Book of Habakkuk

“ They address the nation Israel, on behalf of God: he rather speaks to God on behalf of Israel. Their task was Israel’s sin, the proclamation of God’s doom and the offer of His grace to their penitence. Habakkuk’s task is God Himself, the effort to find out what He means by permitting tyranny and wrong. They attack the sins, he is the first to state the problems, of life. To him the prophetic revelation, the Torah, is complete: it has been codified in Deuteronomy and enforced by Josiah. ”

“ The righteous shall live by his faithfulness.
“The beginning of speculation in Israel.”
[Pg 115]
CHAPTER IX THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK
As it has reached us, the Book of Habakkuk, under the title The Oracle which Habakkuk the prophet received by vision, consists of three chapters, which fall into three sections. First: chap. i. 2—ii. 4 (or 8) , a piece in dramatic form; the prophet lifts his voice to God against the wrong and violence of which his whole horizon is full, and God sends him answer. Second: chap. ii. 5 (or 9) -20, a taunt-song in a series of Woes upon the wrong-doer. Third: chap. ”

“ From that time Babylon became greater and more terrible than Nineveh, whose power it inherited. Habakkuk (ii. 1-19) paints the rapacity, the selfishness, the inflated ambition, the cruelty, the drunkenness, the idolatry of the Chaldæans. He calls them (i. 5-11) a rough and restless nation, frightful and terrible, whose horsemen were swifter than leopards, fiercer than evening wolves, flying to gorge on prey like the vultures, mocking at kings and princes, and flinging dust over strongholds. ”

“ When the time drew nigh for him to die he called his kinsfolk, and told them that he was going to die. And he continued to gaze upwards for the space of an hour, and behold a great arm, like the hand [and arm] of a man, opened the roof of the house, and came down from above, and reached itself out to his mouth, and took his soul. And when Anastasius, the Christian emperor, read the story of the strife of Habakkuk, he built a church in his honor in the city of Kartas, in the north of Egypt, and it was consecrated as on this day. Salutation to Habakkuk. ”

“ The difficulty of deciding between the various arrangements of the two chapters of Habakkuk does not, fortunately, prevent us from appreciating his argument. What he feels throughout (this is obvious, however you arrange his verses) is the tyranny of a great [Pg 136] heathen power, [375] be it Assyrian, Egyptian or Chaldean. The prophet’s horizon is filled with wrong: [376] Israel thrown into disorder, revelation paralysed, justice perverted. [377] But, like Nahum, Habakkuk feels not for Israel alone. The Tyrant has outraged humanity. ”

“ Repeatedly disappointed of their hopes, and crushed for ages beneath an intolerable tyranny, have they not exhibited the same heroic temper with which their first great questioner was endowed? Endurance—this above all others has been the quality of Israel: though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. And, therefore, as Paul’s adaptation, The just shall live by faith, has become the motto of evangelical Christianity, so we may say that Habakkuk’s original of it has been the motto and the fame of Judaism: The righteous shall live by his faithfulness. ”

“ At the same time a number of critics [342] maintain the genuineness of the chapter, and they have some grounds for this. Habakkuk was, as we can see from chaps. i. and ii., a real poet. There was no need why a man of his temper should be bound down to reflecting only [Pg 128] his own day. If so practical a prophet as Hosea, and one who has so closely identified himself with his times, was wont to escape from them to a retrospect of the dealings of God with Israel from of old, why should not the same be natural for a prophet who was much less practical and more literary and artistic? ”

“ His questions, too, are bold with that sense of God’s absolute power, which flashed so bright in Israel as to blind men’s eyes to all secondary and intermediate causes. Thou, he says,—
Thou hast made men like fishes of the sea,
Like worms that have no ruler, boldly charging the Almighty, in almost the temper of Job himself, with being the cause of the cruelty inflicted by the unchecked tyrant upon the nations; for shall evil happen, and Jehovah not have done it? [379] Thus all through we perceive that Habakkuk’s trouble springs from the central founts of prophecy. ”

“ Now, although the prophet Habakkuk first said this, yet you have the apostle here confirming the prophets, even as Christ did. The object, therefore, of the faith whereby the just man shall live, will be that same God to whom likewise belongs the law, by doing which no man is justified. ”

