Whenever the scriptures need to explain to people what they should do or feel in order to make a change, they use, in a lot of cases with the nature and his components such as the water, the leaves, the land and the rests of the creatures, which are not human-beings. We can learn a lot from this type of usage, but today this will not be our topic.

After the exile from Israel, after the destruction of the first temple in 586 B.C.E a big space had been left in the people that exiled out of Israel by the force of the Babylonians. They felt depressed and the scriptures knows how to tell us the feeling of the exiles in the rivers of Babylon, sitting there, crying all the time, playing with there violins the songs of victory to their enemies and feeling like the woods ate the chosen tree and neglected him in a corner that no one sees him.

Let us look at the scriptures and feel their pain as written in Psalms 137:1-4-

“עַל נַהֲרוֹת, בָּבֶל–שָׁם יָשַׁבְנוּ, גַּם-בָּכִינוּ:    בְּזָכְרֵנוּ, אֶת-צִיּוֹן.

עַל-עֲרָבִים בְּתוֹכָהּ–    תָּלִינוּ, כִּנֹּרוֹתֵינוּ.
כִּי שָׁם שְׁאֵלוּנוּ שׁוֹבֵינוּ, דִּבְרֵי-שִׁיר– וְתוֹלָלֵינוּ שִׂמְחָה:
שִׁירוּ לָנוּ,    מִשִּׁיר צִיּוֹן. אֵיךְ–נָשִׁיר אֶת-שִׁיר-יְהוָה:    עַל, אַדְמַת נֵכָר”

“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 asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?

The rivers had a lot of the tears of the people from Israel. Though they made sins, though they didn’t serve The Lord in the correct way, they didn’t imagine that the chosen tree will be left alone in the rivers of Babylon.

The question the need to be ask is what is going to be the thing that will encourage them to come back and serve The Lord what metaphor will bring them the vision that will open their eyes , or if I might ask , open our eyes today , in the days that some people says that the world is not united?

To be continued…

Main phrases of the post + transcription + translation

Eli@eteachergroup.com

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