“_IN THE MIDST OF THE YEARS_”
HABAKKUK iii.
We have seen the impossibility of deciding the age of the ode which is
attributed to Habakkuk in the third chapter of his book.[417] But this
is only one of the many problems raised by that brilliant poem. Much of
its text is corrupt, and the meaning of many single words is uncertain.
As in most Hebrew poems of description, the tenses of the verbs puzzle
us; we cannot always determine whether the poet is singing of that
which is past or present or future, and this difficulty is increased
by his subject, a revelation of God in nature for the deliverance
of Israel. Is this the deliverance from Egypt, with the terrible
tempests which accompanied it? Or have the features of the Exodus been
borrowed to describe some other deliverance, or to sum up the constant
manifestation of Jehovah for His people’s help?
The introduction, in ver. 2, is clear. The singer has heard what is
to be heard of Jehovah, and His great deeds in the past. He prays for
a revival of these _in the midst of the years_. The times are full
of trouble and turmoil. Would that God, in the present confusion of
baffled hopes and broken issues, made Himself manifest by power and
brilliance, as of old! _In turmoil remember mercy!_ To render _turmoil_
by _wrath_, as if it were God’s anger against which the singer’s heart
appealed, is not true to the original word itself,[418] affords no
parallel to _the midst of the years_, and misses the situation. Israel
cries from a state of life in which the obscure years are huddled
together and full of turmoil. We need not wish to fix the date more
precisely than the writer himself does, but may leave it with him _in
the midst of the years_.
There follows the description of the Great Theophany, of which, in his
own poor times, the singer has heard. It is probable that he has in
his memory the events of the Exodus and Sinai. On this point his few
geographical allusions agree with his descriptions of nature. He draws
all the latter from the desert, or Arabian, side of Israel’s history.
He introduces none of the sea-monsters, or imputations of arrogance
and rebellion to the sea itself, which the influence of Babylonian
mythology so thickly scattered through the later sea-poetry of the
Hebrews. The Theophany takes place in a violent tempest of thunder
and rain, the only process of nature upon which the desert poets of
Arabia dwell with any detail. In harmony with this, God appears from
the southern desert, from Teman and Paran, as in the theophanies in
Deuteronomy xxxiii. and in the Song of Deborah;[419] a few lines recall
the Song of the Exodus,[420] and there are many resemblances to the
phraseology of the Sixty-Eighth Psalm. The poet sees under trouble
the tents of Kushan and of Midian, tribes of Sinai. And though the
Theophany is with floods of rain and lightning, and foaming of great
waters, it is not with hills, rivers or sea that God is angry, but with
the _nations_, the oppressors of His poor people, and in order that He
may deliver the latter. All this, taken with the fact that no mention
is made of Egypt, proves that, while the singer draws chiefly upon
the marvellous events of the Exodus and Sinai for his description, he
celebrates not them alone but all the ancient triumphs of God over the
heathen oppressors of Israel. Compare the obscure line—these be _His
goings of old_.
The report of it all fills the poet with trembling (ver. 16 returns
upon ver. 26), and although his language is too obscure to permit us to
follow with certainty the course of his feeling, he appears to await in
confidence the issue of Israel’s present troubles. His argument seems
to be, that such a God may be trusted still, in face of approaching
invasion (ver. 16). The next verse, however, does not express the
experience of trouble from human foes; but figuring the extreme
affliction of drought, barrenness and poverty, the poet speaking in the
name of Israel declares that, in spite of them, he will still rejoice
in the God of their salvation (ver. 17). So sudden is this change from
human foes to natural plagues, that some scholars have here felt a
passage to another poem describing a different situation. But the last
lines with their confidence in the _God of salvation_, a term always
used of deliverance from enemies, and the boast, borrowed from the
Eighteenth Psalm, _He maketh my feet like to hinds’ feet, and gives me
to march on my heights_, reflect the same circumstances as the bulk of
the Psalm, and offer no grounds to doubt the unity of the whole.[421]
PSALM[422] OF HABAKKUK THE PROPHET.
_LORD, I have heard the report of Thee;
I stand in awe![423]
LORD, revive Thy work in the midst of the years,
In the midst of the years make Thee known;[424]
In turmoil[425] remember mercy!_
_God comes from Teman,[426]
The Holy from Mount Paran.[427]
He covers the heavens with His glory,
And filled with His praise is the earth.
The flash is like lightning;
He has rays from each hand of Him,
Therein[428] is the ambush of His might._
_Pestilence travels before Him,
The plague-fire breaks forth at His feet.
