CHAPTER XI
_TYRANNY IS SUICIDE_
HABAKKUK ii. 5-20
In the style of his master Isaiah, Habakkuk follows up his _Vision_ with a series of lyrics on the same subject: chap. ii. 5-20. They are taunt-songs, the most of them beginning with _Woe unto_, addressed to the heathen oppressor. Perhaps they were all at first of equal length, and it has been suggested that the striking refrain in which two of them close—
_For men’s blood, and earth’s waste, Cities and their inhabitants_—
was once attached to each of the others as well. But the text has been too much altered, besides suffering several interpolations,[394] to permit of its restoration, and we can only reproduce these taunts as they now run in the Hebrew text. There are several quotations (not necessarily an argument against Habakkuk’s authorship); but, as a whole, the expression is original, and there are some lines of especial force and freshness. Verses 5-6_a_ are properly an introduction, the first Woe commencing with 6_b_.
The belief which inspires these songs is very simple. Tyranny is intolerable. In the nature of things it cannot endure, but works out its own penalties. By oppressing so many nations, the tyrant is preparing the instruments of his own destruction. As he treats them, so in time shall they treat him. He is like a debtor who increases the number of his creditors. Some day they shall rise up and exact from him the last penny. So that in cutting off others he is _but forfeiting his own life_. The very violence done to nature, the deforesting of Lebanon for instance, and the vast hunting of wild beasts, shall recoil on him. This line of thought is exceedingly interesting. We have already seen in prophecy, and especially in Isaiah, the beginnings of Hebrew Wisdom—the attempt to uncover the moral processes of life and express a philosophy of history. But hardly anywhere have we found so complete an absence of all reference to the direct interference of God Himself in the punishment of the tyrant; for _the cup of Jehovah’s right hand_ in ver. 16 is simply the survival of an ancient metaphor. These _proverbs_ or _taunt-songs_, in conformity with the proverbs of the later Wisdom, dwell only upon the inherent tendency to decay of all injustice. Tyranny, they assert, and history ever since has affirmed their truthfulness—tyranny is suicide.
The last of the taunt-songs, which treats of the different subject of idolatry, is probably, as we have seen, not from Habakkuk’s hand, but of a later date.[395]
INTRODUCTION TO THE TAUNT-SONGS (ii. 5-6_a_).
_For ...[396] treacherous, An arrogant fellow, and is not ...[397] Who opens his desire wide as Sheol; He is like death, unsatisfied; And hath swept to himself all the nations, And gathered to him all peoples. Shall not these, all of them, take up a proverb upon him, And a taunt-song against him? and say:—_
FIRST TAUNT-SONG (ii. 6_b_-8).
_Woe unto him who multiplies what is not his own, —How long?— And loads him with debts![398] Shall not thy creditors[399] rise up, And thy troublers awake, And thou be for spoil[400] to them? Because thou hast spoiled many nations, All the rest of the peoples shall spoil thee. For men’s blood, and earth’s waste, Cities and all their inhabitants._[401]
SECOND TAUNT-SONG (ii. 9-11).
_Woe unto him that gains evil gain for his house,[402] To set high his nest, to save him from the grasp of calamity! Thou hast planned shame for thy house; Thou hast cut off[403] many people, While forfeiting thine own life.[404] For the stone shall cry out from the wall, And the lath[405] from the timber answer it._
THIRD TAUNT-SONG (ii. 12-14).
_Woe unto him that builds a city in blood,[406] And stablishes a town in iniquity![407] Lo, is it not from Jehovah of hosts, That the nations shall toil for smoke,[408] And the peoples wear themselves out for nought? But earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah,[409] Like the waters that cover the sea._
FOURTH TAUNT-SONG (ii. 15-17).
_Woe unto him that gives his neighbour to drink, From the cup of his wrath[410] till he be drunken, That he may gloat on his[411] nakedness! Thou art sated with shame—not with glory; Drink also thou, and stagger.[412] Comes round to thee the cup of Jehovah’s right hand, And foul shame[413] on thy glory. For the violence to Lebānon shall cover thee, The destruction of the beasts shall affray thee.[414] For men’s blood, and earth’s waste, Cities and all their inhabitants.[415]_
FIFTH TAUNT-SONG (ii. 18-20).
