TEXT [Commentary]

black diamond   3.   The second taunt: the plotting Babylonians will be denounced (2:9-11)

9 “What sorrow awaits you who build big houses

with money gained dishonestly!

You believe your wealth will buy security,

putting your family’s nest beyond the reach of danger.

10 But by the murders you committed,

you have shamed your name and forfeited your lives.

11 The very stones in the walls cry out against you,

and the beams in the ceilings echo the complaint.

NOTES

2:9 beyond the reach of danger. The imagery of the Hebrew text envisions setting one’s nest on high so as to escape from the “grasp of disaster” (Laetsch 1956:335). The reference is doubtless to Nebuchadnezzar’s many fortification efforts, particularly in Babylon. He enclosed his capital city with two massive walls, the outermost of which was entirely surrounded by a moat that stretched from its east side to the Euphrates on the city’s west side. (For more details, see Patterson 1991:190-191; Laetsch 1956:335-336.)

2:10 forfeited your lives. Lit., “sinning against your soul.” The NLT translates according to the sense of the passage, as do several other translations (e.g., NIV, NRSV).

2:11 stones . . . beams. The importance of wood in Mesopotamian buildings may be seen in Nebuchadnezzar’s account of enlarging the palace built by his father, Nabopolassar:

I built a structure of burned brick, and I built very high in its tower a large chamber with bitumen and burned brick for my royal dwelling-place, and joined it to my father’s palace, and in a prosperous month, on a favourable day, I firmly laid its foundation in the bowels of the earth, and I raised high its turrets. . . . Mighty cedar trees from the snow-capped mountains, ashuhu trees with broad trunks, and cypress trees (with) costly stones, I laid in rows for its roofing. (“East India House Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II” in Assyrian and Babylonian Literature, trans. C. D. Gray [New York: D. Appleton, 1901], 141-142)

COMMENTARY [Text]

The second taunt song underscores the Babylonians’ capacity for cunning schemes against mankind. Building upon the imagery in the first woe, the Babylonians are portrayed as achieving wealth through violence and evil means. Used as a verb, the root batsa‘ [TH1214, ZH1298] (lit., “break off”) means “gain one’s end through violence,” while as a noun (betsa‘ [TH1215, ZH1299]), it signifies “gain made by violence.” Both occur here together for emphasis—the picture being further strengthened by the addition of the adjective “evil.” A play on the root meaning may be intended: By violently accruing unjust gain for their “house,” the Babylonians have “cut off” their own “house” with evil. By cutting off—degrading and destroying—many peoples, the Babylonians sin against themselves, sealing their own judgment before God. They too would be cut off forever.

The Babylonians were to have no lasting empire. The arrogant misuse of others along with selfish scheming against them for personal and national aggrandizement would one day backfire. Even the building materials in the proud city could not be silent. Though men may keep still, they who were mute witnesses to all of the Babylonians’ greedy and grandiose plots could not. Fallen Babylon would one day be home to only the collapsed edifice of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The proverbial dictum is ever true: “Godliness makes a nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov 14:34).