No More Joy in Music - Psalms 137-139

Psalms 137:1-3 (ESV)
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

Memories can be painful.  The punishment for disobedience in our lives can bear unkind fruit and put us in awkward and lonely places.   In psalm 137 we have the song that recalls the captivity of the nation of Israel, primarily Judah.   Babylon took them captive and brought them to their land to make slaves out of them.   Apparently they brought them to the water’s edge.  Perhaps it was for them to fetch water for them, help irrigate their crops or perhaps tend to their boats/fishing.   Whatever the task their captors added torment to their captivity by demanding that they play songs on their harps.  These were the same harps that they played for their own entertainment prior to their captivity.  They played them for their own sensual behavior.  That was part of the problem and the reason for the punishment into captivity.   It is curious that now, in captivity, they did not want to play them.   But, this is what sin does.  It sounds so good and feels so good until it doesn’t.   When you are lead by that sin into captivity, the very thing you enjoyed for sensuality, is taken away.  Yet, there were those harps, hanging in a tree.  It is odd that coming out of Jerusalem and being marched to Babylon they would carry their harps.   It is as if God caused them to have the joys they had in disobedience become part of the punishment.  Notice what Solomon says about the naive one who is seduced by the pleasures of folly:

Proverbs 7:21-23 (ESV)
With much seductive speech she persuades him;
with her smooth talk she compels him.
All at once he follows her,
as an ox goes to the slaughter,
or as a stag is caught fast
till an arrow pierces its liver;
as a bird rushes into a snare;
he does not know that it will cost him his life.

The nation of Israel played the harp to enjoy their lives.  But, that enjoyment and self indulgence took them into disobedience. Now they are paying for that sin and the joy of harps and music have been taken from them.   This is the seduction of sin.