“ The righteous mentioned there are Israel as a whole, the wicked their heathen oppressors. So Hitzig, Ewald, König and practically Smend. Ewald is so clear that Habakkuk ascribes no sin to Judah, that he says we might be led by this to assign the prophecy to the reign of the righteous Josiah; but he prefers, because of the vivid sense which the prophet betrays of actual experience of the Chaldees, to date the [Pg 119] passage from the reign of Jehoiakim, and to explain Habakkuk’s silence about his people’s sinfulness as due to his overwhelming impression of Chaldean cruelty. ”

“ Etheridge states that only fragments of this book are extant (p. 406) . Delitzsch (de Habacuci Proph. vita atque ætate, Lips. 1842, p. 34) also defends Martini's sincerity, and says "Non dubito fore, ut fragmentum a Raymundo nobiscum communicatum aliquando in antiquis Genesis Rabba Codd., qui sane rarissimi sunt, inveniatur."
The fact incidentally brought out in the story that Habakkuk was not engaged in reaping, but was occupied in taking out food for the reapers, fits in well with the idea of his advanced age. ”

“ And the angel of God seized him by the hair of his head, as he was carrying the food, and brought him to the pit of the city of Babylon, which was shut, and he gave that food to Daniel and he ate; and immediately the angel of God brought him back to the land of Judah. Now he was a very old man. When the children of Israel returned from captivity, and built the sanctuary, Habakkuk came to Jerusalem, and they welcomed him with great joy, and they made the sanctuary beautiful and assembled to hear his prophecy. ”

“ Assyria. Nahum exults in the destruction of Niniveh; Habakkuk sees in the Chaldeans nothing but the avengers of the peoples whom Assyria [48] had oppressed. For both these events are the close of an epoch: neither prophet looks beyond this. Nahum (not on behalf of Israel alone) gives expression to the epoch’s long thirst for vengeance on the tyrant; Habakkuk (if Budde’s reading of him be right [49] ) states the problems with which its victorious cruelties had filled the pious mind—states the problem and beholds the solution in the Chaldeans. ”

“ Let the righteous, however baffled his faith be by experience, hold on in [Pg 141] loyalty to God and duty, and he shall live. Though St. Paul, as we have said, used the Greek rendering of faith for the enforcement of trust in God’s mercy through Jesus Christ as the secret of forgiveness and life, it is rather to Habakkuk’s wider intention of patience and fidelity that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews returns in his fuller quotation of the verse: For yet a little while and He that shall come will come and will not tarry ”

“ This prophet prophesied much about the coming of the Lord; he died two years before the return of the people from Babylon, and was buried with honour in his own field.
Solomon of Basrah (thirteenth century) says: "The Jews stoned him in Jerusalem."
Some of the above matter has the air of being extracted from a book of prophecy; and it is more detailed by far than the accounts of some other prophets, e. g. Zephaniah and Haggai; but I cannot feel at all confident that it really does preserve pieces of the pseudepigraphs of Habakkuk. ”

“ Did not Rabha say, referring to the passage [Habakkuk iii. 4] : "And (his) brightness was like the sunlight; rays streamed forth out of his hand unto them: and there was the hiding of his power." "The righteous as compared with the Shekhina appear as the light of a candle to a bright flame; and concerning the benediction to be made at the close of the Sabbath-day which is pronounced over a light, he said, that a bright flame is more conducive to the efficient fulfilment of that duty?" (Why then should a flame not be permitted for the search?) ”

“ The composition of Nahum is placed between 720 and 698 B.C. Nineveh was destroyed 606 B.C., a century later.
The first verse of Zephaniah declares that the book was written “in the days of Josiah,” in the seventh century B.C.; the last verse shows that it was written in the days of Cyrus, in the sixth century B.C. Every chapter of Habakkuk and Obadiah’s single chapter show that these books were written after the dates assigned.
The book of Haggai is ascribed to Haggai, the last person in the world to whom it can reasonably be ascribed. It is not a book of Haggai, but about Haggai. ”

“ You may return to tell of God's greatness, which you have seen in Eastern lands. Perhaps they will be more ready to believe in God when they hear what you have to say. Ten years after you reach home I will visit you, as I visited Habakkuk and Daniel, whom I took over many lands. I will then bring you to this place, chosen of God, that your bones may be guarded here till the Judgment-Day. Remain here for seven days, then take with you food for your journey, and return to the North."
In the morning, when Eric awoke, he thanked God, and did all the angel had told him. ”

