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The Levites Bit Off Their Fingers Rather Than Sing in Babylon

Babylon told them to play. The Levites put their fingers between their teeth, bit them off, and threw them down in front of the men who burned the Temple.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Verse They Never Finished
  2. Eight Times the Land Was Emptied
  3. Sing Us a Song of Zion
  4. The Cloud Came Down for Them
  5. Sixty Cubits of Rolling Stone
The Levites Bit Off Their Fingers Rather Than Sing in Babylon Click for full size

The Verse They Never Finished

Six hundred thousand Levites stood on the platform with harps in their hands, and every one of them was descended from Moses. It was the eve of the ninth of Av, at the going out of Shabbat, in a Sabbatical year. The line they had reached was about a God who brings a man's own guilt down on his head and cuts him off in his own evil.

They got as far as "and shall cut them off."

Then Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers were inside the courts and the rest of the sentence stayed in their mouths. Some of the singers were killed on the platform. The others were marched east. Centuries later, on the same date, at the same hour of the week, in another Sabbatical year, Levites stood on that same platform singing that same line, and the words broke off at exactly the same place when Rome came through the gate.

Eight Times the Land Was Emptied

It had been coming apart for generations. Between Egypt and the burning of the Temple, Israel was carried out of the land eight times, four by Sennacherib of Assyria and four by Nebuchadnezzar. Sennacherib took Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh, and picked up on his way the golden calf that Jeroboam had planted in Dan, which those tribes had built a sanctuary for. He settled them at Lahlah and Habor and the river Gozan and the cities of Media. Then he took Asher, Zebulun, Naphtali and Issachar. Then Samaria. Then he hid Judah and Simeon behind the mountains of darkness on the far side of the rivers of Ethiopia, and nobody has produced them since.

Nebuchadnezzar finished the work. His Babylonian captain Nebuzaradan broke Jerusalem after eighteen months of siege, blinded Zedekiah at Riblah, stripped the pillars and the sea of brass out of the house, and then went and besieged sixty cities that belonged to the Levites, the sons of Moses. The number of men in them was six hundred thousand. He left the poorest people in the country and drove everyone else into exile in Babylon.

When Jeremiah looked around and could hardly find an Israelite, he asked to be let out of it. "Take my soul from me," he prayed, "for it is better for me to die than to live." A voice answered, "Wait, and see the fall of Babylon." Then God hid him.

Sing Us a Song of Zion

The captors wanted entertainment. They had heard what the Temple choir sounded like, and now the choir was standing in their city with its instruments.

"Sing us a song of Zion," they said.

"How can we sing a song of Zion on foreign ground?"

"Then you will sing by force."

They refused, and then they made the refusal permanent. The Levites put their fingers between their teeth and bit them off and threw them on the ground in front of the men who were giving the order. "How can these fingers, which struck the strings of the harps in the Temple, strike them here in a strange land?"

And God said, "If I forget Jerusalem, let My right hand be forgotten."

The Cloud Came Down for Them

That night a cloud settled over the whole company, over the sons of Moses and their wives and their children and their sheep and their cattle, and lifted them. It set them down in the dark somewhere east of Havila.

They heard water before they saw anything. It ran all night, a noise like a river in flood, and when the light came there was not a drop anywhere. The bed was full of stones and sand rolling over each other with the sound of an earthquake, and it moved fast enough that a man who walked up to the bank was torn to pieces on the spot. It ran that way six days. On Shabbat it stopped, and on the eve of Shabbat a cloud came down over it thick with smoke, and nobody crossed in either direction. They called it Sabbatyon.

There were no wild beasts on their side, no unclean animals, nothing that creeps. Only the flocks and the herds they had come with.

Sixty Cubits of Rolling Stone

In one place the channel narrows to less than sixty cubits. People stand on their own bank there and shout, and people on the far bank shout back, and that is the whole traffic between the sons of Moses and the world.

What lies behind them, further east, nobody on either bank knows. Naphtali and Gad and Asher moved to Dan at some point, because Issachar, who lived in the mountains of the deep, had quarreled with them and called them the sons of the handmaids, and they were afraid it would come to war.

The sons of Moses plowed and sowed and asked their questions over the stones. One of the answers that came back across the water was that the second Temple had been burned too. Then they went back to the field.

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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Chronicles of Jerahmeel, trans. Moses Gaster (1899) · Public Domain

The destruction of the Temple happened on the eve of the ninth of Av, on the outgoing of the Sabbath, in a Sabbatical year. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, the Levites were standing on their platform with harps in hand, singing the psalm that begins, "He has brought upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own evil." They never finished the verse. The enemy burst in before the last words left their mouths.

