The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

HÅKAN BENGTSSON 201
will God condemn him to destruction. And as for that which He said,
Because of the blood of the city and the violence done to the land: interpreted,
the city is Jerusalem, where the Wicked Priest committed abominable
deeds and defiled the Temple of God. The violence done to the land:
these are the cities of Judah where he robbed the Poor of their possessions.
This passage continues the unfavorable description of the Wicked Priest.
In the first statement, a reassurance of the Priest’s retaliation is made. He
has done wrong to the Poor (Mynwyb)). It has been discussed whether “the
Poor” could be a self-designation for the Qumran community; for example,
in the War Scroll, “the Sons of Light” are called Mynwyb). 62 The following
allegorical interpretation focuses on different words and phrases in
the lemma and applies them to the community and its adherents. “For
Lebanon (Nwnblh) is the Council of the Community; and the beasts
(twmhbh) are the simple of Judah who keep the Law.” At first glance,
these applications certainly look arbitrary. They do not follow the earlier
pattern in which there was correspondence in thought, theme, or etymological
root between the lemma and interpretation. 63 Many different theories
have been suggested to solve this enigma. Is the etymological root
Nbl alluded to because the community wore white garments? In two passages,
Josephus clearly states that the Essenes did so. 64 Or is Nwnblh a
“cryptogram” for the temple, and, since the community considered itself
as a sacred building, does the temple allusion apply to the community? 65
Here I can only hint at some of the different suggestions. Still, our
analysis presents the main point: the exegesis hints that the community
has been subjected to pressure and perhaps even persecution, and that
this shall be vindicated. Whether the vindication lies in the future or not
is difficult to discern here. In the first mention of vindication, the Ml#$l
(“to repay him”) has no tense attached to it, but in the second instance,
hlkl l) wn+pw#$y (“God condemned him to destruction”), the imperfect
could be translated as future tense.
Further, with the second lemma recited from the Habakkuk text, two
additional allegorical implications are made. “The city is Jerusalem” and
“The violence done to the land: these are the cities of Judah.” Once again,
the focus is not specifically on the allegory itself. The Wicked Priest is
62. 1QM 11.9, 13; 13.13–14. Brownlee, The Midrash Pesher, 198.
63. Horgan, Pesharim, 244–45.
64. Josephus, J.W. 2.123.
65. Holding this view are both Geza Vermes, “The Symbolical Interpretation of
Lebanon in the Targums: The Origin and Development of an Exegetical Tradition,”
JTS 9 (1958): 1–12; and Bertil E. Gärtner, The Temple and the Community in Qumran and
the New Testament: A Comparative Study in the Temple Symbolism of the Qumran Texts and the
New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).