18 matching verse commentaries
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
INTRODUCTION TO Psalms 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...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,.... If by Babylon is meant the country, then the rivers of it are Chebar, Ulai, Tigris, Euphrates, and others; see Ezekiel 1:1; but if the city itself, then only Euphrates, which ran through it; and is expressed by rivers, because of the largeness of it, and because of the several canals cut out of it,...
Matthew Henry - Complete Commentary - Matthew Henry
There are divers psalms which are thought to have been penned in the latter days of the Jewish church, when prophecy was near expiring and the canon of the Old Testament ready to be closed up, but none of them appears so plainly to be of a late date as this, which was penned when the people of God were captives in Babylon, and there insulted over...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. Babylon was full of canals and rivers; the captive Israelites sought out lonely places where they might be away front their oppressors, and might in the company of their countrymen pour out the sad stream...
Spurgeon - Treasury of David - Charles H. Spurgeon
Ver. 1. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Water courses were abundant in Babylon, wherein were not only natural streams but artificial canals: it was place of broad rivers and streams. Glad to be away from the noisy streets, the captives sought the river side, where the flow of the waters seemed to be in sympathy with their tears. It...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. These were musical instruments, used in the temple service by the Levites, who seem to be the persons here speaking; who took care of them, and preserved them from the plunder of the enemy; and carried them with them to Babylon, in hope of returning with them to use them as before, or to...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,.... Or, "words of a song" (z). To repeat the words of one of the songs of Zion, as it is afterwards expressed: this the Babylonians did, as the Targum; who were they that carried the Jews into captivity; and this is given as a reason why they hung their harps on willows, and were...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. As no cups except those that were taken out of God’s holy house would do for Belshazzar when he wanted to make himself drank, so no music would suit these heathen captors of Israel but the songs...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?] This is the answer returned by the Jews to the above request or demand; it may be, particularly, by the Levites, whose business it was to sing these songs: so the Targum, "immediately the Levites said, how shall we sing the hymns of the Lord in a strange land?'' This they said, not merely on...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. “No,” they said, “if we were to make mirth for the Babylonians, we should be doing serious damage to Zion, we should be traitors to Jerusalem;” so the harpers said, “Sooner than we will play a tune to make mirth for you, let...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,.... This was said by one or everyone of the Levites; or singers, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi; or by the congregation of Israel, as Jarchi; by one of them, in the name of the rest; or by the composer of the psalm. The Targum is, "the voice of the Spirit of God answered and said, "if I forget", c.'' that is, to weep over...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
If I do not remember thee,.... In prayer, in discourse, in conversation; this is the same as before, to forget, repeated for the confirmation of it; let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; as is the case of a person in a fever, or in a violent thirst, which is to be in great distress, Psalms 18:6; the sense is, let me have no use of my...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;- They said it each one for himself; they would sooner be dumb than sing these sacred songs for the amusement of the ungodly revelers who had gathered round about them. Instead of a song, they offered a prayer which must have sounded terribly in the ears of those who mocked...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. These Edomites, who ought to have been like brothers to the Jews, were their most ferocious enemies, and they stirred up the Chaldeans to be more terribly cruel than they...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem,.... Of her visitation, calamity, and destruction, how they behaved then, and them for it; who, though the children of Esau and brethren of the Jews, as well as their neighbours, yet hated them; the old grudge of their father, because of the birthright and blessing, as well as the old...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed,.... By the determinate counsel and decree of God, and according to divine predictions; see Jeremiah 50:1; so mystical Babylon, antichrist, and the man of sin, who therefore is called the son of perdition, 2 Thessalonians 2:3; because appointed to destruction, and shall certainly go into it,...
Spurgeon - Verse Expositions - Charles H. Spurgeon
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed: happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. For these people had gone all over the world, wherever they could, murdering and mutilating. Tens of thousands of little children had they brutally killed,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Happy [shall he be] that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. That takes the infants from their mothers' breasts, or out of their arms, and dashes out their brains against a "rock", as the word (k) signifies; which, though it may seem a piece of cruelty, was but a just retaliation; the Babylonians having done the same to the...