Captives in Babylon Loyally Remembered Zion

 7. (a) Religiously speaking, what was the land of ancient Babylon like? (b) What effect must this have had on the Jewish captives?

⁷ Ancient Babylon was the land of false gods, the idols of which abounded. (Daniel 5:4) We can imagine the effect that this worship of many false gods had upon the hearts of the faithful Jews who had worshiped only the one true God without any kind of image. Instead of beholding the temple of Jehovah in all its beauty in Jerusalem, they beheld the temples of these false gods and their idols throughout the land of Babylon.a How the worshipers of the one and only true God must have suffered a feeling of revulsion by all of this!

 8. (a) How long would the Jews have to put up with their captivity, and what longing would loyal Jews have? (b) How does Psalm 137:1-4 describe the heartbroken condition of the loyal Jewish captives?

⁸ According to the prophecy of Jeremiah, they would have to put up with this for 70 years before restoration would come. (2 Chronicles 36:18-21; Jeremiah 25:11, 12) The heartbroken condition of the Jewish captives who loved Jehovah and desired to worship him at a temple dedicated to him at his chosen city is described for us in Psalm 137:1-4:

For there those holding us captive asked us for the words of a song, and those mocking us​—for rejoicing: ‘Sing for us one of the songs of Zion.’

 9. How would the Babylonians regard the singing of “the song of Jehovah,” but what was due to happen at the end of the 70 years?

⁹ “The song of Jehovah” should be the song of a free people worshiping him at his holy temple. To those Babylonians, the singing of “the song of Jehovah” by these Jews in the land of their captivity would be an occasion for the captors to jeer at the name of Jehovah as the name of a god inferior to the gods of Babylon. His holy name had already come under tremendous reproach by his letting his people be taken off their God-given homeland and marched away to a land with a multiplicity of gods. But the time for those Babylonians to jeer at him and to belittle his name people was to be for only a limited period​—70 years. Then down with the false gods of Babylon and up with the true God, Jehovah!