Used in constructing booths at the feast of tabernacles (Leviticus 23:40). Spring up along watercourses. Spiritually it is thus made manifest to us that in using the means of grace the believer thrives (Isaiah 44:4). The Jewish captives in Babylon hung their harps on the weeping willow along the Euphrates. The Salix alba, viminalis (osier), and Egyptiaca are all found in Bible lands. Before the date of the Babylonian captivity the willow was associated with joy, after it with sorrow, probably owing to Psalm 137. Babylonia was a network of canals, and would therefore abound in willows.
        The Jews generally had their places of prayer by the river side (Acts 16:13) for the sake of ablution before prayer; the sad love streams, inasmuch as being by their murmuring congenial to melancholy and imaging floods of tears (Lamentations 2:18; Lamentations 3:48; Jeremiah 9:1). Tear bottles are often found in the ancient tombs, and referred to in old inscriptions. The willow of Babylon has long, pointed, lance-shaped leaves, and finely serrated, smooth, slender, drooping branches. Vernon, a merchant at Aleppo, first introduced it in England at Twickenham park where P. Collinson saw it growing 1748. Another tradition makes Pope to have raised the first specimen from green twigs of a basket sent to Lady Suffolk from Spain (Linnaean Transactions, 10:275).