Bible Strands
Psalms 137:4
How can we sing a song of the LORD in a foreign land?
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The exiled Israelites answer their Babylonian captors who demanded they perform songs of Zion after forcibly removing them from Jerusalem.
The words — The rhetorical question relies on אֵ֗ךְ ('Eikh, "how?") and נֵכָֽר (ne.Khar, "foreignness"), literally asking how worship can occur on conquered, alien soil.
The thread — This displacement of sacred music parallels Isaiah 22:12, Amos 8:3, and Hosea 9:4, where prophetic judgment replaces temple celebration with mourning.
Why it lands — The text asserts that covenant worship cannot be performed under occupation, requiring the reader to confront the practical impossibility of joyful devotion in a displaced context.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Cross-references
- Isaiah 22:12 On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
- Amos 8:3 “In that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”
- Hosea 9:4 They will not pour out wine offerings to the LORD, and their sacrifices will not please Him, but will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat will be defiled. For their bread will be for themselves; it will not enter the house of the LORD.
- Lamentations 5:14 The elders have left the city gate; the young men have stopped their music.
- Ecclesiastes 3:4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
- Isaiah 49:21 Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. So who has reared them? Look, I was left all alone, so where did they come from?’”