He stands and earth shakes,[429]
He looks and drives nations asunder;
And the ancient mountains are cloven,
The hills everlasting sink down._
These be _His ways from of old_.[430]
_Under trouble I see the tents of Kûshān,[431]
The curtains of Midian’s land are quivering.
Is it with hills[432] Jehovah is wroth?
Is Thine anger with rivers?
Or against the sea is Thy wrath,
That Thou ridest it with horses,
Thy chariots of victory?
Thy bow is stripped bare;[433]
Thou gluttest (?) Thy shafts.[434]
Into rivers Thou cleavest the earth;[435]
Mountains see Thee and writhe;
The rainstorm sweeps on:[436]
The Deep utters his voice,
He lifts up his roar upon high.[437]
Sun and moon stand still in their dwelling,
At the flash of Thy shafts as they speed,
At the sheen of the lightning, Thy lance.
In wrath Thou stridest the earth,
In anger Thou threshest the nations!
Thou art forth to the help of Thy people,
To save Thine anointed.[438]
Thou hast shattered the head from the house of the wicked,
Laying bare from ...[439] to the neck.
Thou hast pierced with Thy spears the head of his princes.[440]
They stormed forth to crush me;
Their triumph was as to devour the poor in secret.[441]
Thou hast marched on the sea with Thy horses;
Foamed[442] the great waters._
_I have heard, and my heart[443] shakes;
At the sound my lips tremble,[444]
Rottenness enters my bones,[445]
My steps shake under me.[446]
I will ...[447] for the day of trouble
That pours in on the people.[448]_
_Though the fig-tree do not blossom,[449]
And no fruit be on the vines,
Fail the produce of the olive,
And the fields yield no meat,
Cut off[450] be the flock from the fold,
And no cattle in the stalls,
Yet in the LORD will I exult,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Jehovah, the Lord, is my might;
He hath made my feet like the hinds’,
And on my heights He gives me to march._
This Psalm, whose musical signs prove it to have been employed in the
liturgy of the Jewish Temple, has also largely entered into the use
of the Christian Church. The vivid style, the sweep of vision, the
exultation in the extreme of adversity with which it closes, have
made it a frequent theme of preachers and of poets. St. Augustine’s
exposition of the Septuagint version spiritualises almost every clause
into a description of the first and second advents of Christ.[451]
Calvin’s more sober and accurate learning interpreted it of God’s
guidance of Israel from the time of the Egyptian plagues to the days
of Joshua and Gideon, and made it enforce the lesson that He who so
wonderfully delivered His people in their youth will not forsake them
in the midway of their career.[452] The closing verses have been torn
from the rest to form the essence of a large number of hymns in many
languages.
For ourselves it is perhaps most useful to fasten upon the poet’s
description of his own position in the midst of the years, and like
him to take heart, amid our very similar circumstances, from the
glorious story of God’s ancient revelation, in the faith that He is
still the same in might and in purpose of grace to His people. We, too,
live among the nameless years. We feel them about us, undistinguished
by the manifest workings of God, slow and petty, or, at the most,
full of inarticulate turmoil. At this very moment we suffer from the
frustration of a great cause, on which believing men had set their
hearts as God’s cause; Christendom has received from the infidel no
greater reverse since the days of the Crusades. Or, lifting our eyes
to a larger horizon, we are tempted to see about us a wide, flat waste
of years. It is nearly nineteen centuries since the great revelation
of God in Christ, the redemption of mankind, and all the wonders of
the Early Church. We are far, far away from that, and unstirred by the
expectation of any crisis in the near future. We stand _in the midst
of the years_, equally distant from beginning and from end. It is the
situation which Jesus Himself likened to the long double watch in the
middle of the night—_if he come in the second watch or in the third
watch_—against whose dulness He warned His disciples. How much need is
there at such a time to recall, like this poet, what God has done—how
often He has shaken the world and overturned the nations, for the sake
of His people and the Divine causes they represent. _His ways are
everlasting._ As He then worked, so He will work now for the same ends
of redemption. Our prayer for _a revival of His work_ will be answered
before it is spoken.
It is probable that much of our sense of the staleness of the years
comes from their prosperity. The dull feeling that time is mere routine
is fastened upon our hearts by nothing more firmly than by the constant
round of fruitful seasons—that fortification of comfort, that
regularity of material supplies, which modern life assures to so many.
