her cunning That is, lose its skill of playing. In the Hebrew it is only, Let my right hand forget, without expressing what, to intimate the extent and generality of this wish; let it forget, or be disabled for every action, in which it was formerly used. If I do not remember thee With affection and sympathy, so as to damp my joys; let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth Become incapable of singing, speaking, or moving; if I prefer not Jerusalem, &c. If I do not value and desire Jerusalems prosperity more than all other delights, and consequently, if Jerusalems misery do not so deeply affect me as to hinder my delighting in any other thing. Hebrew, , literally, If I advance not Jerusalem in the beginning, or at the head, (as properly signifies,) of my joy; that is, if I again sing any such festive song till that joyful day shall come, when I shall see Jerusalem and her holy solemnities restored. The whole nation, says Dr. Horne, may be supposed, in these words, to declare as one man, that neither the afflictions nor the allurements of Babylon should efface from their minds the remembrance of Jerusalem, or prevent their looking forward to her future glorious restoration. If any temptation should induce them to employ their tongues and their hands in the service of Babel rather than that of Sion, they wish to lose the use of the former, and the skill of the latter. Thus, the thoughts and affections of true penitents, both in prosperity and adversity, are fixed upon their heavenly country and city: they had rather be deprived of their powers and faculties than of the will to use them aright; and the hope of glory hereafter to be revealed in the church is the flower and crown of their joy.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
137:5 {d} If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget [her cunning].
(d) Even the faithful are touched by their particular griefs, yet the common sorrow of the Church is most grievous to them, and is such as they cannot but remember and lament.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. Love for Jerusalem 137:5-6
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).