By the Rivers of Babylon (Ezekiel 1:1-3)
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors requested a song; our tormentors demanded songs of joy: “Sing us a song of Zion.”
How can we sing a song of the LORD in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand cease to function. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy!
Remember, O LORD, the sons of Edom on the day Jerusalem fell: “Destroy it,” they said, “tear it down to its foundations!” O Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us. Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
This psalm begins with a reference to Ezekiel 1:1-3. “In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was among the exiles by the River Kebar, the heavens opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— the word of the LORD came directly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Kebar. And there the LORD’s hand was upon him.” Jerusalem has fallen to the Babylonians. After centuries of idolatry and moral degradation, God has finally brought judgement just as He promised the Israelites in the Song of Moses. Deuteronomy 32:15-19 tells us, “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—
becoming fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation. They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear. You ignored the Rock who brought you forth; you forgot the God who gave you birth. When the LORD saw this, He rejected them, provoked to anger by His sons and daughters.”
God gave Moses the song recorded in Deuteronomy 32 as a warning to the Israelites, for them to teach it to succeeding generations. But the Israelites failed to heed the warning or to teach it to their children. Instead, the Israelites got caught up in a myriad of fertility cults, cults demanding child sacrifice, etc. God allowed the Israelites plenty of time to repent, but they only got worse. Finally, God allowed the Assyrians to conquer the Northern Kingdom and the Babylonians to conquer Judah and Jerusalem.
Among the captives, there were some true believers in the One True Living God. Now those people are stuck in Babylon with the Babylonians mocking them by demanding they sing worship songs to entertain the Babylonians. The Jews are so discouraged that they have hung up their harps on the trees; however, their captors are insisting they should sing. Worship in Jerusalem was simple; however, how can these exiles worship God in Babylon? If they sing worship songs, will God smite them for heresy?
Who are the “sons of Edom?” Edom is a neighboring country inhabited by the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s first-born son. Yes, conflict in the Middle East has been ongoing for thousands of years. Rather than rejoicing over the fall of Jerusalem, the Edomites should have assisted the Jews, but they have not. The psalm ends by the writer prophesying destruction for the Babylonians and applauding anybody who will do to the Babylonian infants what the Babylonians have already done to infants in Jerusalem. Why destroy infants? Babies are the future hope for any nation. Destroy babies and you destroy the future of that nation.
APPLICATION: How can we celebrate God when we are in a foreign land? My husband and I have spent most of our lives in Ghana; this next July will mark 36 years since we first arrived in Accra. We joke that we are “Ghamericans;” we can never be fully Ghanaian, and we have spent so long in Ghana that we are no longer fully American either. We have found that readjusting to American culture is far more difficult than returning to Ghana. When we are in America, we are always in danger of speaking a language those around us will not understand. If we attend a charismatic church where people dance during worship, we are likely to dance Ashante adowa or Konkomba kinachung, rather than copying those around us. To borrow a phrase from one of our friends, we are hanging like bats. But no matter how strange things feel, we should still worship.
In the psalm, the musicians have hung their harps on the poplar trees because they feel too sad to try to worship. But we must worship even when we don’t feel like it. I have previously quoted one writer as saying that a sacrifice of praise is generally pushed out between clenched teeth. If we feel like worshiping, we aren’t really sacrificing anything. True sacrifice means yielding up something even when we don’t want to.
What about the gruesome wish at the end of the psalm? That prediction actually came to pass. One of the laws of the Kingdom of God is that the measure you give out is the measure you will receive. Eventually, Babylon was conquered by another principality, and undoubtedly, those conquerors did destroy infants in this gruesome fashion. The act of dashing a helpless baby on rocks was used to symbolize the dashing of the hopes of a conquered nation.
The lesson from this psalm is that we should continue to worship, even when we find ourselves in foreign territory. God will accept the worship, even if it begins because someone else is forcing us to perform for them. God knows our hearts. And worship doesn’t have to be elaborate. At one point during my training, I found myself in a very trying situation. I maintained my sanity and composure by chanting “Praise you, Jesus! Praise you, Jesus! “ under my breath as I walked through the hospital halls.
Today, you might find yourself feeling totally out of place. Use those feelings as a reminder to praise God, even if you must struggle to find reasons to do so. Praise helps change situations. A Gospel song of several decades ago says, “Praise the Lord, for the chains that seem to bind you serve only to remind you that they fall powerless behind you when you praise.”
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, many of us feel caught in strange situations where we struggle to see any light. Help us to praise You even when it’s difficult, knowing that You inhabit the praises of Your people and that You can change our situations and vaporize barriers. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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