(May 11, 2021 at 11:39 am)Gwaithmir Wrote:(May 10, 2021 at 12:50 pm)Drich Wrote: got to remember alot of the psalms were songs of joy and thanks giving. others were laments and prayer recorded during captivity. for instance the book of kings 1 and 2 are a period of where the jews are captured sold into slavery, repent as a people and god restores them a generation goes by and the cycle repeats.
in this case you have a lament, that is saying how can we sing songs of worship and praise while we are here in a foreign land as slaves (where the people do not support or love God as they do.) the passage asks how can we sing of the joy of the lord when nothing in the foreign land is of god. we know this to be the indisputable case as the rest of the passage frames it out to be so:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
and i can not help you with any of the vulgate passages as i study the koine/hebrew bible.
Perhaps it was politically incorrect at the time to pray to your own god in a foreign land. Some extant ancient correspondence shows the writers praying to strange gods while in countries other than their own. There might have also been a belief that gods only held sway in the countries in which they were chiefly worshiped.
Henotheism - Wikipedia
read verse three it tells you why. they could not sing songs of joy to their tormentors. 4 how can we sing these(joyful songs) while made slaves in a foreign land.
Imagine being captured by ISIS or the taliban forced to work as a slave have you life threaten by beheading with a dull bayonet like the reporters that jihadi john beheaded. then told to sing the national anthem like whitney houston did during the super bowl.. or lee green wood's proud to be an american. could you do it and mean it when you lost hope of life itself? could you do it just so they could mock you?
