By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Ver. 1. By the rivers of Babylon] Tigris and Euphrates; for the land of Shinar (where Babel was founded, and afterwards Babylon built) was, as most geographers think, a part of the garden of Eden, fruitful beyond credulity; but to the poor captives all this was no comfort, when they remembered the desolations of their country, and the loss of their former liberty. The bird of paradise, they say, once taken and enraged, groaneth incessantly, till she die.
There we sat down, yea, we wept] "He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him," saith Jeremiah of the mourner, Lamentations 3:28, who is much in meditation; so were these, bewailing bitterly their sin and misery, with their heart sounding as a harp, Isaiah 16:1, where, if one string be touched, all the rest sound.
When we remembered Zion] The former solemnities, the present desolations.