By The Rivers of Babylon

Jeremiah 51 & Psalm 137

It’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for Babylon.

Ruthless and yet used by God as a servant and tool to carry out Israel and Judah’s punishment.  In this prophesy, it is Babylon’s turn to experience God’s wrath.  Full circle.

Ch 51:5 “For Israel and Judah have not been forsaken by their God, the LORD Almighty,

Though their land is full of guilt before the Holy One of Israel.

6 Flee from Babylon!

Run for your lives!

It is time for the LORD’s vengeance

He will pay her for what she deserves.

7 Babylon was a gold cup

In the LORD’s hands.

She made the whole world drunk.

8 Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken.

Wail over her!

Get balm for her pain;

Perhaps she can be healed.”

34 “Nebuchadnezzar, Kind of Babylon has devoured us.

He has thrown us into confusion,

He has made us an empty jar.”

Punishment for the undoing of God’s people. Babylon seems like a mere pawn in the plot, swept along in the story without a voice or a choice.  Part of the choreography.  I wonder if Nebuchadnezzar could have drawn the line and stayed on this side of propriety.  But he ordered the destruction of the city, and defiled God’s Holy House, the temple, and this desecration put him in the firing line of God’s wrath.  The NIV Notes say that this same sacrilege would occur under the Romans in 70AD.

Ch 51:56 “For the LORD is a God of retribution; He will repay in full.” 

58 Babylon’s thick walls will be leveled and her high gates set on fire…”

Her rough places made level and her strongholds pulled down. There is no place to hide and the might of man will be no match at all.

Ch 51:59 “This is the message Jeremiah gave to the staff officer Seraiah, when he went to Babylon with Zedekiah king of Judah, 4 years into his reign.”

With a bit of dramatic flair, Jeremiah’s instruction for these words are that they be written on this scroll, read aloud in the royal courts of Babylon, tied to a stone, and be thrown into the Euphrates. Vs 64  “Then say, ‘So will Babylon sink to rise no more because of the disaster I will bring upon her. And her people will fall.’”

And this strange non-chronological insertion is tacked on near the end of this book. The words of Jeremiah come to and unsatisfying end.  But this is not the end of the story.  Babylon, Judah’s mortal enemy, will be slain, and the remnant will return, because God has spoken it. 

Psalm 137 is a song from an exile in captivity during this time. 

I am always amazed that the people living in these times find the inspiration to keep going and to carry out their craft and their art.  Writing stories and songs and poetry.  Intimate little portraits and vignettes of what suffering looks and feels like. The blisters inside of their hearts and their souls.  The NIV Notes describe this writer as an exile who has recently returned from Babylon, but in whose soul there lingers a bitter memory of the years in a foreign land and of the cruel events the led to that enforced stay.

Ps 137:1 “By the rivers of Babylon,

We sat and wept

When we remembered Zion. “

Such deep love and longing for Zion. Israel and Judah being forced to sing joyful songs by their captors.   Imagine being forced to sing the well-known songs of ascents when your heart is overwhelmed with homesickness.  About the joy of pilgrimaging to Jerusalem and to the temple to worship, when you know that your captors have burned it to the ground and not left one stone on top of another.  Salt in your fresh wounds. Songs for life’s hard and cruel moments.   I feel like in all these moments this group of people does not give up or lose hope. They already know that this is not the end of their story.   I love that today.   There is always hope.   Always.