But the song will not close with reference only to Israel's blessings. "He gives bread to all flesh." The loving-kindness which flashes forth even in destructive acts, and is manifested especially in bringing Israel back from exile, stretches as wide in its beneficence as it did in its first creative acts, and sustains all flesh which it has made. Therefore the final call to praise, which rounds off the psalm by echoing its beginning, does not name Him by the Name which implied Israel's special relation, but by that by which other peoples could and did address Him, "the God of heaven," from whom all good comes down on all the earth. PSALM CXXXVII. 1 By the streams of Babylon, there we sat, yea, wept, When we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows in the midst thereof We hung our harps. 3 For there our captors required of us words of song, And our plunderers [required of us] mirth; "Sing us one of the songs of Zion." 4 How can we sing Jehovah's songs In a strange land? 5 If I forget thee, Jerusalem, May my right hand forget! 6 May my tongue cleave to my palate, If I remember thee not, If I set not Jerusalem Above the summit of my joy! 7 Remember, Jehovah, to the children of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, "Lay bare, lay bare, To the foundation therein." 8 Daughter of Babylon, thou that art laid waste, Happy he that requites thee Thy doing which thou hast done to us! 9 Happy he that seizes and dashes thy little ones Against the rock! The Captivity is past, as the tenses in vv. 1-3 show, and as is manifest from the very fact that its miseries have become themes for a psalm. Grief must be somewhat removed before it can be sung. But the strains of triumph heard in other psalms are wanting in this, which breathes passionate love for Jerusalem, tinged with sadness still. The date of the psalm is apparently the early days of the Return, when true-hearted patriots still felt the smart of recent bondage and sadly gazed on the dear ruins of the city. The singer passes in brief compass from tender music breathing plaintive remembrance of the captives' lot, to passionate devotion, and at last to an outburst of vehement imprecation, magnificent in its fiery rush, amply explicable by Israel's wrongs and Babylon's crimes, and yet to be frankly acknowledged as moving on a lower plane of sentiment than is permissible to those who have learned to repay scorn with gentleness, hate with love, and injuries with desires for the injurer's highest good. The coals of fire which this psalmist scatters among Israel's foes are not those which Christ's servants are bidden to heap on their enemies' heads.