Longtime readers know that Boney M and I go way back.
For some reason I couldn’t get this song out of my head last night.
The words are from Psalms 137:1:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Which continues:
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not;
if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.
I’ll be in Israel in late July, including at least three days in Jerusalem. I plan to meet some of our Israeli blogger friends as well as a reader who reached out to me.
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Comments
A Bob Marley fan! Irieites, ayah!
I envy you the trip to Jerusalem, Wm. the Psalms you quoted, think of them every time some moron talks about Jerusalem as a capital of any Arab state.
I always liked the Don McLean version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkRWcZPHng8 🙂
Beat me to it.
And of course there are also the less frequently quoted verses of Psalm 137:
8. O Daughter of Babylon, who is destined to be plundered, praiseworthy is he who repays you your recompense that you have done to us.
9. Praiseworthy is he who will take and dash your infants against the rock
i.e., payback’s a bitch…
Or rather, what goes around comes around, and will keep on doing so. Note that the psalmist doesn’t justify the slaughter of the Babylonian babies; he merely predicts that it’s going to happen, and sheds no tears at the prospect. As Hillel put it, “because you drowned others, you were drowned, and in the end those who drowned you will drown”.
Bill, maybe it was on your mind because the 17th of Tammuz was coming up…