I’m hearing this song a lot since Desmond passed away, and I have come to realize that I don’t have the faintest idea what it’s about. Does anyone know how to translate the patois and decipher the meaning? I don’t see where it’s about Israel or the people of Israel, or really much of anything. Maybe it’s all of that King’s English obscuring the beauty of the lyrics to my ears. I dunno. How about you?
Lyrics here. It appears to be a simple lament about the narrator’s poverty. I’m not sure what the significance of Israelites is in this context.
I think it’s a reggae/Rasta thing. Rastafarians believe themselves to be the true Israelites, descended from the Lost Tribes.
Silly me, I thought it was about pharmacy-robbing drug addicts. Such a nice song, too.
No, Biffy’s right, and apparently this is the reason:
From Wiki
Thanks for the information, folks. It’s odd having spent 37 years wondering about something like that, eh? I still don’t get the connection between the rest of the lyrics and the title, but oh well.
Well, even aside from any particular Rastafarian beliefs, it doesn’t seem too hard to imagine that a man whose family (within a few generations ago) was forcibly removed from their homeland and now who lives as a lower class citizen in the distant foreign land, might identify a little bit with the Biblical story of the plight of the Israelites during their exile in Babylon?
Some how when this song was written & recorded someone misheard the words “me ears are a lite (a light) meaning that the writer had heard the truth, & understood them as 'The Israelites”!
when you listen to the song are hear it as “me ears are a lite” then it makes since.
He’s singing about the true sadness of the poverty that was & still in Jamica