Tradition says that Habakkuk was a priest, the son of Joshua, of the tribe of Levi, but this is only an inference from the late liturgical notes to the Psalm which has been appended to his prophecy.[344] All that we know for certain is that he was a contemporary of Jeremiah, with a sensitiveness under wrong and impulses to question God which remind us of Jeremiah; but with a literary power which is quite his own. We may emphasise the latter, even though we recognise upon his writing the influence of Isaiah’s.
Habakkuk’s originality, however, is deeper than style. He is the earliest who is known to us of a new school of religion in Israel. He is called prophet, but at first he does not adopt the attitude which is characteristic of the prophets. His face is set in an opposite direction to theirs. 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. Habakkuk’s business is not to add to it but to ask why it does not work. Why does God suffer wrong to triumph, so that the Torah is paralysed, and Mishpat, the prophetic justice or judgment, comes to nought? The prophets travailed for Israel’s character—to get the people to love justice till justice prevailed among them: Habakkuk feels justice cannot prevail in Israel, because of the great disorder which God permits to fill the world. It is true that he arrives at a prophetic attitude, and before the end authoritatively declares God’s will; but he begins by searching for the latter, with an appreciation of the great obscurity cast over it by the facts of life. He complains to God, asks questions and expostulates. This is the beginning of speculation in Israel. It does not go far: it is satisfied with stating questions to God; it does not, directly at least, state questions against Him. But Habakkuk at least feels that revelation is baffled by experience, that the facts of life bewilder a man who believes in the God whom the prophets have declared to Israel. As in Zephaniah prophecy begins to exhibit traces of apocalypse, so in Habakkuk we find it developing the first impulses of speculation.
We have seen that the course of events which troubles Habakkuk and renders the Torah ineffectual is somewhat obscure. On one interpretation of these two chapters, that which takes the present order of their verses as the original, Habakkuk asks why God is silent in face of the injustice which fills the whole horizon (chap. i. 1–4), is told to look round among the heathen and see how God is raising up the Chaldeans (i. 5–11), presumably to punish this injustice (if it be Israel’s own) or to overthrow it (if vv. 1–4 mean that it is inflicted on Israel by a foreign power). But the Chaldeans only aggravate the prophet’s problem; they themselves are a wicked and oppressive people: how can God suffer them? (i. 12–17). Then come the prophet’s waiting for an answer (ii. 1) and the answer itself (ii. 2 ff.). Another interpretation takes the passage about the Chaldeans (i. 5–11) to be out of place where it now lies, removes it to after chap. ii. 4 as a part of God’s answer to the prophet’s problem, and leaves the remainder of chap. i. as the description of the Assyrian oppression of Israel, baffling the Torah and perplexing the prophet’s faith in a Holy and Just God.[345] Of these two views the former is, we have seen, somewhat artificial, and though the latter is by no means proved, the arguments for it are sufficient to justify us in re-arranging the verses chap. i.—ii. 4 in accordance with its proposals.
The Oracle which Habakkuk the Prophet
Received by Vision.[346]
How long, O Jehovah, have I called and Thou
hearest not?
I cry to Thee, Wrong! and Thou sendest no help.
Why make me look upon sorrow,
And fill mine eyes with trouble?
Violence and wrong are before me,