“ Heb. day of cold.
[312] ישכנו, dwell, is the Heb. reading. But LXX. ישנו, ἐκοίμισεν. Sleep must be taken in the sense of death: cf. Jer. li. 39, 57; Isa. xiv. 18.
[313] Except one or two critics who place it in Manasseh’s reign. See below.
[314] See next note.
[315] So Pusey. Delitzsch in his commentary on Habakkuk, 1843, preferred Josiah’s reign, but in his O. T. Hist. of Redemption, 1881, p. 226, Manasseh’s. Volck (in Herzog, Real Encyc.,2 art. “Habakkuk,” 1879) , assuming that Habakkuk is quoted both by Zephaniah (see above, p. 39, n.) and Jeremiah, places him before these. ”

“ Selah.
35:003:014 Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly.
35:003:015 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.
35:003:016 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. ”

“ Pusey, Ewald, König, Sinker (The Psalm of Habakkuk, Cambridge, 1890) , Kirkpatrick (Smith’s Bible Dict., art. “Habakkuk”) , Von Orelli.
[343] חֲבַקּוּק (the Greek Ἁμβακουμ, LXX. version of the title of this book, and again the inscription to Bel and the Dragon, suggests the pointing חַבַּקוּק; Epiph., De Vitis Proph.—see next note—spells it Ἁββακουμ) , from חבק, to embrace. Jerome: “He is called ‘embrace’ either because of his love to the Lord, or because he wrestles with God.” Luther: “Habakkuk means one who comforts and holds up his people as one embraces a weeping person.” ”

“ But even if the stimulus of her repentance proceeded from her faith, she heard her justification by faith through her repentance pronounced in the words, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” by Him who had declared by Habakkuk, “The just shall live by his faith.” [47]
Footnotes ↑ Luke vii. 1–10.↑ Comp. Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Refut. 7, for the same argument: Εἰ οὐδὲ ἐν τῷ ̓Ισραὴλ τοιαύτην πίστιν εὖρεν, κ.τ.λ. “If He found not so great faith, even in Israel, as He discovered in this Gentile centurion, He does not therefore condemn the faith of Israel. ”

“ How many in 1:2-3? (2) The description of Nineveh-not only her wickedness, but her energy and enterprise. (3) The doom predicted for Nineveh-analyze the predictions to the different things to which she is doomed. (4) Pride as a God-ward sin and its punishment. (5) Cruelty, The man-ward sin and its punishment.
Habakkuk.
The Prophet. His name means "embracing," and he very likely was a contemporary of Jeremiah and prophesied between 608 B. C. and 638 B. C. at a time of political and moral crisis. He may have been a Levite connected with the Temple music.
The Prophecy. ”

“ It is very likely that he lived after the destruction of Nineveh, as he speaks of the Chaldeans, but makes no mention of the Assyrians. And he appears also to have prophesied before the Jewish captivity, see [5] ; [6] ; [7] , [8] ; and therefore Abp. Newcome thinks he may be placed in the reign of Jehoiakim, between the years 606 b.c. and 598 b.c.
As a poet, Habakkuk holds a high rank among the Hebrew prophets. The beautiful connection between the parts of his prophecy, its diction, imagery, spirit, and sublimity, cannot be too much admired ”

“ And Habakkuk said, “Nay, my son, there is none among the Kings of the earth who may be compared with my lord King Solomon in riches, or in majesty, or in wisdom; yet haply in this matter of playing at the chess, the Lord, to whom be all the glory, hath been minded not to lay up the187 whole of his treasure in a single treasure house; for thy servant hath played with men of understanding as well as with others these two hundred years and more, yet hath he never lost a game to any of the children of men.” ”

“ The same, too, says David: “They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; there is none that doeth good, no, not one; they have all gone aside, they have together become profitless.” [79] So also Habakkuk: “What profiteth the graven image that he has graven it a lying image? Woe to him that saith to the stone, Awake; and to the wood, Arise.” [80] Likewise spoke the other prophets of the truth. And why should I recount the multitude of prophets, who are numerous, and said ten thousand things consistently and harmoniously? ”