James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (144 page)

To this was added the note ‘
rather each man would stand on his own net
’ or ‘
Watchtower
’. Here, not only will this archaic phraseology, ‘
House of Judah
’ – clearly an archaism for ‘
Jews
’ – also be important for the exposition of both Habakkuk 2:3 and 2:4 about to follow in 1QpHab VII.5–VIII.3, but so is this passage from 2:1, ‘
taking one
’
s stand upon one
’
s watchtower and looking out
’ – now also about to be expounded as a prelude to these in VI.12–VII.5.

The problem is that in this phrase in Column IV.12 of the Cairo Damascus Document, the scribe redacted ‘e
ach man would stand on his own net
/
metzudo’
, not ‘
watchtower
’ or ‘
fortress
’/
metzuro
, which really does make things obscure – seemin
g
ly miscopying
dalet
(
D
) for
resh
(
R
), virtually identical in written Hebrew.
But such a scribal error would be very understandable in view of the context of what follows in the Column IV.12–V.11, the ‘
Three Nets
’ (
metzudot
) in which Belial ‘
catches Israel
,
transforming these things before them into three kind of Righteousness’
.

Even were the substitution purposeful – meaning possibly, ‘
each man standing on his own record
’ or ‘
Righteousness
’ – still the language would clearly appear to be that of Habakkuk 2:1, now being subjected to exegesis here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
(VI.12–VII.8). Once again we have dramatic proof of the basic homogeneity of all these documents – but what is even more startling, that the writer of the Damascus Document seems to be using the very same passage as the
writer here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
– if so, intending us to understand that this, too, was the new state of affairs Habakkuk was envisioning.

Be this as it may, for the Habakkuk
Pesher
at this point at the end of Column VI.12–13, the ‘
standing upon one
’
s Watc
h
tower
’ and ‘
looking out to see what
(
God
)
would say
’ is interpreted to refer to
both
the Prophet Habakkuk and ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ (God’s exegete
par excellence
) and their mutual
visions
of
the End Time
– obviously an extremely important subject. The
Pesher
, in fact, is particularly graphic about this, connecting the ‘
reading and running
’ in the underlying text from Haba
k
kuk 2:2 to the exegetical mastery of the Righteous Teacher, ‘
to whom God made known all the Mysteries of the words of His Servants the Prophets’
. With regard to these, one should also recall the kind of
revelations
Paul claims to be having, in partic
u
lar in Romans 16:25 and his proclamation of ‘
the Gospel of Jesus Christ
,
according to the revelation of the Mystery
,
kept s
e
cret of the times of the Ages and by the Prophetic Scripture
,
but now made plain’
. The parallel of this with the language being encountered here in the
Pesher
should be plain.

By contrast, here in the
Pesher
the reference is directly to the Righteous Teacher, who is being described in precisely the manner he was in the earlier scriptural exegesis sessions of ‘
the Priest
’ in Column II.8–9, ‘
in whose heart God has put the i
n
sight to interpret all the words of His Servants the Prophets
’ – that is to say,
his heart was truly circumcised
as opposed to the Wicked Priest’s or, even more germane to the material before us, those ‘
fleshy tablets of the heart
’ upon which Paul claims to be writing ‘
Christ
’
s Letter
’ in 2 Corinthians 3:3 ‘
with the Spirit of the Living God’
. In fact, in the rest of the text from Haba
k
kuk 2:2 being cited here: ‘
write down the vision and make it plain on tablets
,
so that he may read it on the run’
, we have all
u
sion to the
very
‘
tablets
’ Paul is referring to. But now these
tablets
upon which God told Habakkuk to write down his vision are interpreted in terms of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
,
to whom God make known all the Mysteries of the words of His Servants the Prophets’
.
15
If such were not clear earlier, it is now unmistakably so that ‘
the Priest
’ here and
the Righteous Teacher
are
one and the same
.

Since the underlying passage from Habakkuk 2:3 that follows this speaks enigmatically about ‘
there shall yet be another v
i
sion of the Appointed Time
,
and it will speak of the End and it will not lie’
, the whole interpretation is then framed eschat
o
logically, ‘
the End
’ now being both ‘
the Last Generation
’ and ‘
the Last End’
, just encountered in the Damascus Document’s exposition of ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ as ‘
the Elect of Israel
,
called by Name
,
who will stand up in the Last Days
’ – ‘
the First Men of Holiness’
, ‘
who would justify the Righteous and condemn the Wicked
’. So, once again, we are in the same exegetical milieu.

Attached to the next passage from Habakkuk 2:3 about ‘
there yet being another vision of the Appointed Time
’ is an all
u
sion in the underlying text to ‘
it shall tell of the End and shall not lie’
. Again, the appeal of such a Biblical text to Qumran ex
e
getes or, for that matter, those in the early Church should be plain. One should also appreciate the kind of connections that could have been drawn to Paul with his repeated protestations to
not Lying
in the corpus attributed to him. The thrust given it in the
Pesher
, of course, is that the Righteous Teacher’s interpretation is
the Truth
, as opposed to ‘
Lying
’ ones like those of
the Man of Lying
or ‘
Lying Spouter’
.

