\\INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 137\\

The occasion of this psalm was the captivity of the Jews in Babylon,
and the treatment they met with there; either as foreseen, or as now
endured. Aben Ezra ascribes this psalm to David; and so the Syriac
version, which calls it,

``a psalm of David; the words of the saints, who were carried
captive into Babylon.''

The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Ethiopic versions, make it to be
David's, and yet add the name of Jeremiah; and the Arabic version calls
it David's, concerning Jeremiah: but, as Theodoret observes, Jeremiah
was not carried into Babylon, but, after some short stay in or near
Jerusalem, was forced away into Egypt; and could neither be the writer
nor subject of this psalm: and though it might be written by David under
a spirit of prophecy; who thereby might foresee and foretell the
Babylonish captivity, and what the Jews would suffer in it; as the
prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah did, many years before it came to pass;
yet it seems rather to have been written by one of the captivity,
either while in it, or immediately after it.