Psalm 137: A New Translation

The translation offered below is designed to enhance appreciation of the poetry and prosody of the underlying Hebrew text.

Unobtrusive differences in the use of blank spacing define stress units, versets, lines, strophes, and stanzas.

 A verset of two to three stress units is given a line of its own, with stress units marked by differences in the use of spacing. A line of two to three versets is set off from contiguous lines by an empty line of miminal dimensions. Minimal use of capitalization and punctuation is intentional. Capitalization marks the onset of a strophe as defined in the general rule.[1]

 The goal has been to furnish a global approximation of the poetry and prosody of the Hebrew text, even if the results are necessarily piecemeal. The rich texture of the original cannot be mapped onto a translation except in fits and starts. I sometimes retain, in imitation of the Hebrew, examples of enallage, chiasm, ellipsis, and inversion which perforce result in a less idiomatic rendering. 

 My thanks to David Curzon for going over a draft of this translation, and for helping me to avoid unnecessary archaisms and awkward expressions.

Psalm 137
   
By the rivers  of Babylon

there  we sat  and wept

when we remembered  Zion

 

on the willows  in its midst

we hung  our lyres

 

for there  our captors

demanded  words of  song

our mockers  mirth

 

sing  for us

a song  of Zion

 

how can we sing  a song of YHVH

on foreign  soil?

 

If I forget you, Jerusalem

let my right hand  wither

 

let my tongue cleave  to my palate

if I do not  remember you

 

if I  do not set  Jerusalem

above my highest delight

 

Remember,  YHVH,

against  the Edomites

that day  of Jerusalem

 

when they said,  lay bare,  lay bare

the foundation  of it

 

Lovely Babylon, the doomed

how happy  he who rewards you

with the portion you apportioned us

 

how happy  he who seizes and dashes

your infants  against the rock

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[1] The general rule: ancient Hebrew verse is confined within a system of “twos and threes”: two to three “stress units” make up a “verset”; two to three versets a poetic “line”; two to three lines a “strophe”; two to three strophes a “stanza”; two to three stanzas a “section”; and two to three sections a poem, or an extensive section thereof.