_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. iii., part
psalm, part prayer, descriptive of a Theophany and expressive of
Israel’s faith in their God. Of these three sections no one doubts the
authenticity of the _first_; opinion is divided about the _second_;
about the _third_ there is a growing agreement that it is not a genuine
work of Habakkuk, but a poem from a period after the Exile.
1. CHAP. I. 2—II. 4 (OR 8).
Yet it is the first piece which raises the most difficult questions.
All[313] admit that it is to be dated somewhere along the line of
Jeremiah’s long career, _c._ 627—586. There is no doubt about the
general trend of the argument: it is a plaint to God on the sufferings
of the righteous under tyranny, with God’s answer. But the order and
connection of the paragraphs of the argument are not clear. There is
also difference of opinion as to who the tyrant is—native, Assyrian or
Chaldee; and this leads to a difference, of course, about the date,
which ranges from the early years of Josiah to the end of Jehoiakim’s
reign, or from about 630 to 597.
As the verses lie, their argument is this. In chap. i. 2-4 Habakkuk
asks the Lord how long the wicked are to oppress the righteous, to
the paralysing of the Torah, or Revelation of His Law, and the making
futile of judgment. For answer the Lord tells him, vv. 5-11, to look
round among the heathen: He is about to raise up the Chaldees to do His
work, a people swift, self-reliant, irresistible. Upon which Habakkuk
resumes his question, vv. 12-17, how long will God suffer a tyrant
who sweeps up the peoples into his net like fish? Is he to go on with
this for ever? In ii. 1 Habakkuk prepares for an answer, which comes
in ii. 2, 3, 4: let the prophet wait for the vision though it tarries;
the proud oppressor cannot last, but the righteous shall live by his
constancy, or faithfulness.
The difficulties are these. Who are the wicked oppressors in chap. i.
2-4? Are they Jews, or some heathen nation? And what is the connection
between vv. 1-4 and vv. 5-11? Are the Chaldees, who are described in
the latter, raised up to punish the tyrant complained against in the
former? To these questions three different sets of answers have been
given.
_First:_ the great majority of critics take the wrong complained
of in vv. 2-4 to be wrong done by unjust and cruel Jews to their
countrymen, that is, civic disorder and violence, and believe that
in vv. 5-11 Jehovah is represented as raising up the Chaldees to
punish the sin of Judah—a message which is pretty much the same as
Jeremiah’s. But Habakkuk goes further: the Chaldees themselves with
their cruelties aggravate his problem, how God can suffer wrong, and
he appeals again to God, vv. 12-17. Are the Chaldees to be allowed to
devastate for ever? The answer is given, as above, in chap. ii. 1-4.
Such is practically the view of Pusey, Delitzsch, Kleinert, Kuenen,
Sinker,[314] Driver, Orelli, Kirkpatrick, Wildeboer and Davidson, a
formidable league, and Davidson says “this is the most natural sense of
the verses and of the words used in them.” But these scholars differ
as to the date. Pusey, Delitzsch and Volck take the whole passage from
i. 5 as prediction, and date it from before the rise of the Chaldee
power in 625, attributing the internal wrongs of Judah described in
vv. 2-4 to Manasseh’s reign or the early years of Josiah.[315] But
the rest, on the grounds that the prophet shows some experience of
the Chaldean methods of warfare, and that the account of the internal
disorder in Judah does not suit Josiah’s reign, bring the passage down
to the reign of Jehoiakim, 608—598, or of Jehoiachin, 597. Kleinert and
Von Orelli date it before the battle of Carchemish, 506, in which the
Chaldean Nebuchadrezzar wrested from Egypt the Empire of the Western
Asia, on the ground that after that Habakkuk could not have called
a Chaldean invasion of Judah incredible (i. 5). But Kuenen, Driver,
Kirkpatrick, Wildeboer and Davidson date it after Carchemish. To Driver
it must be immediately after, and before Judah became alarmed at the
consequences to herself. To Davidson the description of the Chaldeans
“is scarcely conceivable before the battle,” “hardly one would think
before the deportation of the people under Jehoiachin.”[316] This also
is Kuenen’s view, who thinks that Judah must have suffered at least the
first Chaldean raids, and he explains the use of an undoubted future in
chap. i. 5, _Lo, I am about to raise up the Chaldeans_, as due to the
prophet’s predilection for a dramatic style. “He sets himself in the
past, and represents the already experienced chastisement [of Judah]
as having been then announced by Jehovah. His contemporaries could not
have mistaken his meaning.”
