28. A Song of Patriotism

A Meditation of Psalm 137

Psalm 137 is a lyric that might be considered a classic in the world literature. It is an expression of the feelings of intense sadness, anger, and revenge from the depth of human heart in the most touching way.

In 586 B.C., Babylon (today’s Iraq) attacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took a large number of Jews as captives to Babylon. There were two rivers in Babylon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. There were also small man-made canals connecting the two rivers, and by all these rivers and canals, there were Poplar trees. The Jews in the exile met by these rivers, and sitting under the shade of the poplar trees, they shared their nostalgic feelings of their homeland among each other. After 50 years, in 536 B.C., many of them returned to Jerusalem. This psalm was probably written by someone soon after returning from Jerusalem remembering their life in captivity.

This psalm has the form of a story. Those who returned from Babylon tell the story of their captivity to those who were in Jerusalem. The storytellers seem to be the levitic singers, who used to sing in the temple of Jerusalem before they were captured. In Babylon, their captors forced them to join the other exotic court orchestras that the Babylonian kings kept for entertainment. However, they refused to sing. A singer swears an oath by what is most dear to a musician--hands and tongue--to exalt Jerusalem always. A musician plays harp with his/her right hand, and sing with his/her tongue. The singer expresses his/her patriotism saying: If I forget Zion, and sing for these Babylonians, let my right hand wither, and let my tongue stick to my palate so that I won’t be able to sing any more! The psalm ends with a prayer that the enemies of Jerusalem, Edom and Babylon be destroyed. Babylonians killed the Jewish children when they attacked Jerusalem. They did not want those children to grow up and take revenge upon them later. The psalmist says that the same thing will happen to the children of Babylon as well.

A novel written by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist, is entitled “By the River Piedra, I sat down and wept”. A beautiful wall plaque made by the artist Zalman Zwieg in 1910 based on this psalm can be seen here. http://www.jhom.com/topics/rivers/popup_babylon.htm. It is interesting to read a modern Cuban version of psalm 137.

“Beside the Miami River we sat and wept at the memory of La Habana leaving our conga drums by the palm trees.
"Sing," they said, "some mambo”. How can we sing our rumba in a pagan land. Mi Habana, If I forget you may my right hand wither.
Yahweh, remember what the communists did . . . a blessing on him who takes and dashes their babies against the rock!”

One gets shocked at reading the last verse of this psalm. How can any human being utter such a curse about innocent children? I think it was not at all easy even for the psalmist to include this verse in the psalm. The psalmist perhaps intended to create that shock in those who hear or read this psalm.

This psalm shows before our eyes the horror of a divided world—a world divided into nations, and fighting with each other by smashing the innocent children against rocks. Jews belong to Jerusalem, and Babylonians belong to Babylon. They are willing to die for their own nation, but they shower curses on the foreign nations. They want to bring up their own children but want to murder the foreign children. About 2500 years have passed since this psalm was written, and the world continues in the same way— divided.

In spite of all the electronic communication devices that let us send a message across the world at a mouse-click, and in spite of the transportation facilities that let us go anywhere on the globe in a day, our “global village” still remains divided. There are huge walls within human hearts that separate human beings from human beings. We still can’t think in terms of one mankind that belongs to the planet earth. If only all the people on the earth realize that we all belong to one family, and that we don’t need to kill one another, our earth could be one step closer to becoming the Kingdom of God. Earth is our home, and it belongs to all of us. There are no foreigners here; we are all natives, the citizens, of this world. Instead of a national patriotism, let us develop a global patriotism!

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