Psalms 137

My Notes Authors

My Notes Authors Matthew Henry - Commentary on the Whole Bible We have here the daughter of Zion covered with a cloud, and dwelling with the daughter of Babylon; the people of God in tears, but sowing in tears. Observe, I. The mournful posture they were in as to their affairs and as to their spirits. 1. They were posted by the rivers of Babylon, in a strange land, a great way from their own country, whence they were brought as prisoners of war. The land of Babylon was now a house of bondage to that people, as Egypt had been in their beginning. Their conquerors quartered them by the rivers, with design to employ them there, and keep them to work in their galleys; or perhaps they chose it as the most melancholy place, and therefore most suitable to their sorrowful spirits. If they must build houses there (Jer. xxix. 5), it shall not be in the cities, the places of concourse, but by the rivers, the places of solitude, where they might mingle their tears with the streams. We find some of them by the river Chebar (Ezek. i. 3), others by the river Ulai, Dan. viii. 2. 2. There they sat down to indulge their grief by poring on their miseries. Jeremiah had taught them under this yoke to sit alone, and keep silence, and put their mouths in the dust, Lam. iii. 28, 29. “We sat down, as those that expected to stay, and were content, since it was the will of God that it must be so.” 3. Thoughts of Zion drew tears from their eyes; and it was not a sudden passion of weeping, such as we are sometimes put into by a trouble that surprises us, but they were deliberate tears (we sat down and wept), tears with consideration—we wept when we remembered Zion, the holy hill on which the temple was built. Their affection to God’s house swallowed up their concern for their own houses. They remembered Zion’s former glory and the satisfaction they had had in Zion’s courts, Lam. i. 7. _Jerusalem remembered, in the days of her misery, all her pleasant things which she had in the days of old, _Ps. xlii. 4. They remembered Zion’s present desolations, and favoured the dust thereof, which was a good sign that the time for God to favour it was not far off, Ps. cii. 13, 14. 4. They laid by their instruments of music (v. 2): We hung our harps upon the willows. (1.) The harps they used for their own diversion and entertainment. These they laid aside, both because it was their judgment that they ought not to use them now that God called to weeping and mourning (Isa. xxii. 12), and their spirits were so sad that they had no hearts to use them; they brought their harps with them, designing perhaps to use them for the alleviating of their grief, but it proved so great that it would not admit the experiment. Music makes some people melancholy. As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that sings songs to a heavy heart. (2.) The harps they used in God’s worship, the Levites’ harps. These they did not throw away, hoping they might yet again have occasion to use them, but they laid them aside because they had no present use for them; God had cut them out other work by _turning their feasting into mourning and their songs into lamentations, _Amos viii. 10. Every thing is beautiful in its season. They did not hide their harps in the bushes, or the hollows of the rocks; but hung them up in view, that the sight of them might affect them with this deplorable change. Yet perhaps they were faulty in doing this; for praising God is never out of season; it is his will that we should _in every thing give thanks, _Isa. xxiv. 15, 16.

My Notes Authors

My Notes Authors