_Second:_ others, however, deny that chap. i. 2-4 refers to the
internal disorder of Judah, except as the effect of foreign tyranny.
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
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. König[317] takes vv. 2-4 as a general complaint of
the violence that fills the prophet’s day, and vv. 5-11 as a detailed
description of the Chaldeans, the instruments of this violence.
Vv. 5-11, therefore, give not the judgment upon the wrongs described in
vv. 2-4, but the explanation of them. Lebanon is already wasted by the
Chaldeans (ii. 17); therefore the whole prophecy must be assigned to
the days of Jehoiakim. Giesebrecht[318] and Wellhausen adhere to the
view that no sins of Judah are mentioned, but that the _righteous_ and
_wicked_ of chap. i. 4 are the same as in ver. 13, viz. Israel and a
heathen tyrant. But this leads them to dispute that the present order
of the paragraphs of the prophecy is the right one. In chap. i. 5 the
Chaldeans are represented as about to be raised up for the first time,
although their violence has already been described in vv. 1-4, and in
vv. 12-17 these are already in full career. Moreover ver. 12 follows on
naturally to ver. 4. Accordingly these critics would remove the section
vv. 5-11. Giesebrecht prefixes it to ver. 1, and dates the whole
passage from the Exile. Wellhausen calls 5-11 an older passage than the
rest of the prophecy, and removes it altogether as not Habakkuk’s. To
the latter he assigns what remains, i. 1-4, 12-17, ii. 1-5, and dates
it from the reign of Jehoiakim.[319]
_Third:_ from each of these groups of critics Budde of Strasburg
borrows something, but so as to construct an arrangement of the verses,
and to reach a date, for the whole, from which both differ.[320] With
Hitzig, Ewald, König, Smend, Giesebrecht and Wellhausen he agrees that
the violence complained of in i. 2-4 is that inflicted by a heathen
oppressor, _the wicked_, on the Jewish nation, the _righteous_. But
with Kuenen and others he holds that the Chaldeans are raised up,
according to i. 5-11, to punish the violence complained of in i. 2-4
and again in i. 12-17. In these verses it is the ravages of another
heathen power than the Chaldeans which Budde descries. The Chaldeans
are still to come, and cannot be the same as the devastator whose long
continued tyranny is described in i. 12-17. They are rather the power
which is to punish him. He can only be the Assyrian. But if that be so,
the proper place for the passage, i. 5-11, which describes the rise of
the Chaldeans must be after the description of the Assyrian ravages in
i. 12-17, and in the body of God’s answer to the prophet which we find
in ii. 2 ff. Budde, therefore, places i. 5-11 after ii. 2-4. But if the
Chaldeans are still to come, and Budde thinks that they are described
vaguely and with a good deal of imagination, the prophecy thus arranged
must fall somewhere between 625, when Nabopolassar the Chaldean made
himself independent of Assyria and King of Babylon, and 607, when
Assyria fell. That the prophet calls Judah _righteous_ is proof that he
wrote after the great Reform of 621; hence, too, his reference to Torah
and Mishpat (i. 4), and his complaint of the obstacles which Assyrian
supremacy presented to their free course. As the Assyrian yoke appears
not to have been felt anywhere in Judah by 608, Budde would fix the
exact date of Habakkuk’s prophecy about 615. To these conclusions of
Budde Cornill, who in 1891 had very confidently assigned the prophecy
of Habakkuk to the reign of Jehoiakim, gave his adherence in 1896.[321]
Budde’s very able and ingenious argument has been subjected to a
searching criticism by Professor Davidson, who emphasises first the
difficulty of accounting for the transposition of chap. i. 5-11 from
what Budde alleges to have been its original place after ii. 4 to
its present position in chap. i.[322] He points out that if chap. i.
2-4 and 12-17 and ii. 5 ff. refer to the Assyrian, it is strange the
latter is not once mentioned. Again, by 615 we may infer (though we
know little of Assyrian history at this time) that the Assyrian’s hold
on Judah was already too relaxed for the prophet to impute to him
power to hinder the Law, especially as Josiah had begun to carry his
reforms into the northern kingdom; and the knowledge of the Chaldeans
displayed in i. 5-11 is too fresh and detailed[323] to suit so early a
date: it was possible only after the battle of Carchemish. And again,
it is improbable that we have two different nations, as Budde thinks,
described by the very similar phrases in i. 11, _his own power becomes
his god_, and in i. 16, _he sacrifices to his net_. Again, chap. i.
