WHO WAS HABAKKUK?

 

                          Habakkuk (2004, mixed media)

His Character

“Habakkuk is exceptional for the intellectual honesty and moral and spiritual integrity with which he faces up to profound issues. He grapples with these in a way which can only be described as courageous....Whoever eavesdrops on this agonized interchange with God must feel, at length, that he 'knows' Habakkuk. And yet in other respects the prophet remains an almost complete stranger.” (Nute)

“His thought, however, is laid bare by the searching questions he asks.” (Hicks)

Bullock notes that “Habakkuk's confidence and faith, perhaps implied in 2:4, is clearly affirmed in 2:1 and 3:16. He will wait and trust.”

Baker first cites the apocryphal addition to Daniel called “Bel and the Dragon” as attesting to the respect this prophet had in later years. He adds that “his character as a sincere believer in Yahweh and his covenant, as well as his courage, shine brightly through his prophecy.”

And Southwell cites passages in the NT and the Dead Sea scrolls to demonstrate “that his historical and theological insights were valued within the Jewish community and beyond long after his day.”

His Background, Abilities, and Profession

Chisholm notes from Hab. 1:13 that “Habakkuk clearly knew his theological creed: the Lord is the just ruler and protector of his people, and cannot tolerate evil and injustice.”

Some variant manuscripts of “Bel and the Dragon” identify him as being of the tribe of Levi. Nute feels that despite the unreliability of this account,”nevertheless he could well have been a Levite. The musical terms which annotate his psalm (ch. 3) would suggest this. Certainly he was a poet of no mean order and possessed considerable literary skill. Some see Habakkuk as a member of a group or guild of Temple ministers (Eaton), and this seems the more likely if it can be shown that the book bears signs of being a liturgical composition. Chapter 1 certainly has this characteristic...”

The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery goes even further by stating that “Habakkuk's use of these poems is a stroke of literary genius.”

Scholars such as Hicks are a little more skeptical and assume that chapter 3 “was probably added later, possibly from the circles of cultic prophecy.” More conservative voices such as Baker's stress the unity of the whole book.

Bullock says, “ In modern scholarship Habakkuk has often been associated with the Temple. That notion is based largely on the literary nature of chapter 3, which is called a psalm, and which provides liturgical notes (3:1,3,9a,13). That is not impossible, but the book as a whole does not seem to have had a liturgical usage.”

His Exact Identification

Here we are faced with the unfortunate absence of information. Payne notes, “The introduction to the book of Habakkuk (1:1) provides no information about the life and times of its author, except for stating that he was a prophet.” Hicks remarks that “nothing is known about the life of the Old Testament prophet, not even his father's name.”

Thus, Roberson says, “Various conjectures and myths have arisen to fill out the picture of the life of this servant of the Lord. But neither the Scriptures nor outside sources provide any solid information concerning the life of Habakkuk...Habakkuk appeared as a 'voice' and nothing more. He must be heard because he was the bearer of God's message, not because of what he was in himself.”

J.B. Taylor is one of many who suggest that his name may be derived from an Assyrian plant called hambakuku. Alternatively, “His name..is said to derive from a Heb. root signifying 'to clasp, or embrace.'...It is doubtless this meaning that gave rise to the conjecture which identifies Habakkuk with the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kg. 4:16). Both this and the further suggestion which links him with Isaiah's watchman (Isa. 21:6; see Hab. 2:1) may be discounted. (Nute)

Bruckner deduces the following from the second possible origin of the prophet's name given above: “The Hebrew root (habaq) means 'to embrace,' especially as a means of keeping warm when there is no other shelter (e.g. Job 24:8; Lam 4:5). God's revelation of Judah's coming devastation was embraced by Habakkuk in faith (Hab 3:17). The embrace of God's dialogue with him became a shelter for Israel, when it appeared that every other means of shelter would be removed.”

His Time Period

Dating the times of the prophets is notoriously hard to pin down, especially if there are no particular historical events mentioned in their writings. And even if they are, skeptics often attribute those verses to later writers. In the case of Habakkuk:

Nute says that “the only certain key is to be found in the reference to the Babylonians (1:6); and even so, some have argued that this should read Kittim (Cypriot Greeks) rather than Kasidim (Babylonians...). This emendation would have the effect of placing the prophecy in the days of Alexander the Great (late 4^th cent. B.C.).” But even without that emendation, there is still the difficulty of determining whether Habakkuk was looking to future events or relating those happening at the time. Nute feels that the former is the case, leading to a proposed date in the early 600's B.C.

Chisholm starts with Habakkuk 1:5-6 in which the prophet surprises his audience by predicting that Babylon will reach a position of prominence. That happened in 605 B.C. But in other verses such as 1:6-11,15-17; 2:5-17, Babylon has already achieved that distinction some time earlier. And in Habakkuk 3:16-19, he deals with an imminent invasion of Judah by the Babylonian army. That could refer to either the event related in II Kings 24:10-17 (dated to 597 B.C.) or the later destruction of Jerusalem in 588-586.

R.L. Smith reviews some of the opinions regarding the date of the writing based on the references to “the wicked” in 1:4 and 1:13b. Several commentators attempt to identify this group as a hostile force outside of Israel in order to pin the date down. But as most would conclude, this group of enemies probably represented enemies of God within the Jewish people, not outside forces. Finally, Smith notes, “The majority of OT scholars would probably date a large portion of the book of Habakkuk in the period between 612 and 587 B.C. Although some editing was probably done later.”

Childs adds that Hab. 2:17 “implies a long history of pillage under which Judah suffered.” His conclusion is: “Generally a literary unity of the book has been defended, particularly among scholars such as Sellin and Humbert, who derived this unity from a cultic function of the book. Their approach went beyond simply recognizing liturgical material within the book such as in ch. 3, but portrayed Habakkuk as a cultic prophet whose role within a ritual accounted for the particular fusion of elements of complaint, response, vision, and theophany.” Childs and others attribute this present unity to the presence of a later redactor who shaped the book.

Chisholm deduces that “the best way to resolve the problem is to understand the book as a collection of messages from different periods in the prophet's career.” But Childs doubts this scenario because “solid literary evidence for seeing a process at work is lacking.”