Yesterday I talked about the question at the heart of “Bring Us Home” — how do you ache for a home you’ve never seen? Today I want to dig into the idea that makes that question so dangerous: the real threat in this story was never the whip. It was the welcome.
What we expect from “the enemy”
When most of us picture the Babylonian exile, we picture cruelty. Soldiers. Chains. A burning city. And yes — that’s exactly how “Bring Us Home” opens. The Prologue is brutal on purpose. The Temple burns. Families are marched east in chains. That’s real, it’s biblical (2 Kings 25, Jeremiah 52), and I didn’t want to soften it.
But here’s the thing — that cruelty isn’t what threatens to destroy Aviva’s faith and identity. It’s not what nearly costs her everything.
Comfort is.
Babylon was good at being a home
Historically, this checks out. Jeremiah 29 records God’s own instructions to the exiles: build houses, plant gardens, settle in, seek the welfare of the city you’ve been carried to. Babylon wasn’t a prison camp in the way we might imagine — for many exiles, it became a genuinely livable, even prosperous place. The irrigation worked. The bread came. Life went on.
And that’s exactly the trap. When I was writing Nabu’s character — the Babylonian court musician — I gave him a line that captures this perfectly: he talks about his family coming down from the hills generations back, with nothing but “dirt and mudslides and praying for rain that never came.” Down in Babylon? “The bread arrives every single morning whether you’ve earned it or not.”
Of course people want to stay. Of course an entire generation grows up not aching for a ruined city when the city they’re standing in actually works.
The gold is the real danger
In the show, Aviva is taken to Belshazzar’s palace — and the danger there isn’t that she’s mistreated. It’s the opposite. She’s dazzled. Dressed in gold. Flattered. Given music with “structure” and “rules” and “mathematics,” as Nabu describes it — beautiful, polished, safe.
And slowly, without anyone forcing her to do anything, she starts to forget. There’s a moment where she tries to hum her mother’s lullaby — the song that’s carried her entire identity — and she can’t remember the words. Not because someone took it from her. Because comfort quietly let her set it down.
That’s the moment Daniel warned her about. He tells her: “It costs you nothing to wear their gold. But do not let them buy the one thing you brought in through that gate.” He’s not warning her about chains. He’s warning her about ease.
Why I think this is the most relevant part of the whole show
I’ll be honest — this is the theme that hits closest to home for me, personally. Most of us aren’t facing literal persecution for our faith. Most of us are facing something much quieter: a comfortable life that slowly, gently, makes it easier and easier to stop aching for the things that actually matter. Easier to forget the song. Easier to let the gold do the talking.
The cruelty of Babylon makes for a dramatic opening scene. But the comfort of Babylon is the thing that could actually win — if no one in the story chooses, again and again, to remember.
This is why Daniel matters so much in this story
Daniel isn’t the lead character of “Bring Us Home” — I’ll talk more about why in a future post — but he’s the one character who’s lived inside the comfort of Babylon for fifty years without losing the song under the song, as he calls it. He’s proof that it’s possible. That’s why he becomes Aviva’s guide. He’s not warning her from the outside. He’s warning her as someone who’s walked that exact tightrope his whole life.
Tell me what you think
💬 Comment below — do you think comfort is harder to resist than hardship? I’d love to hear your take.
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Starting tomorrow, I’m going to introduce you to the people who carry this whole story — starting with the girl at the center of it all, Aviva.
