Bible Strands
Psalms 137:2
There on the willows we hung our harps,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist describes exiled Israelites suspending their instruments on trees beside the rivers of Babylon while grieving over Jerusalem. This occurs during their captivity, immediately following their weeping over Zion.
The words — The text employs עֲרָבִים ('aravim), meaning poplars or willows, and תִּלִינוּ (tilinu), meaning we hung up, to describe the physical act of placing כִנּוֹרוֹתֵינוּ (kinnorotenu), their harps. This lexical pairing records a concrete suspension of musical practice.
The thread — The cessation of harp music appears in Ezekiel 26:13, Isaiah 24:8, and Revelation 18:22 as a recurring marker of desolation. These passages parallel the Babylonian exile by using the silence of instruments to signify judgment and loss.
Why it lands — The verse demands acknowledgment that political displacement can forcibly interrupt sacred and cultural practices. It requires the reader to confront how oppression renders instruments of worship and identity functionally useless.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 26:13 So I will silence the sound of your songs, and the music of your lyres will no longer be heard.
- Isaiah 24:8 The joyful tambourines have ceased; the noise of revelers has stopped; the joyful harp is silent.
- Revelation 18:22 And the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will never ring out in you again. Nor will any craftsmen of any trade be found in you again, nor the sound of a millstone be heard in you again.
- Psalms 33:2 Praise the LORD with the harp; make music to Him with ten strings.
- Psalms 81:2 Lift up a song, strike the tambourine, play the sweet-sounding harp and lyre.
- Amos 8:10 I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.