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Lament During the Babylonian Exile

137 By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat, yes, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows[a] in her midst,
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors asked of us
words of a song,
and our tormentors[b] asked of us jubilation,
“Sing for us from a song of Zion.”

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Footnotes

  1. Psalm 137:2 Species of tree uncertain
  2. Psalm 137:3 Only occurring once in the MT, this interpretation is uncertain. The LXX’s “carried us captive” is a guess. If related to the Hebrew root yll it might have the idea of “mockers/yammerers”