Psalm 137:1-9 vs. “Psalm 137 (Babylon)”

Sons of Korah · checked 2026-09-06

What we checked

PassagePsalm 137:1-9 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asparaphrase

Categoryadditions / omissions

AlbumRedemption Songs · 2000

Words addressed tovaries by section

Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

The band's own upload carries a signed commentary that works through the whole psalm, including the last verse, so the hardest part is explained right beside the music
The psalm's history is kept. The exile, the captors asking for a song, Zion, Jerusalem and the foundations called for show up in every transcription checked, and Edom is named in two of the three
In two of the transcriptions, a marker word from each verse first appears in the psalm's own order, from the rivers through to verse 8
Verse 7's prayer is kept, and in the psalm that prayer is handed to the LORD. The psalm asks God to remember. It does not tell the singer to act
This is a lament and the setting leaves it as one. No turn into praise, and no ending the psalm does not have, shows up in any transcription checked

⚠ Cautions

Three separate transcriptions of this setting carry the psalm through verse 8. None carries verse 9. Nothing the band itself publishes could be checked against, so this rests on the transcriptions
Verse 9 is the verse a reader most needs help with. The band's help for it sits in the video description, not in anything you sing
The band's per-psalm pages carry commentary only and name no translation, and neither does the commentary published with the upload. The NIV naming lives in a 2010 interview
The wording is loosened for singing. The band's own account of the method is artistic licence used sparingly, not word for word

Verse Proof

Psalm 137:1-9

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the willows we hung our harps, for there our captors requested a song; our tormentors demanded songs of joy: “Sing us a song of Zion.” How can we sing a song of the LORD in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand cease to function. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy! Remember, O LORD, the sons of Edom on the day Jerusalem fell: “Destroy it,” they said, “tear it down to its foundations!” O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us. Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

Psalm 137 carries no heading naming a writer. It runs nine verses, and it names its own moment. The speakers are exiles from Judah, sitting by the waterways of Babylon after Jerusalem fell. Verses 1 to 4 set the scene. They wept, they hung up their instruments, and their captors asked them for one of the songs of Zion. Verses 5 and 6 are a vow. May the singer's own hand and tongue fail him before he forgets Jerusalem. Verse 7 turns and speaks to God. It asks the LORD to remember what Edom said on the day the city fell. Verses 8 and 9 turn again and speak to Babylon, and they close on an image of infants and the rock. The band's own commentary places the psalm in the Babylonian defeat of 605 to 586 BC and works through it to that last verse.

What the song says, described not quoted

The band publishes no lyric sheet for this song. So the sung words were not read against anything the rights holder printed. What could be checked was word presence across three separate transcriptions of the recording, all listed in the sources. All three carry the opening scene by the rivers, the instruments put away, and the captors asking for a song. All three carry the vow about Jerusalem, including the hand and the tongue. All three carry verse 7's demand about the city's foundations, and two of the three name Edom. All three carry verse 8, where the psalm speaks to Babylon. None of the three carries any word that verse 9 needs. In the two fullest transcriptions, a marker word from each verse first appears in the psalm's own order, from the rivers through to verse 8.

The shape holds and the ending does not. In the transcriptions checked, the psalm runs in its own order as far as verse 8. Verse 9 is the part that is missing. Verse 9 is the psalm's closing curse, and the verses that are sung do not depend on it for their sense, so what is sung is not made to mean something else. The wording is also loosened for singing, and the band does not hide that. Matthew Jacoby has described the method in interview as a little artistic licence, with the psalm preserved as far as it can be. He named the NIV there as the translation the band works from most. That naming lives in a 2010 interview. The band's per-psalm pages carry commentary only. None of them names a translation, and neither does the commentary published with the upload. So a listener has no version to hold the wording against. Wikipedia's article says the band uses the psalms "almost verbatim." That is a third party talking, and it is a stronger claim than the band makes for itself.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The setting works through Psalm 137 in order, with the wording loosened for singing. Three separate transcriptions of it carry the text through verse 8, and none carries verse 9. No translation is named with the song.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The song stops at verse 8. The commentary under it does not.

