The tears of memory.
"Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." The rivers of Babylon and the district were the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the branch streams of those rivers. The writer of the psalm is not in Babylon, but is recalling to mind what happened when he was there. It is not easy to recognize the mood of the psalmist when he composed this psalm. Usually it is assumed that there was first a gentle and plaintive mood, and then a fierce and revengeful mood; but perhaps it is true to the weaknesses of human nature to regard it throughout as a bitter retrospect. The mood is one of intensity, excitement, and anger in the remembrance of sufferings and humiliations that had been endured. There is a weeping of anger and of remembered sufferings and humblings; as there is a weeping when enduring humiliations in the thought of bygone joys, relations, and privileges.
I. MEMORY MAY AFFECTINGLY RECALL LOST PRIVILEGES. The psalmist seems to himself to be again in Babylon, again oppressed with the burden of the lost national liberty and the present national bondage. He no longer belonged to a nation. He no longer had any capital city. He no longer had any center for the religious life. The kingdom was broken up, the city was desolated, the temple lay in ruins, the nation was scattered, and the people were virtual slaves to severe and even cruel taskmasters. Some sullenly endured their fate; but to some every remembrance of the old days was a cutting pain—it either made them angry and forced bitter tears, or in softer moods it broke them down and caused tears of regret. How often the memory of the past still brings pain and tears! There is so much in it that might have been otherwise. Often our memory-tears are bitter. Only in good moods are they gentle and tender. They may be, they should be, tears of thankful, trustful love.
II. MEMORY MAY AFFECTINGLY RECALL THE CAUSE OF LOST PRIVILEGES. It was only an imperfect memory that recalled a desolated Zion. There was something more than loss and woe to remember—there was the sin of the nation that caused the loss, and was punished in the woe. And it is only when memory of past sorrows includes the sin that brought the sorrows, that memory brings worthy and healing tears.—R.T.