Hip, hip…

Originally posted on January 13, 2008 – by Andre Piet

Have you ever realized that when people shout “hip, hip…” for someone’s birthday, this cheer actually recalls the downfall of Jerusalem? Most likely not, so here is a brief explanation.

Between 1810 and 1820, a wave of antisemitism erupted in the German Empire. This culminated in 1819 in large-scale riots in various cities, including Frankfurt. Jews were violently driven out, and history books refer to this antisemitic outbreak as the “HEP! HEP Riots.” The uprising began among students, who for the occasion revived an old battle cry of the Crusaders. HEP is a Latin acronym for Hierosolyma Est Perdita, meaning “Jerusalem is lost.”

According to some sources, the HEP HEP battle cry goes back to Emperor Hadrian, who in the year 135 brutally crushed the Jewish revolt led by Bar Kochba, during which more than half a million (!) Jews were gruesomely killed. Jerusalem was (once again) razed to the ground, and on its ruins a new city was built with a new name. Judea was henceforth called Palestine, and on Mount Moriah the emperor had a temple built in honor of Jupiter.

When Hadrian appeared before the Senate, he would cry out HEP HEP, to declare that Jerusalem had been destroyed once and for all.

Eventually, through Latin and German, ‘hep, hep’ made its way into Dutch as ‘hiep, hiep’ and into English as ‘hip, hip’. However innocent the cheer may seem today (since who still knows its meaning?), the term nonetheless recalls 20 centuries of antisemitism. Several times in Scripture we read the prophecy that when Israel would be scattered among the nations, they would become “a proverb and a byword” there (Deut. 28:37; 1 Kings 9:7; 2 Chron. 7:20; Jer. 24:9). A “byword” is literally a sharp or pointed word (Str. 8148), such as an abbreviation or slogan. Well, that is precisely what HEP HEP is.

It may be just a coincidence (from a human perspective) that the Dutch follow “hiep, hiep…” with “Long may he live — in glory!” For twenty centuries we have known Someone who, since His resurrection from the dead, has lived long (read: endlessly) in glory! In parallel with that, we have also known an equally long period during which Israel has been set aside and Jerusalem has been lost. But the latter will not last much longer, because the appointed time is nearly fulfilled.

Then “hiep, hiep…” will definitively belong to the past…
Hooray!

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