Wicked Priest - Text

Text

“ Moreover, the arrogant man seizes wealth without halting. He widens his gullet like Hell and like Death he has never enough. All the nations are gathered to him and all the people are assembled to him. Will they not all of them taunt him and jeer at him saying, 'Woe to him who amasses that which is not his! How long will he load himself up with pledges?
Interpreted, this concerns the Wicked Priest who was called by the name of truth when he first arose. But when he ruled over Israel his heart became proud, and he forsook God and betrayed the precepts for the sake of riches. He robbed and amassed the riches of men of violence who rebelled against God, and he took the wealth of the peoples, heaping sinful iniquity upon himself. And he lived in the ways of abominations amidst every unclean defilement.		 ”

—1QpHab, col. 8, lines 4-11, translated by Vermes (2004)
“ Because of the blood of men and the violence done to the land, to the city, and all its inhabitants.
Interpreted, this concerns the Wicked Priest whom God delivered into the hands of his enemies because of the iniquity committed against the Teacher of Righteousness 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 wickedly to His elect.		 ”

—1QpHab, col. 9, lines 8-12, translated by Vermes (2004)
“ Woe to him who causes his neighbours to drink; who pours out his venom to make them drunk that he may gaze upon their feasts.
Interpreted, this concerns the Wicked Priest who pursued the Teacher of Righteousness to the house of his exile that he might confuse him with his venomous fury. And at the time appointed for rest, for the Day of Atonement, he appeared before them to confuse them, and to cause them to stumble on the Day of Fasting, their Sabbath of repose.		 ”

—1QpHab, col. 11, lines 3-8, translated by Vermes (2004)
“ You have filled yourself with ignomity more than with glory. Drink also, and stagger! The cup of the Lord's right hand shall come round to you and shame shall come on your glory.
Interpreted, this concerns the Priest whose ignomity was greater than his glory. For he did not circumcise the foreskin of his heart, and he walked in the ways of drunkenness that he might quench his thirst. But the cup of wrath of God shall confuse him, multiplying his and the pain of 		”

—1QpHab, col. 11, lines 8-16, translated by Vermes (2004)

Read more about this topic:  Wicked Priest

Famous quotes containing the word text:

    “If ever I should condescend to prose,
    I’ll write poetical commandments, which
    Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
    That went before; in these I shall enrich
    My text with many things that no one knows,
    And carry precept to the highest pitch:
    I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
    Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’”
    —George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)

    “The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
    —Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

    “I am so glad you have been able to preserve the text in all of its impurity.”
    —Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)