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3.Then they that carried us away captive, etc. We may be certain that the Israelites were treated with cruel severity under this barbarous tyranny to which they were subjected. And the worst affliction of all was, that their conquerors reproachfully insulted them, and even mocked them, their design being less to wound the hearts of these miserable exiles, than to cast blasphemies upon their God. The Babylonians had no desire to hear their sacred songs, and very likely would not have suffered them to engage in the public praises of God, but they speak ironically, and insinuate it as a reproach upon the Levites that they should be silent, when it was their custom formerly to sing sacred songs. Is your God dead, as if they had said, to whom your praises were formerly addressed? Or if he delights in your songs, why do you not sing them? The last clause of the verse has been variously rendered by interpreters. Some derive תוללינו, tholalenu, from the verb לליyalal, to howl, reading — they required mirth in our howlings. Others translate it suspensions of mirth. (182) Some take it for a participle of the verb הלל halal, to rage, and read, raging against us. But as תלינו talinu, the root of the noun here employed, is taken in the preceding verse as meaning to suspend, I considered the reading which I have adopted the simplest one.
(182) “ have it from. תלה he suspended, as thought, they demanded joy on our suspended ones, i.e., harps which we had suspended from the willows.” —Bythner.