_What boots an image, when its artist has graven it, A cast-image and lie-oracle, that its moulder has trusted upon it, Making dumb idols? Woe to him that saith to a block, Awake! To a dumb stone, Arise! Can it teach? Lo, it ...[416] with gold and silver; There is no breath at all in the heart of it. But Jehovah is in His Holy Temple: Silence before Him, all the earth!_
FOOTNOTES:
[394] See above, pp. 125 f.
[395] See above, pp. 125 f. Nowack (1897) agrees that Cornill’s and others’ conclusion that vv. 9-20 are not Habakkuk’s is too sweeping. He takes the first, second and fourth of the taunt-songs as authentic, but assigns the third (vv. 12-14) and the fifth (18-20) to another hand. He deems the refrain, 8_b_ and 17_b_, to be a gloss, and puts 19 before 18. Driver, _Introd._, 6th ed., holds to the authenticity of all the verses.
[396] The text reads, _For also wine is treacherous_, under which we might be tempted to suspect some such original as, _As wine is treacherous, so_ (next line) _the proud fellow_, etc. (or, as Davidson suggests, _Like wine is the treacherous dealer_), were it not that the word _wine_ appears neither in the Greek nor in the Syrian version. Wellhausen suggests that היין, _wine_, is a corruption of הוי, with which the verse, like vv. 6_b_, 9, 12, 15, 19, may have originally begun, but according to 6_a_ the taunt-songs, opening with הוי, start first in 6_b_. Bredenkamp proposes וְאֶפֶס כְּאַיִן.
[397] The text is ינוה, a verb not elsewhere found in the Old Testament, and conjectured by our translators to mean _keepeth at home_, because the noun allied to it means _homestead_ or _resting-place_. The Syriac gives _is not satisfied_, and Wellhausen proposes to read ירוה with that sense. See Davidson’s note on the verse.
[398] A.V. _thick clay_, which is reached by breaking up the word עבטיט, _pledge_ or _debt_, into עב, _thick cloud_, and טיט, _clay_.
[399] Literally _thy biters_, נשכיך, but נשך, _biting_, is _interest_ or _usury_, and the Hiphil of נשך is _to exact interest_.
[400] LXX. sing., Heb. pl.
[401] These words occur again in ver. 17. Wellhausen thinks they suit neither here nor there. But they suit all the taunt-songs, and some suppose that they formed the refrain to each of these.
[402] Dynasty or people?
[403] So LXX.; Heb. _cutting off_.
[404] The grammatical construction is obscure, if the text be correct. There is no mistaking the meaning.
[405]Heb. כפיס, not elsewhere found in the O.T., is in Rabbinic Hebrew both _cross-beam_ and _lath_.
[406] Micah iii. 10.
[407] Jer. xxii. 13.
[408] Literally _fire_.
[409] Jer. li. 58: which original?
[410] After Wellhausen’s suggestion to read מסף חמתו instead of the text מספח חמתך, _adding_, or _mixing_, _thy wrath_.
[411] So LXX. Q.; Heb. _their_.
[412] Read הרעל (cf. Nahum ii. 4; Zech. xii. 2). The text is הערל, not found elsewhere, which has been conjectured to mean _uncover the foreskin_. And there is some ground for this, as parallel to _his nakedness_ in the previous clause. Wellhausen also removes the first clause to the end of the verse: _Drink also thou and reel; there comes to thee the cup in Jehovah’s right hand, and thou wilt glut thyself with shame instead of honour._
[413] So R.V. for קיקלון, which A.V. has taken as two words—קי for which cf. Jer. xxv. 27, where however the text is probably corrupt, and קלון. With this confusion cf. above, ver. 6, עבטיט.
[414] Read with LXX. יחתך for יחיתן of the text.
[415] See above, ver. 8.
[416] תָּפוּשׂ?
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