The land of Babylon was now a house of bondage to that people, as Egypt had been in their beginning. There they sat down to indulge their grief by poring on their miseries. Their affection to God's house swallowed up their concern for their own houses. They remembered Zion's present desolations, and favoured the dust thereof, which was a good sign that the time for God to favour it was not far off, Ps. The harps they used for their own diversion and entertainment.
Music makes some people melancholy.
As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that sings songs to a heavy heart. The harps they used in God's worship, the Levites' harps. Every thing is beautiful in its season. The abuses which their enemies put upon them when they were in this melancholy condition, v. 3. They had carried them away captive from their own land and then wasted them in the land of their captivity, took what little they had from them.