5-11 would not read quite naturally after chap. ii. 4. And in the woes
pronounced on the oppressor it is not one nation, the Chaldeans, which
are to spoil him, but all the remnant of the peoples (ii. 7, 8).
These objections are not inconsiderable. But are they conclusive? And
if not, is any of the other theories of the prophecy less beset with
difficulties?
The objections are scarcely conclusive. We have no proof that the power
of Assyria was altogether removed from Judah by 615; on the contrary,
even in 608 Assyria was still the power with which Egypt went forth
to contend for the empire of the world. Seven years earlier her hand
may well have been strong upon Palestine. Again, by 615 the Chaldeans,
a people famous in Western Asia for a long time, had been ten years
independent: men in Palestine may have been familiar with their methods
of warfare; at least it is impossible to say they were not.[324] There
is more weight in the objection drawn from the absence of the name of
Assyria from all of the passages which Budde alleges describe it; nor
do we get over all difficulties of text by inserting i. 5-11 between
ii. 4 and 5. Besides, how does Budde explain i. 12_b_ on the theory
that it means Assyria? Is the clause not premature at that point? Does
he propose to elide it, like Wellhausen? And in any case an erroneous
transposition of the original is impossible to prove and difficult to
account for.[325]
But have not the other theories of the Book of Habakkuk equally great
difficulties? Surely, we cannot say that the _righteous_ and the
_wicked_ in i. 4 mean something different from what they do in i. 13?
But if this is impossible the construction of the book supported
by the great majority of critics[326] falls to the ground. Professor
Davidson justly says that it has “something artificial in it” and “puts
a strain on the natural sense.”[327] How can the Chaldeans be described
in i. 5 as _just about to be raised up_, and in 14-17 as already for
a long time the devastators of earth? Ewald’s, Hitzig’s and König’s
views[328] are equally beset by these difficulties; König’s exposition
also “strains the natural sense.” Everything, in fact, points to i. 5-11
being out of its proper place; it is no wonder that Giesebrecht,
Wellhausen and Budde independently arrived at this conclusion.[329]
Whether Budde be right in inserting i. 5-11 after ii. 4, there can be
little doubt of the correctness of his views that i. 12-17 describe a
heathen oppressor who is not the Chaldeans. Budde says this oppressor
is Assyria. Can he be any one else? From 608 to 605 Judah was sorely
beset by Egypt, who had overrun all Syria up to the Euphrates. The
Egyptians killed Josiah, deposed his successor, and put their own
vassal under a very heavy tribute; _gold and silver were exacted of the
people of the land_: the picture of distress in i. 1-4 might easily
be that of Judah in these three terrible years. And if we assigned
the prophecy to them, we should certainly give it a date at which the
knowledge of the Chaldeans expressed in i. 5-11 was more probable than
at Budde’s date of 615. But then does the description in chap, i. 14-17
suit Egypt so well as it does Assyria? We can hardly affirm this, until
we know more of what Egypt did in those days, but it is very probable.
Therefore, the theory supported by the majority of critics being
unnatural, we are, with our present meagre knowledge of the time, flung
back upon Budde’s interpretation that the prophet in i. 2—ii. 4 appeals
from oppression by a heathen power, which is not the Chaldean, but upon
which the Chaldean shall bring the just vengeance of God. The tyrant is
either Assyria up to about 615 or Egypt from 608 to 605, and there is
not a little to be said for the latter date.
In arriving at so uncertain a conclusion about i.—ii. 4, we have but
these consolations, that no other is possible in our present knowledge,
and that the uncertainty will not hamper us much in our appreciation of
Habakkuk’s spiritual attitude and poetic gifts.[330]
2. CHAP. II. 5-20.
The dramatic piece i. 2—ii. 4 is succeeded by a series of fine
taunt-songs, starting after an introduction from 6_b_, then 9, 11, 15
and (18) 19, and each opening with _Woe!_ Their subject is, if we take
Budde’s interpretation of the dramatic piece, the Assyrian and not the
Chaldean[331] tyrant. The text, as we shall see when we come to it,
is corrupt. Some words are manifestly wrong, and the rhythm must have
suffered beyond restoration. In all probability these fine lyric Woes,
or at least as many of them as are authentic—for there is doubt about
one or two—were of equal length. Whether they all originally had the
refrain now attached to two is more doubtful.
