5/18/2023 0 Comments Rivers of babylon![]() Popular music versions have been recorded by American singer and songwriter Don McLean (and used in a memorable scene in “Mad Men”). Verdi’s first popular opera, “Nabucco,” retells the story of the captivity. Bach, Dvorak and Verdi all wrote musical settings for it. Bible scholar Rainer Albertz estimates that “about 70 percent of the Hebrew Bible tackles the questions of how the catastrophe of exile was possible and what Israel can learn from it.” Inspiring musicīecause the psalm deals with music – a famous verse asks, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” – it has been like “poetic catnip,” intriguing to musicians and composers. And the aftermath of exile, when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and allowed the Judeans to return to Israel, is narrated in books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The exile story, which echoes through the Bible, is central to the major prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Lamentations and Isaiah.
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