Melanie Grace

Tag: Saba Elan

  • Behind the Song: “By the Willows”

    Behind the Song: “By the Willows”

    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.

  • Saba Elan and the Harp in the Willows

    Saba Elan and the Harp in the Willows

    Posting Date: July 14

    So far you’ve met Aviva and her mother Miryam. Today I want you to meet the man whose vow set the whole emotional spine of “Bring Us Home” in motion — Aviva’s grandfather, Saba Elan.

    Who is Saba Elan?

    Before the exile, Saba Elan was the chief harpist of the Temple in Jerusalem. For forty years, he played beneath the singers in the temple courts — including, in the show’s opening moments, his own daughter Miryam, when she was just a teenager. He’s gruff. He’s proud. And underneath all of that, he’s tender in a way he’d never admit to out loud.

    When the city falls, he’s the one who grabs Miryam’s hand and tells her — as soldiers close in — “They can take the city. They cannot take what you carry in here.”

    That line is basically Saba Elan’s entire character in one sentence.

    The vow

    When the exiles arrive at the riverbank in Babylon, Saba Elan does something that becomes one of the central images of the whole show. He unwraps the harp he carried all the way from Jerusalem — the same harp from the Temple — and he hangs it in the willow trees.

    And he makes a vow: he will not play it. Not for gold. Not for safety. Not to entertain his captors. Not one note — until the day they go home.

    One by one, other exiles follow him, hanging their own instruments in the willows, until the trees are heavy with silent harps and lyres. It’s one image, but it does so much work — it’s grief and protest and worship all at once.

    “By the Willows”

    This is Saba Elan’s signature song, and it’s drawn almost directly from Psalm 137 — the overseers mock the exiles, demanding they sing “songs of Zion” for entertainment, and the elders respond with total silence. Saba Elan stands, says nothing, and simply looks at the man demanding a performance. That silence becomes the most powerful thing in the scene.

    I love writing moments where the most dramatic choice a character makes is to do nothing. Saba Elan’s silence isn’t weakness. It’s the loudest thing in the room.

    The promise to a sleeping baby

    There’s a quieter scene — one of my favorites in the entire show — where Saba Elan sits by the fire with baby Aviva. He’s gruff with Miryam, as always, but the moment the baby’s hand closes around his finger, something in him cracks open. He makes her a promise: that harp comes down on one day, and one day only — the day they go home. And when that day comes, he’s going to teach her every song Babylon tried to make them forget.

    He thinks she’s asleep. He says it anyway. That’s Saba Elan.

    When the vow finally gets kept — sort of

    I don’t want to spoil too much here, because there’s a moment near the end of the show involving Saba Elan, that harp, and Aviva that genuinely gets me every time I work on it. Let’s just say: keeping a vow for seventy years doesn’t always mean you’re the one who gets to finish it. Sometimes keeping the vow is passing it on.

    I’ll save the rest for the “Behind the Song” post on this one.

    Tell me about your “Saba Elan”

    💬 Comment below — do you have someone in your life — a grandparent, an elder, a mentor — who held onto something on principle for years, even when it cost them?

    📱 Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at @TheMelanieGrace for the next character reveal.

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    🎧 Follow me on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music so “By the Willows” reaches you the moment it drops.

    Tomorrow: the one character in this story drawn straight from Scripture — Daniel.