Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 137

By the rivers ...—Mentioned as the characteristic feature of the country, as we say “among the mountains of Wales.” The canals which irrigated Babylonia made it what an ancient writer called it, the greatest of “cities of river places.”

Willows. —It is perhaps not necessary to attempt to identify the trees mentioned in this verse, since the touching picture may only be a poetical way of expressing the silence during the exile of all the religious and festal songs. The ‘ ereb’ is certainly not the willow, a tree not found in Babylonia, but the poplar (Populus Euphraticus) .

A song. —See the margin. The expression is generally regarded as redundant, but may be explained as in Psalm 105:27 (see the note there). Perhaps “some lyric thing” would express the original. No doubt it is a Levite who is requested to sing.

They that wasted us. —A peculiar Hebrew word which the Septuagint and Vulgate interpret as synonymous with the verb in the first clause. The modern explanation, “they that make us howl,” is far preferable. Those whose oppression had raised the wild, Eastern scream of lamentation now asked for mirth.

Songs of Zion —or, as in the next verse, songs of Jehovah, were, of course, the liturgical hymns. Nothing is more characteristic than this of the Hebrew sensibility. The captors asked for a national song to amuse them, much as the Philistines asked Samson for sport. The Hebrew can think only of one kind of song: that to which the unique spirit of their people was dedicated.

Strange land.— The feeling expressed in this question is too natural to need any such explanation as that it was contrary to the Law to sing a sacred song in a strange land. Nehemiah’s answer (Nehemiah 2:2–3) offers a direct illustration.

Of Jerusalem’s choir in Babylon it might truly be said:

“Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays.
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallowed ground.”

TENNYSON: In Memoriam.

Her cunning — i.e., the skill of playing on the harp. If at such a moment the poet can so far forget the miserable bondage of Jerusalem as to strike the strings in joy, may his hand forever lose the skill to touch them.