[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. [342]) 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.