Bialik’s “On the Slaughter” and the Tradition of Biblical Lament: Stanza Four

Go here, here, here, here, and here for earlier posts in this series.

Stanza Four, the final stanza of Bialik’s poem, goes like this:

וארור האומר: נקם!

נקמה כזאת, נקמת דם ילד קטן

עוד לא-ברא השטן –

ויקב הדם את-התהום!

יקב הדם עד תהמות מחשכים,

ואכל בחשך וחתר שם

כל-מוסדות הארץ הנמקים.

 But cursed be the one who says; Avenge!

Revenge like this, revenge for the blood of a small child

Satan has not yet created –

and let the blood pierce the abyss!

Let the blood pierce through the deep-dark abysses,

and devour, in the darkness, and breach there

all the rotting foundations of the earth.

 In the preceding stanza, Bialik asked that justice be done here and now or not at all. In this stanza, the conclusion of his prayer, Bialik reverses himself. He wants justice to be done all the same, even if it will not happen here and now.

Bialik’s final prayer moves beyond the request for tit-for-tat justice. His curse on the one who, like the author of Psalm 137, imagines revenge for the blood of a small child to be something God might actually devise, may strike us as a nice liberal point of view, the kind of thing any enlightened person today might think.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Bialik does not resign himself to less than tit-for-tat justice, as enlightened middle-class people do, who in the process become less than men and less than women, and satisfy themselves with substitutes for justice like personal peace and prosperity.

Bialik knows that much more than tit-for-tat justice is the only satisfactory solution. The rotting foundations of earth itself must be breached. The language is apocalyptic. The world order as Bialik knows it must come to an end. Anything less would be insufficient.

Bialik taps a rich vein of biblical prophecy in the conclusion of his prayer, a vein that continues to be misunderstood and maligned by most interpreters. It is that stream of biblical tradition which sees the world as something far less than the best of all possible worlds. It is that stream of tradition which longs for the destruction of the status quo, and its replacement by something radically new.

רֹעָה הִתְרֹעֲעָה הָאָרֶץ

פּוֹר הִתְפּוֹרְרָה אֶרֶץ

מוֹט הִתְמוֹטְטָה אָרֶץ

 

נוֹעַ תָּנוּעַ

אֶרֶץ כַּשִּׁכּוֹר

וְהִתְנוֹדְדָה כַּמְּלוּנָה

 

וְכָבַד עָלֶיהָ פִּשְׁעָהּ

וְנָפְלָה וְלֹא־תֹסִיף קוּם׃

The earth is breaking, breaking;
     earth is splitting, splitting;
            earth is tottering, tottering.

Like a drunk the earth
     will sway and sway;
         like a shanty, rock to and fro.

Its crime will weigh upon it;
     it shall fall, to rise to no more.

Isa 24:19-20

כִּי קֶצֶף לַיהוה

עַל־כָּל־הַגּוֹיִם

וְחֵמָה עַל־כָּל־צְבָאָם

 

הֶחֱרִימָם נְתָנָם לַטָּבַח

וְחַלְלֵיהֶם יֻשְׁלָכוּ

וּפִגְרֵיהֶם יַעֲלֶה בָאְשָׁם

 

וְנָמַסּוּ הָרִים מִדָּמָם

וְנָמַקּוּ כָּל־צְבָא הַשָּׁמַיִם

 

וְנָגֹלּוּ כַסֵּפֶר הַשָּׁמָיִם

וְכָל־צְבָאָם יִבּוֹל

 

כִּנְבֹל עָלֶה מִגֶּפֶן

וּכְנֹבֶלֶת מִתְּאֵנָה

For the Lord is in a rage
       against all the nations;
           in a fury against all their array.

He vowed them to destruction, consigned them to slaughter;
       their dead shall be thrown away,
             their corpses send up a stench.

The hills will dissolve in their blood.
       all the array of heaven will molder;

the heaven will roll up like a scroll,
       all its array will shrivel

like leaves shrivel on a vine,
       like fruit shrivels on a fig tree.
                                           Isa 34:2-4

The third and fourth stanzas of Bialik’s prayer allude to Isa 34. The destruction Bialik envisions does not involve a tit-for-tat slaughter, but it continues to contemplate the end of the regime of both heaven and earth as Bialik knew it.

Here is the vocalized text:

וְאָרוּר הָאוֹמֵר: נְקֹם!

נְקָמָה כָזֹאת, נִקְמַת דַּם יֶלֶד קָטָן

עוֹד לֹא-בָרָא הַשָּׂטָן –

וְיִקֹּב הַדָּם אֶת-הַתְּהוֹם!

יִקֹּב הַדָּם עַד תְּהֹמוֹת מַחֲשַׁכִּים,

וְאָכַל בַּחֹשֶׁךְ וְחָתַר שָׁם

כָּל-מוֹסְדוֹת הָאָרֶץ הַנְּמַקִּים.