By the Rivers of Babylon

Image by Gemini AI

One of the songs that I’ve listened to for decades is Boney-M’s By the Rivers of Babylon. Here’s the song, in case you’re interested.

   That song which is based on a biblical psalm [137] is a wonderful lesson on the nature of religious belief.

Quite a lot of the Old Testament of the Bible was written when the Israeli Jews experienced a severe spiritual crisis. Their beloved temple in Jerusalem was burnt down by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Destroying a place of worship is a powerful political tool. It demonstrates that even your God is powerless before our human might. The Babylonians didn’t just burn down the temple; they looted the sacred vessels and other treasures, adding insult to injury.

And they exiled the Jews to Babylon. Sitting on the bank of the Euphrates, the psalmist sang: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Not only the psalms, but a surprisingly large portion of the Old Testament was written as a response to the agony of being deserted by God. Did Yahweh abandon us? The Jews asked themselves. If Yahweh was indeed Isarel’s own God, why had he allowed his own Temple to be burnt down? If Jerusalem was His chosen city, why had Babylon conquered it? If David’s dynasty had God’s eternal promise, why was the Davidic king gone?

And, perhaps most painfully: Had Yahweh himself been defeated by the Babylonian god Marduk?

That is the historical background of the song above. And of the Bible’s most profound theological thinking.

The answers to the above questions evolve gradually in the Old Testament. There’s plain grief in the five poems of Lamentations. “Thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.” [5:22] However, prophet Ezekiel emerged to tell the Jews that their God had not abandoned them in anger. God is not imprisoned in the Jerusalem Temple, he said. God is not residing in any building; He is with the people.

The books from Deuteronomy through Kings teach a revealing lesson in theology. Instead of seeing the situation as Babylon defeated our God, the insight becomes: Our God allowed Babylon to punish us because we had betrayed the covenant.

In short, the theology now is: You may lose the land. You may lose the king. You may lose the Temple. But you can carry God with you, within you.

Isn’t that the right place for God: within the human breast? Which God is going to sit like a prisoner inside the palatial buildings constructed in vanity by human beings?

As the song concludes: “Let the words of our mouth / And the meditations of our hearts / Be acceptable in thy sight here tonight.” There is no temple here. But there are our hearts.