There was no need to understand the words. Every syllable rang with clear meaning. It was the song of her people, desperate for their God, crying out to him in their bondage: the plaintive cry from a broken heart, from a nation of broken hearts. The cry rose in one verse and fell in another, as the tide of hope grew and receded. Over two hundred years of bitter bondage had seen the rise and fall of the Hebrews’ hope, time and again.