Adversity would brace us to a new expectation of the near and strong
action of our God. This is perhaps the meaning of the sudden mention of
natural plagues in the seventeenth verse of our Psalm. Not in spite of
the extremes of misfortune, but just because of them, should we exult
in _the God of our salvation_; and realise that it is by discipline He
makes His Church to feel that she is not marching over the dreary
levels of nameless years, but _on our high places He makes us to
march_.
“Grant, Almighty God, as the dulness and hardness of our flesh is so
great that it is needful for us to be in various ways afflicted—oh
grant that we patiently bear Thy chastisement, and under a deep
feeling of sorrow flee to Thy mercy displayed to us in Christ, so that
we depend not on the earthly blessings of this perishable life, but
relying on Thy word go forward in the course of our calling, until at
length we be gathered to that blessed rest which is laid up for us in
heaven, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”[453]
FOOTNOTES:
[417] Above, pp. 126 ff.
[418] רגז nowhere in the Old Testament means _wrath_, but either
roar and noise of thunder (Job xxxvii. 2) and of horsehoofs (xxxix.
24), or the raging of the wicked (iii. 17) or the commotion of fear
(iii. 26; Isa. xiv. 3).
[419]
_Jehovah from Sinai hath come,
And risen from Se‘ir upon them;
He shone from Mount Paran,
And broke from Meribah of Ḳadesh:
From the South fire ... to them._
Deut. xxxiii. 2, slightly altered after the LXX. _South_: some form
of ימין must be read to bring the line into parallel with the others;
תימן, Teman, is from the same root.
_Jehovah, in Thy going forth from Se’ir,
In Thy marching from Edom’s field,
Earth shook, yea, heaven dropped,
Yea, the clouds dropped water.
Mountains flowed down before Jehovah,
Yon Sinai at the face of the God of Israel._
Judges v. 4, 5.
[420] Exod. xv.
[421] In this case ver. 17 would be the only one that offered any
reason for suspicion that it was an intrusion.
[422] תפלה, lit. Prayer, but used for Psalm: cf. Psalm cii. 1.
[423] Sinker takes with this the first two words of next line: _I have
trembled, O LORD, at Thy work_.
[424] תודע, Imp. Niph., after LXX. γνωσθήσῃ. The Hebrew has תּוֹדִיעַ,
Hi., _make known_. The LXX. had a text of these verses which
reduplicated them, and it has translated them very badly.
[425] רֹגֶז, _turmoil_, _noise_, as in Job: a meaning that offers a
better parallel to _in the midst of the years_ than _wrath_, which
the word also means. Davidson, however, thinks it more natural to
understand the _wrath_ manifest at the coming of Jehovah to judgment.
So Sinker.
[426] Vulg. _ab Austro_, _from the South_.
[427] LXX. adds κατασκίον δασέος, which seems the translation of a
clause, perhaps a gloss, containing the name of Mount Se‘ir, as in the
parallel descriptions of a theophany, Deut. xxiii. 2, Judg. v. 4. See
Sinker, p. 45.
[428] Wellhausen, reading שׂם for שׁם, translates _He made them_, etc.
[429] So LXX. Heb. _and measures the earth_.
[430] This is the only way of rendering the verse so as not to make it
seem superfluous: so rendered it sums up and clenches the theophany
from ver. 3 onwards; and a new strophe now begins. There is therefore
no need to omit the verse, as Wellhausen does.
[431] LXX. Ἀίθιοπες; but these are Kush, and the parallelism requires
a tribe in Arabia. Calvin rejects the meaning _Ethiopian_ on the same
ground, but takes the reference as to King Kushan in Judg. iii. 8, 10,
on account of the parallelism with Midian. The Midianite wife whom
Moses married is called the Kushite (Num. xii. 1). Hommel (_Anc. Hebrew
Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments_, p. 315 and n. 1) appears to
take Zerah the Kushite of 2 Chron. xiv. 9 ff. as a prince of Kush in
Central Arabia. But the narrative which makes him deliver his invasion
of Judah at Mareshah surely confirms the usual opinion that he and his
host were Ethiopians coming up from Egypt.
[432] For הבנהרים, _is it with streams_, read הבהרים, _is it with
hills_: because hills have already been mentioned, and rivers occur in
the next clause, and are separated by the same disjunctive particle,
אִם, which separates _the sea_ in the third clause from them. The
whole phrase might be rendered, _Is it with hills_ Thou art _angry, O
Jehovah_?
[433] Questionable: the verb תֵּעוֹר, Ni. of a supposed עוּר, does
not elsewhere occur, and is only conjectured from the noun עֶרְוָה,
_nakedness_, and עֶרְיָה, _stripping_. LXX. has ἐντείνων ἐνέτεινας,
and Wellhausen reads, after 2 Sam. xxiii. 18, עוֹרֵר תְּעוֹרֵר, _Thou
bringest into action Thy bow_.
