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 5–6a are properly an introduction, the first Woe commencing with 6b.
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. 5–6a).
For ...[396] treacherous,
An arrogant fellow, and is not ...[397]
Who opens his desire wide as Sheol;
He is like death, unsatisfied;