For this purpose he employs the idea of the Underworld which was prevalent among the northern Semitic peoples. Sheol—the gaping or craving place—which we shall have occasion to describe in detail when we come to speak of belief in the resurrection,[76] is the state after death that craves and swallows all living. There dwell the shades of men amid some unsubstantial reflection of their earthly state (ver. 9), and with consciousness and passion only sufficient to greet the arrival of the new-comer and express satiric wonder at his fall (ver. 9). With the arrogance of the Babylonian kings, this tyrant thought to scale the heavens to set his throne in the mount of assembly of the immortals, to match the Most High.[77] But his fate is the fate of all mortals—to go down to the weakness and emptiness of Sheol. Here, let us carefully observe, there is no trace of a judgement for reward or punishment. The new victim of death simply passes to his place among his equals. There was enough of contrast between the arrogance of a tyrant claiming Divinity and his fall into the common receptacle of mortality to point the prophet's moral without the addition of infernal torment. Do we wish to know the actual punishment of his pride and cruelty? It is visible above ground (strophe 4); not with his spirit, but with his corpse; not with himself, but with his wretched family. His corpse is unburied, his family exterminated; his name disappears from the earth.[78]
Thus, by the help of only a few fragments from the popular mythology, the sacred satirist achieves his purpose. His severe monotheism is remarkable in its contrast to Babylonian poems upon similar subjects. He will know none of the gods of the underworld. In place of the great goddess, whom a Babylonian would certainly have seen presiding, with her minions, over the shades, he personifies—it is a frequent figure of Hebrew poetry—the abyss itself. Sheol shuddereth at thee. It is the same when he speaks (ver. 13) of the deep's great opposite, that mount of assembly of the gods, which the northern Semites believed to soar to a silver sky in the recesses of the north (ver. 14), upon the great range which in that direction bounded the Babylonian plain. This Hebrew knows of no gods there but One, whose are the stars, who is the Most High. Man's arrogance and cruelty are attempts upon His majesty. He inevitably overwhelms them. Death is their penalty: blood and squalor on earth, the concourse of shuddering ghosts below.
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall have them in derision.
He who has heard that laughter sees no comedy in aught else. This is the one unfailing subject of Hebrew satire, and it forms the irony and the rigour of the following ode.[79]
The only other remarks necessary are these. In ver. 9 the Authorized Version has not attempted to reproduce the humour of the original satire, which styles them that were chief men on earth chief-goats of the herd, bell-wethers. The phrase they that go down to the stones of the pit should be transferred from ver. 19 to ver. 20.
And thou shalt lift up this proverb upon the King of Babylon, and shalt say,—
I.
Ah! stilled is the tyrant,
And stilled is the fury!
Broke hath Jehovah the rod of the wicked,
Sceptre of despots:
Stroke of (the) peoples with passion,
Stroke unremitting,
Treading in wrath (the) nations,
Trampling unceasing.
Quiet, at rest, is the whole earth,
They break into singing;
Even the pines are jubilant for thee,
Lebanon's cedars!
"Since thou liest low, cometh not up
Feller against us."
II.
Sheol from under shuddereth at thee
To meet thine arrival,
Stirring up for thee the shades,
All great-goats of earth!
Lifteth erect from their thrones
All kings of peoples.