[434] שְׁבֻעוֹת מַטּוֹת אֹמֶר, literally _sworn are staves_ or _rods of
speech_. A.V.: according _to the oaths of the tribes_, even Thy _word_.
LXX. (omitting שְׁבֻעוֹת and adding יהוה) ἐπὶ σκῆπτρα, λέγει κύριος.
These words “form a riddle which all the ingenuity of scholars has not
been able to solve. Delitzsch calculates that a hundred translations
of them have been offered” (Davidson). In parallel to previous
clause about a _bow_, we ought to expect מטות, _staves_, though it
is not elsewhere used for _shafts_ or _arrows_. שׁבעות may have been
שַׂבֵּעְתָּ, _Thou satest_. The Cod. Barb. reads: ἐχόρτασας βολίδας τῆς
φαρέτρης αὐτοῦ, _Thou hast satiated the shafts of his quiver_. Sinker:
_sworn are the punishments of the solemn decree_, and relevantly
compares Isa. xi. 4, _the rod of His mouth_; xxx. 32, _rod of doom_.
Ewald: _sevenfold shafts of war_. But cf. Psalm cxviii. 12.
[435] Uncertain, but a more natural result of cleaving than _the rivers
Thou cleavest into dry land_ (Davidson and Wellhausen).
[436] But Ewald takes this as of the Red Sea floods sweeping on the
Egyptians.
[437] רום ידיהו נשא = _he lifts up his hands on high_. But the LXX.
read מריהו, φαντασίας αὐτῆς, and took נשא with the next verse. The
reading מריהו (for מראיהו) is indeed nonsense, but suggests an
emendation to מרזחו, _his shout or wail_: cf. Amos vi. 7, Jer. xvi. 5.
[438] Reading for הושיע ישע, required by the acc. following. _Thine
anointed_, lit. _Thy Messiah_, according to Isa. xl. ff. the whole
people.
[439] Heb. יסוד, _foundation_. LXX. _bonds_. Some suggest laying bare
from the foundation to the neck, but this is mixed unless _neck_
happened to be a technical name for a part of a building: cf. Isa.
viii. 8, xxx. 28.
[440] Heb. _his spears_ or _staves_; _his own_ (Von Orelli). LXX.
ἐν ἐκστάσει: see Sinker, pp. 56 ff. _Princes_: פְרָזָו only here.
Hitzig: _his brave ones_. Ewald, Wellhausen, Davidson: _his princes_.
Delitzsch: _his hosts_. LXX. κεφαλὰς δυναστῶν.
[441] So Heb. literally. A very difficult line. On LXX. see Sinker, pp.
60 f.
[442] For חֹמֶר, _heap_ (so A.V.), read some part of חמר, _to foam_.
LXX. ταράσσοντας: cf. Psalm xlvi. 4.
[443] So LXX. א (some codd.), softening the original _belly_.
[444] Or _my lips quiver aloud_—לקול, _vocally_ (Von Orelli).
[445] By the Hebrew the bones were felt, as a modern man feels his
nerves: Psalms xxxii., li.; Job.
[446] For אשר, for which LXX. gives ἡ ἔξις μου, read אשרי, _my steps_;
and for ארגז, LXX. ἑταράχθη, ירגזו.
[447] אָנוּחַ. LXX. ἀναπαύσομαι, _I will rest_. A.V.: _that I might
rest in the day of trouble_. Others: _I will wait for_. Wellhausen
suggests אִנָּחֵם (Isa. l. 24), _I will take comfort_. Sinker takes
אשר as the simple relative: _I who will wait patiently for the day of
doom_. Von Orelli takes it as the conjunction _because_.
[448] יְגֻדֶנּוּ, _it invades_, _brings up troops on them_, only in
Gen. xlix. 19 and here. Wellhausen: _which invades us_. Sinker: _for
the coming up against the people of him who shall assail it_.
[449] תפרח; but LXX. תפרה, οὐ καρποφορήσει, _bear no fruit_.
[450] For גזר Wellhausen reads נִגזר. LXX. ἐξελιπεν.
[451] _De Civitate Dei_, XVIII. 32.
[452] So he paraphrases _in the midst of the years_.
[453] From the prayer with which Calvin concludes his exposition of
Habakkuk.
_OBADIAH_
_And Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge Mount Esau, and the
kingdom shall be Jehovah’s._