Choices (Exiled)


It was their choice.

The unceasing work in shifts, the cruel taskmasters and cruel whips on barebacks, the shackles on their ankles, the shuffling in line to receive rationed food that just kept them alive to continue working the king's mining pits.

It was all the consequence of their choice.

They made it when they turned their back on the protector of their homeland. 

It had seemed far-fetched: the warnings that a day like this would come. There was just no reference point for the desolation the weird-dressing, body-marking, funny-talking prophets promised. For crying out loud, theirs was a merry city.

So, they carried on -- they and their monarchs. Until that night when disaster overtook them. They ended up exiled -- slaves in a far away land.



And their beloved and majestic city was breached, torched and razed. Even now, it lay in ruins.

It was one thing no one spoke about. In fact, most kept their thoughts from straying in that direction, the pain was palpable.

They simply worked -- for the king and their lives. And tried not to remember. And tried not to hope. For that, in itself, was torture.

Yet, even here their enemies would not allow them be. The taunts struck bone, with a ferocity that was crippling: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

There,  by the rivers of Babylon, the descendants of Israel sat down and wept. They recalled...times when each man dwelt in his own house and sat under his own fig. They lifted their voices and mourned their estate, and the choices that led there.

*image from chongsoonkim.blogspot.com

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