Gather, children, near your beds
And listen.
Dim the lights so to your enemies
You don't glisten.
Below this stone, we keep at bay,
And hold them off another day.
We'll never give in.
They'll never win.
They are breaking through the walls of our house.
They're tearing down, tearing down, tearing down.
They are breaking through the walls of our house,
Masada. Masada.
Five minutes, five hours, five days, five months,
And Zealots keep the charge.
960 ways to say you can not have our souls.
Everything is burning but the food.
That we leave to God.
And here we came to God.
Here we came, Masada, came to God.
Here we came to God.
The rooms are burning.
We never could have been counted among your numbers.
Our children never could have been yours.
We never could have served.
And in your lives you'll see our strength.
You die in your defeat,
That is the ghost which echoes in your mind.
Hosted to the sky in this fortress,
God has given
And by God of sky above,
we have been chosen.
Because of might, Rome forces right,
But for all their platitudes and light,
They shall not win.
We'll never give in.
"Overthrow the righteous!," is our cry.
"Capitulation to the state, we'd rather die!"
We keep the soldiers in the Graben,
Now we make our plan.
We know what must be done.
We make our stand.
Our final stand.
Gather, children, at your father's feet,
And of the barley, eat.
Our classmate top this thombroid shall not
Allow for our defeat.
Like a rapacious lion on the scent of blood,
Rome is calling, killing,
Falling many of our kinsman.
Sleep and wake with God,
And with the Great Herod.
The shall not win.
We never gave in.
"Overthrow the righteous!," is our cry.
"Capitulation to the state, we'd rather die!"
We keep the soldiers in the Graben,
Now we make our plan.
We know what must be done.
We make our stand.
Our final stand.
We hear the thunder cracking.
God will rip the sky.
God will set a plague upon them.
Sleep now, stand with I.
Have no fear, He waits Beyond.
Read is not our Kingdom,
Beersheba not our home.
God will comfort, for He guides us.
God, and God alone.
We now not to Rome.
No, Never to Rome.
We'll never give in.
We shall not will.
"Overthrow the righteous!," is our cry.
"Capitulation to the state, we'd rather die!"
We keep the soldiers in the Graben,
Now we make our plan.
We know what must be done.
We make our stand.
Our final stand.
This song has taken many forms, since I wrote it's earliest version in 1994 after watching a history program about the siege of Masada.
I did not quite understand, but now I think I do. I was moved by the courage of this people to retain who they are, even if it meant they had to die in order to win. It was when I first learned what a non-compromising sacrifice for the sake of an idea, even what a phyrric victory meant. The Roman soldiers must have been like a multitude of Zombies to them. Either convert, or die was the choice Rome gave as they spread across the known world. I remember the thought reminded me of the movie, "Night of the Living Dead." (The Zombie genre was not so overrun in the media at the time)
