Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 78:64

Their widows made no lamentation. This implies the extent of the destruction, and is full of meaning to one who has been in an Oriental city, during a plague or other devastating calamity. At first the cry of wailing, which always follows a death in ordinary circumstances, is loud and frequent: but such cries do not increase, but subside, with the increase of the calamity and desolation. Death becomes a familiar object in every house; and every one, absorbed in his own losses, has little sympathy to spare for others. Hence the loudest lamentations cease to be noticed, or to draw consoling friends to the house of mourning; and therefore, as well as from the stupefaction of feeling which scenes of continual horror never fail to produce, a new death is received in silence, or only with sighs and tears. In fact, all the usual observances are suspended. The dead are carried out and buried without mourning ceremonies, and without the presence of surviving friends, by men who make it an employment to take away the dead on the backs of mules or asses, from the homes they leave desolate. We have seen this. Kitto's "Pictorial Bible." 1856.