Hitzig suspected the authenticity of some parts of this series of
songs. Stade[332] and Kuenen have gone further and denied the
genuineness of vv. 9-20. But this is with little reason. As Budde says,
a series of Woes was to be expected here by a prophet who follows so
much the example of Isaiah.[333] In spite of Kuenen’s objection, vv.
9-11 would not be strange of the Chaldean, but they suit the Assyrian
better. Vv. 12-14 are doubtful: 12 recalls Micah iii. 10; 13 is a
repetition of Jer. li. 58; 14 is a variant of Isa. xi. 9. Very likely
Jer. li. 58, a late passage, is borrowed from this passage; yet the
addition used here, _Are not these things[334] from the Lord of Hosts?_
looks as if it noted a citation. Vv. 15-17 are very suitable to the
Assyrian; there is no reason to take them from Habakkuk.[335] The final
song, vv. 18 and 19, has its Woe at the beginning of its second verse,
and closely resembles the language of later prophets.[336] Moreover the
refrain forms a suitable close at the end of ver. 17. Ver. 20 is a
quotation from Zephaniah,[337] perhaps another sign of the composite
character of the end of this chapter. Some take it to have been
inserted as an introduction to the theophany in chap. iii.
Smend has drawn up a defence[338] of the whole passage, ii. 9-20, which
he deems not only to stand in a natural relation to vv. 4-8, but to be
indispensable to them. That the passage quotes from other prophets, he
holds to be no proof against its authenticity. If we break off with
ver. 8, he thinks that we must impute to Habakkuk the opinion that the
wrongs of the world are chiefly avenged by human means—a conclusion
which is not to be expected after chap. i.—ii. 1 ff.
3. CHAP. III.
The third chapter, an Ode or Rhapsody, is ascribed to Habakkuk by
its title. This, however, does not prove its authenticity: the title
is too like those assigned to the Psalms in the period of the Second
Temple.[339] On the contrary, the title itself, the occurrence of the
musical sign Selah in the contents, and the colophon suggest for the
chapter a liturgical origin after the Exile.[340] That this is more
probable than the alternative opinion, that, being a genuine work of
Habakkuk, the chapter was afterwards arranged as a Psalm for public
worship, is confirmed by the fact that no other work of the prophets
has been treated in the same way. Nor do the contents support the
authorship by Habakkuk. They reflect no definite historical situation
like the preceding chapters. The style and temper are different. While
in them the prophet speaks for himself, here it is the nation or
congregation of Israel that addresses God. The language is not, as some
have maintained, late;[341] but the designation of the people as _Thine
anointed_, a term which before the Exile was applied to the king,
undoubtedly points to a post-exilic date. The figures, the theophany
itself, are not necessarily archaic, but are more probably moulded on
archaic models. There are many affinities with Psalms of a late date.
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 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? There are also many phrases in the Psalm
which may be interpreted as reflecting the same situation as chaps. i.,
ii. All this, however, only proves possibility.
The Psalm has been adapted in Psalm lxxvii. 17-20.
FURTHER NOTE ON CHAP. I.—II. 4.
Since this chapter was in print Nowack’s _Die Kleinen Propheten_
in the “Handkommentar z. A. T.” has been published. He recognises
emphatically that the disputed passage about the Chaldeans, chap.
i. 5-11, is out of place where it lies (this against Kuenen and the
other authorities cited above, p. 117), and admits that it follows on,
with a natural connection, to chap. ii. 4, to which Budde proposes to
attach it. Nevertheless, for other reasons, which he does not state,
he regards Budde’s proposal as untenable; and reckons the disputed
passage to be by another hand than Habakkuk’s, and intruded into
the latter’s argument. Habakkuk’s argument he assigns to after 605;
perhaps 590. The tyrant complained against would therefore be the
Chaldean.—Driver in the 6th ed. of his _Introduction_ (1897) deems
Budde’s argument “too ingenious,” and holds by the older and most
numerously supported argument (above, pp. 116 ff.).—On a review of
the case in the light of these two discussions, the present writer
holds to his opinion that Budde’s rearrangement, which he has adopted,
offers the fewest difficulties.
FOOTNOTES:
[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. Sinker (_The Psalm
of Habakkuk_: see below, p. 127, n. 2) deems “the prophecy, taken as a
whole,” to bring “before us the threat of the Chaldean invasion, the
horrors that follow in its train,” etc., with a vision of the day “when
the Chaldean host itself, its work done, falls beneath a mightier foe.”