Here the interpretation of
the Righteous Teacher
is actually given, namely that ‘
the Last Age
’ or ‘
the Final End will be e
x
tended and exceed all that the Prophets have foretold
,
because the Mysteries of God are astonishing’
.
16
Anyone familiar with early Christian history will
immediately recognize this interpretation as equivalent to what goes in modern parlance as ‘
the D
e
lay of the
Parousia
’ or ‘
the Delay of the Second Coming
’ or ‘
Return of Christ
’. But here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, we actually have the scriptural warrant for it – at least from the Qumran perspective –
Habakkuk
2:3. Not only this, it leads up to and a
c
tually introduces the Qumran exposition of Habakkuk 2:4, ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
.’ Even perhaps more signif
i
cantly, it was in the Scriptural exegesis of the Righteous Teacher of ‘
the Appointed Time
’ and ‘
the End
’ of Habakkuk 2:3 that this interpretation first appears to have been made, at least this would appear to be the purport of the text before us – a sta
r
tling conclusion.

‘
If it Tarries
, w
ait for it
’

The sense of this interpretation is reinforced and further expounded in the exposition of the second half of Habakkuk 2:3: ‘
If it tarries
,
wait for it
,
for it will surely come and not be late’
. Of course, as the Habakkuk
Pesher
turns this around, it will ‘
be late
’ or ‘
delayed
’ in view of the events transpiring in Palestine before the eyes of the exegete –
very late
. This is typical of Qu
m
ran usage, just as it is New Testament usage, which sometimes even changes the phraseology of an underlying text in favor of a given exegesis, not to mention reversing it.

One sees a variation of this in John 21:22–23’s portrait of Jesus telling one of his d
isciples
, in his post-Resurrection a
p
pearance along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, ‘
to remain
’ or ‘
wait for
(
him
)
until
(
he
)
comes’
. In this case, it is ‘
the Disciple Jesus loved
’ who is told to ‘
abide
’ his coming. This notion of ‘
waiting on the Lord
’ or patiently for ‘
the God of Judgement
’ is part and parcel of the eschatology of Isaiah 30:18, directly following the material about visionaries ‘
foretelling Smooth Things’
, so integral to the presentation of ‘
the Liar
’
and
his ‘
Covenant-Breaking
’ associates in the Damascus Document above. It is also part and parcel of the ideology of James 5:7 on being patient, because ‘
the coming of the Lord is drawing near’
.

At this point the Habakkuk
Pesher
, VII.10–11, introduces the terminology, ‘
the Doers of the
Torah
’ in apposition, signif
i
cantly, to ‘
the Men of Truth
’ and the analogue to which has already been encountered several times in James applied to those ‘
speaking against the Law and judging it
’. Evoking this terminology here, so much a part of the Letter attributed to James and so disparaged by Paul, is of the profoundest importance. This is particularly true since, as if by way of emphasis, it is then i
m
mediately introduced into the exegesis of Habakkuk 2:4 that follows, a fundamental proof-text we have already seen Paul e
x
pound on behalf of
Gentile
non-
Torah
-Doers
and
bringing Salvation
to Gentiles
generally.

Here in the
Pesher
it is connected to another concept important to the ideology of Paul and James: ‘
the Men of Truth d
o
ing the
Torah
’ or ‘
Torah
-Doers’
. We have already seen how intent Paul is that by telling his communities ‘
the Truth
’ he should not be viewed as their ‘
Enemy
’ (Galatians 4:16) and telling ‘
the Truth
’ about the prophecies so dear to God, at least as he sees this to be. This is particularly the case regarding Abraham’s ‘
Faith
’ in Genesis 15:6 but also the ‘
Salvation by Faith
’ he sees in Habakkuk 2:4.

This would relate to ‘
the Truth of the Gospel
’ (Galatians 2:5 and 2:14) or ‘
the Truth of Christ
’ and ‘
of the Cross
’ (2 Cori
n
thians 11:10) as well. In Romans 1:18–25, for instance (actually evoking Habakkuk 2:4), he calls down ‘
the Wrath of God in Heaven
’ upon those who ‘
disguise the Truth in Unrighteousness
’ or ‘
change God
’
s Truth into a Lie
’ and, later, again speaking about the ‘
Truth in Christ’
, he reiterates his assurance elsewhere that he ‘
does not lie
’ (Romans 9:1). However, here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, the phraseology ‘
the Men of Truth who do the
Torah
’ counter-indicates those having the opposite or ‘
Lying
’ interpretation of these pivotal passages as, for instance, someone of the
genus
of ‘
the Lying Spouter
’ it so reviles.