Today’s “Behind the Song” post is about one of the most directly biblical moments in the entire show — a song built almost entirely on a single, devastating verse: Psalm 137:4. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

The setup

By the time this song happens, the exiles have settled into life by the river. Saba Elan has already hung his harp in the willows, and others have followed — the trees are heavy with silent instruments. It’s become part of daily life. Survival. Threadbare dignity.

Then the overseers show up, bored and cruel, looking for entertainment. They’ve heard the music of Judah is the finest in the east, and they want a show. “Sing us one. Entertain your hosts.”

Silence.

What this song actually dramatizes

This is Psalm 137:1–4, almost beat for beat. The captors demand songs of Zion as mockery — not worship, entertainment. And the response from the exiles isn’t argument, isn’t pleading. It’s refusal. Total, collective silence.

Saba Elan stands. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t even speak. He just rises — an old man, but with enormous gravity — and looks at the overseer. And that look becomes a wall.

Why silence is the loudest thing in the show

I think a lot about how we usually write “strength” in stories — usually it’s a speech, a fight, a big declaration. But Psalm 137 gives us something different: a refusal to perform. The exiles’ sacred songs were not party tricks. They weren’t going to hand over the most holy thing they had left — their worship — to be used as a joke for the people who destroyed their home.

That’s not passivity. That’s the most active thing they could do.

When I was writing this scene, I kept coming back to the question: what does it cost to say nothing? For Saba Elan and the others, it could cost everything — the overseers have soldiers, and the exiles have nothing. But they say nothing anyway. And the overseers — for the first time in the show — back down.

How this connects to Saba Elan’s vow

This song is really the proof of the vow Saba Elan made when he hung his harp in the willows. He said he wouldn’t play for Babylon, not for gold, not for safety. This is the moment that vow gets tested — not by a temptation, but by a threat. And he holds.

It’s also the moment that sets up something important later: when young Aviva, watching all this, asks her grandfather afterward why he wouldn’t sing when he has “the most beautiful harp of anyone,” he gives her the same vow — that harp comes down on one day. The day we go home. That’s the line that becomes her whole inheritance.

Why I wrote it for male voices

In the show, this song is led by Saba Elan and the male exiles, with Aviva’s voice (as a child) coming in above them at the very end — right before the moment where her own singing accidentally stops a soldier in his tracks.

I wanted the bulk of this song to feel like a wall — low, unified, immovable. Then Aviva’s voice cutting through it, small and clear, does double duty: it’s beautiful, and it’s the moment that marks her as someone Babylon will notice. The same voice that protects the camp also puts a target on her future.

The hardest part to get right

Honestly? The hardest part of writing this song was resisting the urge to make it bigger. My instinct as a writer is often to build to a swell, a big emotional release. But this moment isn’t about release — it’s about holding. The power of “By the Willows” is in what doesn’t happen. No one breaks. No one sings for the king. The tension just… sits there, until the overseers can’t stand it anymore and leave.

Writing restraint into a song is so much harder than writing a climax. But I think it’s exactly right for this moment.

Your turn

💬 Comment below — have you ever experienced a moment where saying nothing was the strongest thing you could do?

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Tomorrow: “Can These Dry Bones Live?” — the moment this whole show turns from grief into hope.