Foreigners In Babylon

Psalm 137:1-4

1Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept

as we thought of Jerusalem.

2We put away our lyres,

hanging them on the branches of the willow trees.

3For there our captors demanded a song of us.

Our tormentors requested a joyful hymn:

“Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”

4But how can we sing the songs of the LORD

while in a foreign land?

In captivity in Babylon, the Jews wept for their homeland and prayed for the day when they might return. But when the day of their release from captivity finally came and they were allowed to return, only about fifty thousand (out of hundreds of thousands) made the trek back to Jerusalem.

Why?

For one thing, some of the Jews were making a good living in Babylon—a better living than their fathers had made in Jerusalem. Others had married Babylonian spouses and become assimilated into Babylonian culture. They had forgotten Jerusalem. Can you blame them? Seventy years of captivity is a long time.

Whatever the reason, some of the Jews weren’t like the writer of this psalm, which apparently was written shortly after their return from exile.

The Bible speaks of heaven as our Jerusalem and suggests that where we are now living is Babylon on earth.

How comfortable are you in your Babylon? How are you faring there? Have you forgotten Jerusalem? Have you forgotten that you, too, are an exile, a pilgrim in a foreign land? What are you looking ahead to?

A tent or a cottage, why should I care?

They’re building a palace for me over there;

Though exiled from home, yet still I may sing:

“All glory to God, I’m a child of the King.”

HARRIETT E. BUELL

Bible Networking

Read the melancholy tale of Judah’s captivity in 2 Chronicles 36:14-20.

Notable Quotable

“Every true Christian loves praise. But when the believer falls into sin and darkness, his lyre is on the willows, and he cannot sing the Lord’s song, for he is in a strange land.”

ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE