[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. [84].
[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.
[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.”
[344] See above, pp. [126] ff. The title to the Greek version of Bel and the Dragon bears that the latter was taken from the prophecy of Hambakoum, son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi. Further details are offered in the De Vitis Prophetarum of (Pseud-) Epiphanius, Epiph. Opera, ed. Paris, 1622, Vol. II., p. 147, according to which Habakkuk belonged to Βεθζοχηρ, which is probably Βεθζαχαριας of 1 Macc. vi. 32, the modern Beit-Zakaryeh, a little to the north of Hebron, and placed by this notice, as Nahum’s Elkosh is placed, in the tribe of Simeon. His grave was shown in the neighbouring Keilah. The notice further alleges that when Nebuchadrezzar came up to Jerusalem Habakkuk fled to Ostracine, where he travelled in the country of the Ishmaelites; but he returned after the fall of Jerusalem, and died in 538, two years before the return of the exiles. Bel and the Dragon tells an extraordinary story of his miraculous carriage of food to Daniel in the lions’ den soon after Cyrus had taken Babylon.