By the Waters of Babylon

In 1978, the European based group Boney M’s song “By the Rivers of Babylon” was a best-selling single, both in Europe and the USA. People warmed to its melody and rhythms and empathized with the sadness and despair of spiritually exiled people. What a huge emotional contrast with the savage final verses, redolent with hate and revenge!

First, we must remember that the raw feelings expressed in some emotionally honest psalms are not godly feelings. The psalms express the whole gamut of human emotion, showing us that we can express all our feelings to God–and sometimes that is the best and only place to leave them. Second, honest self-examination reveals that we are all capable of those feelings. This psalm was written during the Exile in Babylon. Anger is first directed at the Edomites, their ancient relatives, descended from Esau, who had delighted in the Babylonian conquest of the Jews and taken advantage of their misfortune (Obad. 8-14). Anger is then directed at the Babylonian conquerors, and behind the awful wish of violence upon their children must stand the innocent deaths of Jewish children in besieged Jerusalem and on the long forced march to Babylon. 

We are all capable of such feelings. We think of the Holocaust and the struggle of the survivors to cope with their emotions, and of surviving Australian prisoners of war who found difficulty in dealing emotionally with the unspeakable cruelty experienced in Japanese concentration camps. What do we feel when we hear of physical or sexual abuse of children? We can express our feelings of anger, revenge and even hatred to God and we can leave them there. We belong to the new covenant and we must follow the new way of love and forgiveness.

When life doesn’t work out as we want it to, we look for scapegoats. To the Jews, it was Babylon. Nostalgia turned to bitterness, then to hate. Ever felt like that? When, and why? What is the best way to handle such feelings?