_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?