The same horrifying symmetry occurred with Nebuchadnezzar's earlier destruction. Again it was the ninth of Av, again the outgoing of the Sabbath, again the Levites were mid-song. Sixty myriads of Levites, all descendants of Moses, stood with harps. The verse was the same. The interruption was the same. The exile to Babylon followed.

When they arrived in Babylon, their captors demanded entertainment. "Sing us a song of Zion," they said. The Levites answered: "How can we sing a song of Zion on foreign soil?" The captors threatened to force them. So the Levites bit off their own fingers with their teeth and threw the severed digits before their tormentors. "How can fingers that struck the strings of God's harps in the Holy Temple now play for idols?"

That night a cloud descended and covered the Levites and their families, and a pillar of fire led them through the darkness. By morning they had reached the shore, where God extended the river Sabbatyon around them as a barrier. This miraculous river rolls stones and sand with the noise of an earthquake six days a week, making it impossible to cross. On the Sabbath it rests, but then a wall of fire erupts on the western side, burning everything within thirty-four miles. Behind that river, the sons of Moses live in purity to this day, with no thieves, no unclean animals, and no one dying before the age of 120.

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Chronicles of Jerahmeel, trans. Moses Gaster (1899) · Public Domain

From the Exodus to the destruction of the First Temple, Israel was exiled eight times. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, four of those exiles were carried out by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and four by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. Together they stripped the land bare.

Sennacherib's first campaign seized the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. He also captured the golden calf that Jeroboam had placed in Dan, which these tribes had turned into a private sanctuary. For this idolatry they were exiled to Lahlah, Habor, the river Gozan, and the cities of Media. The second exile took the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Issachar, who had refused to accept Hosea ben Elah as king. The third swept away the remaining people of Samaria, ending the northern kingdom forever.

Sennacherib then turned toward Jerusalem itself. He sent his general Rabshakeh with 180,000 soldiers. But Hezekiah prayed, and Isaiah prophesied deliverance. That night, the angel of the Lord struck down the entire Assyrian camp. Only Sennacherib survived, and he fled home in disgrace, where his own sons murdered him.

Nebuchadnezzar's four exiles finished what Sennacherib started. He deported Jehoiakim, then Jehoiachin along with 10,000 of Judah's elite, then laid siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah and burned the Temple to the ground. His final campaign swept through Egypt, killing every Jew found in Ammon, Moab, and the surrounding regions. When Jeremiah saw that scarcely any Israelites remained, he begged God to take his life. A voice answered: "Wait. Behold the downfall of Babylon. Afterward I shall preserve you until I build the everlasting building." Then God hid the prophet away.

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Antiquities X.5-7Antiquities of the Jews (Josephus)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

The kingdom that Josiah rebuilt fell apart the moment he died. Josephus records that when Pharaoh Neco marched through Judah on his way to fight the Babylonians at the Euphrates, Josiah refused to let him pass. Neco sent messengers pleading with him, this was not his war. Josiah ignored the warning. In the battle, an Egyptian arrow struck him down. He died at age thirty-nine, and the prophet Jeremiah composed an elegy for him.

What followed was a cascade of puppet kings and catastrophe. Josiah's son Jehoahaz reigned only three months before Neco hauled him to Egypt in chains and installed his brother Jehoiakim on the throne instead. Jehoiakim was, in Josephus's words, "of a wicked disposition, and ready to do mischief." He paid tribute to Babylon for three years, then foolishly rebelled.

Nebuchadnezzar came personally. He killed Jehoiakim and threw his body outside the city walls unburied, exactly as Jeremiah had prophesied (Jeremiah 22:19). Nebuchadnezzar installed young Jehoiachin, who lasted just three months before the Babylonian king changed his mind, dragged him to Babylon along with ten thousand captives, and placed Zedekiah on the throne instead.

Zedekiah was warned repeatedly. Jeremiah told him directly: surrender to Babylon and the city survives; resist and everything burns. Zedekiah secretly believed the prophet but feared his own officials who had defected to Babylon. He chose pride over survival. After an eighteen-month siege, the Babylonians breached Jerusalem on the ninth day of the fourth month. Zedekiah fled by night through the desert. They caught him near Jericho. Nebuchadnezzar forced him to watch his sons executed, then put out his eyes, fulfilling both Jeremiah's prophecy that he would see the king face to face, and Ezekiel's that he would be brought to Babylon but never see it. The Temple of Solomon was burned to the ground.

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