Why it matters

Psalm 137 is a psalm most people know one line of. The rest of it is a record of a defeat. It reports a real deportation, and what a neighbouring nation said while it happened. Then it ends on the image of infants and the rock. The band's own commentary treats that verse as one a reader will need help with, and works through it rather than passing over it.

That is what makes the ending worth tracking. A setting that carries this psalm as far as verse 8 has kept far more of it than the one famous line. It still leaves the reader at the exact place where the help is needed. Here the help exists. It is printed under the video rather than in the song.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repetition plants here is grief that is not talked out of itself. The song keeps the exiles sitting down and weeping, and it keeps the harps up in the willows. It does not hurry to a resolution, because the psalm does not have one there. Loop it and what settles in is a refusal to sing on demand, a vow to keep Jerusalem first, and a request handed to God rather than carried out. The tally between God and self lands in the middle. Most of the words are about a people and a city. God is spoken to once, in verse 7. That is worth knowing before a song is sung until it is memorized. A person can plant this psalm and find it has trained him to remember, to grieve honestly, and to leave the settling of accounts with God. The part the song stops short of is where the band's own commentary does the rest of the work.

Helpful comparison

Beside the band's Psalm 121 and Psalm 131 settings, elsewhere on this site, the difference is the ending. Both of those carry every verse of a short psalm. This one runs as far as verse 8, and the verse it stops before is the one that would be hardest to sing.

It is worth setting next to The Corner Room's Psalm 88, elsewhere on this site, which splits an eighteen-verse lament across two tracks rather than trim it. Two projects, two answers to the same problem. One made the song longer to keep everything. One kept the song and put the missing part in the notes. A reader can check both, which is the point.

Sources

Sons of Korah — Psalm 137 (official upload) · (the band's own channel, @SonsofKorah. oEmbed returns author_name "Sons of Korah" and title "Psalm 137 - Sons of Korah". The description carries the band's commentary on the psalm, signed "Matt Jacoby - Leader Sons of Korah", and covers what verse 9 says, though without numbering it. The upload runs 4:49 and the album track is listed at 5:02, so this entry treats them as the same setting rather than as the same master)
Sons of Korah — Psalm 137 commentary · (a longer version of the same commentary on the band's own site, which does number verses 8 and 9: the Babylonian defeat of 605 to 586 BC, the instruments put away as a sign that there is no joy apart from God, and the psalm's closing curse read through Genesis 12:3. No lyric sheet, and no translation named)
Cross Rhythms — Sons Of Korah interview · (Tony Cummings, dated Wednesday 22nd September 2010. Matthew Jacoby: "We use a little bit of artistic licence, but we try to leave them as much as possible"; "Normally we have to change it a little bit more to get it to flow with the music, but not much; we usually try and preserve the Psalm"; "The NIV has actually been the easiest translation to work with". The same article lists Redemption Songs, released November 2000, as including Psalm 137)
Exodus Books — Redemption Songs CD listing · (the CD track list: track 1 is "Psalm 137 - Babylon", 5:02, on the 2000 album Redemption Songs)
Wikipedia — Sons of Korah (band) · ("The group put Psalms to music, using them as lyrics, almost verbatim." A third-party description, not a claim the band makes for itself)
Messianic Chords — Psalm 137, Babylon by Sons of Korah · (transcription 1 of the three, checked for word presence and word order only)
Genius — Sons of Korah, Psalm 137 (Babylon) · (transcription 2 of the three, checked for word presence and word order only)
ChordU — Babylon (Psalm 137), Sons of Korah · (transcription 3 of the three, checked for word presence only; keyed to a third-party re-upload of the track, video oxdCW4eqWzc on the channel Foreign Sheep, not the band's own upload)

Corrections

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