Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

Weaves together a history of more than 2,500 years using one of the most famous psalms in the Hebrew Bible
Includes interviews with well-known musicians, including one of the final interviews with Tony Brevett

Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

Description

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." The line that begins Psalm 137 is one of the most lyrical of the Hebrew Bible, and has been used since its genesis to evoke the grief and protest of exiled, displaced, or marginalized communities. The psalm is most directly a product of the Babylonian exile—the roughly fifty-year period after Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar's army and many of its leading Judeans taken northeast into captivity. Despite the psalm's popularity, little has been written about its reception during the more than 2,500 years since that period.

In Babylon Revisited David Stowe addresses this gap using a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach that includes textual analysis, historical overview, and a study of the psalm's place in popular culture. Stowe locates its use in the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement, and internationally by anti-colonial Jamaican Rastafari and immigrants from Ireland, Korea, and Cuba. He studies musical references ranging from the Melodians Rivers of Babylon to the score in Kazakh film Tulpan. Based on numerous interviews with musicians, theologians, and writers, Stowe reconstructs the rich and varied reception history of this widely used, yet mysterious text.

The book is broken up into three parts that closely examine each of the psalm's stanzas. Stowe concludes by exploring the often ignored final words: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Usually excised from liturgy and forgotten by scholars, Stowe finds these words echoed in modern occurrences of genocide or ethnic cleansing, and more generally in the culture of vengeance that has existed in North America from the earliest conflicts with Native Americans. Exploring the presence and absence of these words in modern culture is the culmination of Stowe's study as he weaves together the fascinating story of how Psalm 137 has both shaped and been shaped by our understanding of violence, pain, oppression, and justice.

Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

Part One: History
1) Mapping History
2) Comprehending Migration
3) Babylonia
4) In Nebuchudnezzar's Court
5) By the Kebar
6) People of the Land
7) Jeremiah
8) Lamentations
9) Strange Lands
10) Existential Exile
11) Rivers of Watertown
12) Melodious Rivers
Part Two: Memory
13) New World Babylon
14) American Jeremiah
15) Africa as New Israel
16) Echoes of Roland Hayes
17) Footnotes to C.L. Franklin
18) Moses and Jeremiah
19) Moses and Jeremiah
20) Forcing Memory
21) Wood Street
Part Three: Forgetting
22) Jedwabne
23) Revisiting a Vanished World
24) Blaming Victims
25) Thirsting for Vengeance
26) New World Captivity
27) Better Angels
28) Holocaust Songs
29) Sepulchral Memory
30) After Exile
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

Author Information

David W. Stowe, Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University

David W. Stowe teaches English and Religious Studies at Michigan State University, where he is interim chair of the English Department. During the 2012-13 academic year, Stowe held a research fellowship at Yale's Institute of Sacred Music. His most recent book is No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism. His previous book, How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans won the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP.

Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

Reviews and Awards

"Stowe's study of Psalm 137 is one of the best examples of reception history written for nonspecialists, a riveting investigation that takes the reader into surprising places of American culture and beyond...[I]t proves to be nothing short of eye opening." - William P. Brown, Interpretation

"David Stowe's focus is on subsequent, even contemporary use of the psalm, what we now call 'reception history.' Readers will be astonished by the rich inventory of belated uses of the psalm that Stowe has provided, mostly musical and in contexts of anguish. The psalm is now impressively contemporary with its pulses of pathos, resolve, and a will for vengeance." - Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

"Breathtaking! David Stowe's dazzling gloss on Psalm 137 and its compelling transit across centuries of American and European cultural, religious, and musical life is a wondrous testament to learning, curiosity, and the power of enthralling narrative. Song of Exile uplifts the power of words as few books do, a haunting exercise of scholarship and moral imagination." - Jon Butler, Howard R Lamar Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History & Religious Studies, Yale University

"In this elegant account of Psalm 137 and its textual and musical reception, David Stowe marshals extraordinary erudition and interpretive imagination to fashion a probing inquiry into the perennial human experience of exile. Song of Exile invites readers to ponder history, memory, vengeance, forgiveness, and forgetting as classically expressed in the Psalmist's lyric 'By the Waters of Babylon' and movingly explored by Stowe's commentary on its afterlife from the biblical era to our own times." - Stephen A. Marini, Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies, Wellesley College

Song of Exile

The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137

David W. Stowe

From Our Blog

Songs of exile: a playlist for Psalm 137

Psalm 137 begins with one of the more lyrical lines in the Hebrew Bible: 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.' It ends eight lines later with one of the thorniest: 'Happy shall he be, who taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.' Partly because it deals with music'another famous verse asks, 'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?''the psalm has been like poetic catnip, a siren song luring musicians and composers.

Posted on June 27, 2016

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10 representations of Psalm 137 throughout history [slideshow]

Psalm 137 is the only one out of the 150 biblical psalms set in a particular time and place. The vivid tableau sketched by the opening lines has lent itself to visual representations over the millennia. Each interpretation brings something different to the story and shows the cultures which this psalm has touched.

Posted on November 16, 2016

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'Wood Street': On the sound and Psalm 137 references of the Sacred Harp song

On every Saturday or Sunday of the year, if you know where to go, you will find people in the United States, Canada, even Europe singing from an oblong red-brown book called The Sacred Harp.

Posted on May 3, 2016

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