By Francesc Borrull · February 9, 2026

There are words that refuse to stay put. They begin in one place—historical, geographical, specific—and then travel. They pass through exile, prayer, song, politics, art, memory. They shed and gather meanings. They survive not because they are clear, but because they are necessary.
Zion is one of those words.
I did not come to Zion first through the Bible. I came to it through music—through artists who sang of Zion as freedom, as refuge, as an alternative to the violence and exhaustion of the world as it is. Later, I encountered Zion again in Scripture, where it was older, heavier, more demanding than I expected. And much later still, I encountered Zion in the American Southwest—not as a theological concept, but as a place of overwhelming beauty that left me silent.
Only recently did these strands begin to converge.

Zion before it was a metaphor

In the Bible, Zion begins as something stubbornly concrete.

“David took the stronghold of Zion; that is the city of David.”
(2 Samuel 5:7)

Zion is, at first, a hill in Jerusalem—once a Jebusite fortress, later conquered by David. It becomes the political and spiritual center of Israel: the place where kingship and worship meet, where the Ark of the Covenant is brought, where God is said to dwell among the people.
Over time, Zion expands by meaning. It becomes synonymous with Jerusalem. Then with the Temple. Then, through poetry and prayer, with the people themselves.
Psalm 132 gives this expansion its most intimate expression:

“For the Lord has chosen Zion;
 he has desired it for his dwelling place:
 ‘This is my resting place forever;
 here I will dwell, for I have desired it.’”
(Psalm 132:13–14)

This is a startling claim. The God of Israel is not distant or abstract. He chooses to rest. He localizes his presence. Zion is not powerful because humans claim it; it is powerful because God chooses to dwell there.
And that choice is never merely comforting. Zion is praised—but it is also judged. The prophets love Zion fiercely, and they condemn it mercilessly when it becomes complacent, unjust, or self-satisfied. Biblical Zion carries promise and accountability in equal measure.
It is not a trophy. It is a responsibility.

Exile: when Zion becomes memory

Zion’s deepest transformation happens not in triumph, but in loss.
When Jerusalem falls and the people are exiled to Babylon, Zion becomes something they no longer have. And in that absence, its meaning sharpens.

“By the rivers of Babylon—
 there we sat down and wept
 when we remembered Zion.”
(Psalm 137:1)

Here, Zion is no longer simply a place. It is memory. Longing. Identity under pressure. A name for what has been taken, and for the hope that refuses to die.
This moment matters more than we often realize. Exile is what allows Zion to become portable—capable of being carried in prayer, in song, in imagination. From here on, Zion can travel. And it does.

Zion in music and modern longing

When Zion appears in popular culture—especially in Black music traditions—it is almost always born of this exilic logic.
In spirituals, reggae, soul, and hip-hop, Zion stands opposite Babylon. It names a world not governed by domination, exploitation, or humiliation. It becomes a symbol of liberation, dignity, and truth.
When Lauryn Hill sings of Zion, she is not singing about ancient Jerusalem. She is singing about fidelity to what is sacred—about choosing life, authenticity, and love over the false promises of power and success. Zion becomes an interior homeland, a place of truth that resists corruption.
In Rastafari tradition, Zion becomes Ethiopia—a reclaimed origin, a spiritual home against the violence of displacement and colonialism. Again, the geography matters less than the longing. Zion is where humanity is restored to itself.
What is striking is not that these uses depart from the Bible, but that they depend on it. Without the biblical Zion—chosen, wounded, exiled, hoped for—there is no cultural Zion to inherit.
Yet something does change.
Biblical Zion comforts, but it also interrogates. Cultural Zion tends to comfort more than it judges. It keeps the hope, but often loosens the covenantal cost. That shift is understandable—and revealing. When Zion no longer judges, it risks becoming not a call to transformation, but a fantasy of escape—hope without obligation.

A personal Zion: the land speaks

But Zion isn’t just found in the ink of scripture or the vibration of a bassline. Sometimes, it is written in the red rock of the earth itself. There is one more Zion in my life, and it is not metaphorical.
Around 2005, I traveled from Chicago to Utah. I flew into Salt Lake City, rented a car, and drove south into the Colorado Plateau. I visited several national parks—but Zion National Park stopped me in my tracks.
The scale. The silence. The endless verticality of stone and sky. It was overwhelming in the best sense—an experience that demanded stillness. I remember standing there, small and wordless, feeling something close to what I can only call reverence.
For me, experiencing nature at that level is inseparable from experiencing God. Not as an idea, not as a doctrine, but as presence. Beauty that vast does not argue. It claims.
Zion National Park is not biblical Zion. The name is borrowed, transplanted, American. And yet the longing it names—the intuition that there are places where truth seems to rest more visibly, where the noise of domination quiets—felt strangely aligned with everything I had been reading.
It reminded me that Zion survives not only in texts and songs, but in the human impulse to stop, to look, to be undone by beauty.

What Zion gains—and loses—as it travels

As Zion moves through history and culture, it gains reach and accessibility. It becomes available to those outside biblical faith, outside theology, outside institutions. It names hope where hope is scarce.
But something is also at risk of being lost.
Biblical Zion is demanding. It insists that God’s dwelling changes how people live. It refuses to be merely symbolic. It holds power to account. Cultural Zion, by contrast, often becomes purely aspirational—a place of escape rather than transformation.
Both versions matter. But they are not the same.

Why Zion still matters

Zion is not a policy.
It is not a slogan.
It is not a settled answer.
It is a word that refuses to let humanity be satisfied with Babylon—whatever form Babylon takes in a given age.
Zion survives in culture because humanity keeps longing
for a place where truth can finally rest.
Not forever.
Not without struggle.
But enough to remind us that the world as it is
is not the world as it must be.

© Francesc Borrull, 2026