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Conclusion for 1QpHab 8.13–9.3
HÅKAN BENGTSSON 195
Again, the description of the Priest as a traitor to the godly precepts fits
the connotations of the sobriquet “the Wicked Priest” very well.
Moreover, a new theme is introduced here: vengeance. The first part of
the vengeance, bodily affliction, is described as a fact that has already
happened. I prefer to see “the Last Priests of Jerusalem” as a collective
sobriquet for the ruling priestly class in Jerusalem. They also commit
abominable deeds, but when the commentary was written, they were
“still alive and kicking,” and vengeance had not yet reached them; thus,
the implications of these descriptions are mostly ideological.
1QpHab 9.7–12, Commentary on Hab 2:8a
Interpreted, this concerns the Wicked Priest whom God delivered into the
hands of his enemies because of the iniquity committed against the
Righteous Teacher and the men of his Council, that he might be humbled
by means of a destroying scourge, in bitterness of soul, because he had
done wickedness to His elect.
Here the interpretation begins with an assertion that God has delivered the
Wicked Priest into the hands of the enemies, and this retaliation was due
to the fact that the Wicked Priest offended the Righteous Teacher and the
men of his council. Likewise, the interpretation closes with the expectation
of an imminent revenge upon the Priest. The divine revenge is expressed
in the perfect form, l) wntn, “God gave him,” but the imminent
punishment is expressed with infinitive wtwn(l, “to humble him,” and has
no temporal meaning in itself. Still, some translations prefer to see the humbling
in the future; 42 others connect it with the perfect form in 9.10. 43
I find it quite likely that the Wicked Priest was inflicted with some
physical misfortune, although his death, his final humiliation, had not yet
occurred. The author of the pesher expresses this notion with the
Hebrew perfect form, assuring the reader that God has already begun his
retaliation against the Wicked Priest. But since the Priest probably is still
alive, the final punishment is yet to be expected. This assumption of mine
is supported by the following passages, where the retaliation is expressed
as a future concept.
42. See Brownlee, The Midrash Pesher, 153; Eduard Lohse, Die Texte aus Qumran:
Hebräisch und Deutsch (Munich: Kösel, 1964), 239.
43. See Horgan, Pesharim, 18.