He fixes the date either in the concluding years of Manasseh’s reign,
or the opening years of that of Josiah (Preface, 1-4).
[316] Pages 53, 49. Kirkpatrick (Smith’s _Dict. of the Bible_,² art.
“Habakkuk,” 1893) puts it not later than the sixth year of Jehoiakim.
[317] _Einl. in das A. T._
[318] _Beiträge zur Jesaiakritik_, 1890, pp. 197 f.
[319] See Further Note on p. 128.
[320] _Studien u. Kritiken_ for 1893.
[321] Cf. the opening of § 30 in the first edition of his _Einleitung_
with that of § 34 in the third and fourth editions.
[322] Budde’s explanation of this is, that to the later editors of the
book, long after the Babylonian destruction of Jews, it was incredible
that the Chaldean should be represented as the deliverer of Israel, and
so the account of him was placed where, while his call to punish Israel
for her sins was not emphasised, he should be pictured as destined to
doom; and so the prophecy originally referring to the Assyrian was read
of him. “This is possible,” says Davidson, “if it be true criticism is
not without its romance.”
[323] This in opposition to Budde’s statement that the description of
the Chaldeans in i. 5-11 “ist eine phantastische Schilderung” (p. 387).
[324] It is, however, a serious question whether it would be possible
in 615 to describe the Chaldeans as _a nation that traversed the
breadth of the earth to occupy dwelling-places that were not his own_
(i. 6). This suits better after the battle of Carchemish.
[325] See above, p. 121, n. 322.
[326] See above, pp. 114 ff.
[327] Pages 49 and 50.
[328] See above, pp. 118 f.
[329] Wellhausen in 1873 (see p. 661); Giesebrecht in 1890; Budde in
1892, before he had seen the opinions of either of the others (see
_Stud. und Krit._, 1893, p. 386, n. 2).
[330] Cornill quotes a rearrangement of chaps, i., ii., by Rothstein,
who takes i. 2-4, 12 _a_, 13, ii. 1-3, 4, 5 _a_, i. 6-10, 14, 15 _a_,
ii. 6 _b_, 7, 9, 10 _a_ _b_ β, 11, 15, 16, 19, 18, as an oracle against
Jehoiakim and the godless in Israel about 605, which during the Exile
was worked up into the present oracle against Babylon. Cornill esteems
it “too complicated.” Budde (_Expositor_, 1895, pp. 372 ff.) and Nowack
hold it untenable.
[331] As of course was universally supposed according to either of the
other two interpretations given above.
[332] _Z.A.T.W._, 1884, p. 154.
[333] Cf. Isa. v. 8 ff. (x. 1-4), etc.
[334] So LXX.
[335] Cf. Davidson, p. 56, and Budde, p. 391, who allows 9-11 and 15-17.
[336] _E.g._ Isa. xl. 18 ff., xliv. 9 ff., xlvi. 5 ff., etc. On this
ground it is condemned by Stade, Kuenen and Budde. Davidson finds this
not a serious difficulty, for, he points out, Habakkuk anticipates
several later lines of thought.
[337] See above, p. 39, n.
[338] _A. T. Religionsgeschichte_, p. 229, n. 2.
[339] Cf. the ascription by the LXX. of Psalms cxlvi.-cl. to the
prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
[340] Cf. Kuenen, who conceives it to have been taken from a
post-exilic collection of Psalms. See also Cheyne, _The Origin of the
Psalter_: “exilic or more probably post-exilic” (p. 125). “The most
natural position for it is in the Persian period. It was doubtless
appended to Habakkuk, for the same reason for which Isa. lxiii. 7—lxiv.
was attached to the great prophecy of Restoration, viz. that the
earlier national troubles seemed to the Jewish Church to be typical
of its own sore troubles after the Return.... The lovely closing
verses of Hab. iii. are also in a tone congenial to the later religion”
(p. 156). Much less certain is the assertion that the language is
imitative and artificial (_ibid._); while the statement that in ver.
3—cf. with Deut. xxxiii. 2—we have an instance of the effort to avoid
the personal name of the Deity (p. 287) is disproved by the use of the
latter in ver. 2 and other verses.
[341] ישע את, ver. 13, cannot be taken as a proof of lateness;
read probably הושיע את.
[342] Pusey, Ewald, König, Sinker (_The Psalm of Habakkuk_, Cambridge,
1890), Kirkpatrick (Smith’s _Bible Dict._, art. “Habakkuk”), Von Orelli.