No voice speaks more poignantly from exile than the writer of the one hundred thirty-seventh psalm. ‘By the rivers of Babylon’, he explains, ‘we sat and wept for Zion.’
To these captors of the exile Judaeans, the songs of Zion seemed mere entertainment. The exotic accent, the strange musical lilt, must have appeared to offer a respite from empire’s deadening tedium. All they wanted—it didn’t seem like much—was to prod their captives to sing a tune or two from the Old Country.
How could they have anticipated the pained medley of loss and loyalty that their request would elicit:
How could we sing the LORD’S song
in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:4 NRSV)
It seems sacrilegious to intone Jerusalem’s old melodies on this accursed, Babylonian soil. ‘How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?’, the psalmist has his fellow Jews ask. God is not so low as to be hymned upon demand, by whomever and for whatever purpose drives. To sing Zion’s song here, the psalm signals, would be the quintessential act of cowardice and assimilation.
Surely God is not in this place, surely not postured to receive Zion-esque praise over here, here on this blasted Babylonian turf, where YHWH is not praised and his people not free.
Surely not …
Canter Bridge 
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