Kesher Talk

David Aaronovich elegaically compares Saddam to one of the deposed dictator's predecessors, Nebuchadnezzar.

This bum was Saddam? . . . If the disordered tyrant seemed in any way familiar, it is because he also appeared in William Blake's picture of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, brought low as described in the Book of Daniel: "He was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws."

For a secular still-Leftist English Jew, Aaronovich doesn't seem to be so removed from his Jewish heritage. I can't imagine Hitchins quoting from the Bible. Read the whole thing.

posted by Judith @ 12/17/2003 08:03:00 PM