The belief which inspires these songs is very simple. Tyranny is intolerable. In the nature of things it cannot endure, but works out its own penalties. By oppressing so many nations, the tyrant is preparing the instruments of his own destruction. As he treats them, so in time shall they treat him. He is like a debtor who increases the number of his creditors. Some day they shall rise up and exact from him the last penny. So that in cutting off others he is _but forfeiting his own life_. The very violence done to nature, the deforesting of Lebanon for instance, and the vast hunting of wild beasts, shall recoil on him. This line of thought is exceedingly interesting. We have already seen in prophecy, and especially in Isaiah, the beginnings of Hebrew Wisdom—the attempt to uncover the moral processes of life and express a philosophy of history. But hardly anywhere have we found so complete an absence of all reference to the direct interference of God Himself in the punishment of the tyrant; for _the cup of Jehovah’s right hand_ in ver. 16 is simply the survival of an ancient metaphor. These _proverbs_ or _taunt-songs_, in conformity with the proverbs of the later Wisdom, dwell only upon the inherent tendency to decay of all injustice. Tyranny, they assert, and history ever since has affirmed their truthfulness—tyranny is suicide. The last of the taunt-songs, which treats of the different subject of idolatry, is probably, as we have seen, not from Habakkuk’s hand, but of a later date.[395] INTRODUCTION TO THE TAUNT-SONGS (ii. 5-6_a_). _For ...[396] treacherous, An arrogant fellow, and is not ...[397] Who opens his desire wide as Sheol; He is like death, unsatisfied; And hath swept to himself all the nations, And gathered to him all peoples. Shall not these, all of them, take up a proverb upon him, And a taunt-song against him? and say:—_ FIRST TAUNT-SONG (ii. 6_b_-8). _Woe unto him who multiplies what is not his own, —How long?— And loads him with debts![398] Shall not thy creditors[399] rise up, And thy troublers awake, And thou be for spoil[400] to them? Because thou hast spoiled many nations, All the rest of the peoples shall spoil thee. For men’s blood, and earth’s waste, Cities and all their inhabitants._[401] SECOND TAUNT-SONG (ii. 9-11). _Woe unto him that gains evil gain for his house,[402] To set high his nest, to save him from the grasp of calamity! Thou hast planned shame for thy house; Thou hast cut off[403] many people, While forfeiting thine own life.[404] For the stone shall cry out from the wall, And the lath[405] from the timber answer it._ THIRD TAUNT-SONG (ii. 12-14).