At this conquest Nineveh was so utterly destroyed, that, as Strabo (xvi. 1, § 3) attests, the city entirely disappeared immediately after the dissolution of the Assyrian kingdom (7) pév obv Nivos rods jpavicdn Trapayphwa peta Tv TOV Zvpwv katadvow). When Xenophon entered the plain of Nineveh, in the year 401, on the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, he found the ruins of two large cities, which he calls Larissa and Mespila, and by the side of the first a stone pyramid of 200 feet in height and 100 feet in breadth, upon which many of the inhabitants of the nearest villages had taken refuge, and heard from the inhabitants that it was only by a miracle that it had been possible for the Persians to conquer those cities with their strong walls (Xenoph. Anab, iii. 4, 7 sqq.). These ruined cities had been portions of the ancient Nineveh: Larissa was Calah; and Mespila, Kouywnjik. Thus Xenophon passed by the walls of Nineveh without even learning itsname. Four hundred years after (according to Tacitus, Annal. xii. 13), a small fortress stood on this very spot, to guard the crossing of the Tigris; and the same fortress is mentioned by Abul-Pharaj in the thirteenth century (Hist. Dynast. pp. 266, 289, 353). Opposite to this, on the western side of the Tigris, Mosul had risen into one of the first cities of Asia, and the ruins of Nineveh served as quarries for the building of the new city, so that nothing remained but heaps of rubbish, which even Niebuhr took to be natural heights in the year 1766, when he was told, as he stood by the Tigris bridge, that he was in the neighbourhood of ancient Nineveh. So completely had this mighty city vanished from the face of the earth; until, in the most recent times, viz. from 1842 onwards, Botta the French consul, and the two Englishmen Layard and Rawlinson, instituted excavations in the heaps, and brought to light numerous remains of the palaces and state-buildings of the Assyrian rulers of the world. Compare the general survey of these researches, and their results, in Herm. J. ©. Weissenborn’s Ninive u. sein Gebiet., Erfurt 1851, and 56, 4.
But if Nahum’s prophecy was thus fulfilled in the destruction of Nineveh, even to the disappearance of every trace of its existence, we must not restrict it to this one historical event, but must bear in mind that, as the prophet simply saw in Nineveh the representative for the time of the power of the world in its hostility to God, so the destruction predicted to Nineveh applied to all the kingdoms of the world which have risen up against God since the destruction of Asshur, and which will still continue to do so to the end of the world.
AIERSON or tHE PropHet.—Nothing certain is known as to the circumstances of Habakkuk’s life. The name Pip2, formed from PH, to fold the hands, piel to embrace, by a repetition of the last radical with the vowel wu, like svi from 7Y3, my from Y¥, etc, and a reduplication of the penultimate. (cf. Ewald, § 157, a), signifies embracing; and as the name of a person, either one wks embraces, or one who is embraced. Luther took the name in the first sense. “ Habakkuk,” he says, “ signifies an embracer, or one who embraces another, or takes him to his arms,” and interpreted it thus in a clever although not perfectly appropriate manner: ‘“ He embraces his people, and takes them to his arms, 7.e. he comforts them and holds (lifts) them up, as one embraces a weeping child or person, to quiet it with the assurance that if God will it shall be better soon.” The LXX. wrote the name ’AyPaxovp, taking the word as pronounced?3Pa5, and compensating for the doubling of the 2 by the liquid yw, and changing the closing P into p. Jerome in his translation writes duel name Habewte In the headings to his book (ch. i. 1 and iii. 1) Habakkuk is simply described by the epithet 8°23, as a man who held the office of a prophet. From the conclusion to the psalm in ch. i, “To the leader in the accompaniment to my playing upon stringed instruments” (ver. 19), we learn that he was officially qualified to take part in the liturgical singing of the temple, and therefore belonged to one of the Levitical families, who were charged with the maintenance of the temple music, and, like the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who sprang from priestly households, belonged to the tribe of Levi. This is supported by the superscription of the apocryphon of Bel and the dragon at VOL. II. D
Babel, é« mpodntelas ’ApBaxodp viod "Incod é« ths pudys Avi, which has been preserved in the Cod. Chisian. of the LX X. from Origen’s tetrapla, and has passed into the Syriohexaplar. version; even if this statement should not be founded upon tradition, but simply inferred from the subscription to ch. iii. 19. For even in that case it would prove that *M2122 was understood in ancient times as signifying that the prophet took part in the liturgical singing of the temple.’ On the other hand, the rest of the legends relating to our prophet are quite worthless: viz. the circumstantial account in the apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon of the miraculous way in which Habakkuk was transported to Daniel, who had been cast into the lions’ den, which is also found in a ms. of the Midrash Bereshit rabba; and also the statements contained in the writings of Ps. Doroth. and Ps. Epiph. de vitis prophet., that Habakkuk sprang from the tribe of Simeon; that he was born at Byé- foxijp (Sozomenus, Xapap Zayapia, the talmudic {27 153), a hamlet to the north of Lydda, near to Maresha on the mountains; that when Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem, he fled to Ostrakine (on the promontory now called Ras Straki, situated in the neighbourhood of Arabia Petreea); and that he died on his native soil two years after the return of the people from Babylon, and was buried at the spot between Keila and Gabatha, where his grave was still shown in the time of Eusebius and Jerome (cf. Onomast. ed. Lars. et Parthey, pp. 128-9).
1 There is not much probability in this conjecture, however, since the LXX. have not understood the subscription in this sense, but have rendered it incorrectly rod wixgoos ¢v 7H On wYTOv, which has led the fathers to take the words as belonging to the psalm itself, and to understand it as relating to the songs of praise which the church would raise to God for the deliverance which it had received. Theod. Mops. explains it in this way: ‘ He sets us higher than all the rest, so that nothing else becomes us than to continue in the songs and hymns which are due to God, because, against all human hope, He has given us the victory over our enemies.” Cyril of Alex. and Theodoret give similar explanations. Even Jerome, in his rendering ‘‘et super excelsa mea deducet me victori in psalmis canentem,” connects the words with the preceding sentence, and interprets them as referring to the songs of praise which ‘“ every righteous man who is worthy of the election of God” will raise at the end of the world to the great conqueror ‘Jesus, who was the first to conquer in the fight.” With such an explanation of the words as these, it was impossible to see any intimation of the Levitical descent of the prophet in the expression ia.
For further particulars as to the apocryphal legends, see Delitzsch, De Habacuct proph. vita atque etate commentat., ed. ii. iblone 1842.
NINEVEH’S SINS AND INEVITABLE DESTRUCTION.—Cnap.
These legends do not even help us to fix the date of Habakkuk’s life. All that can be gathered with any certainty from his own writings is that he prophesied before the arrival of the Chaldzans in Palestine, i.e. before the victory gained by Nebuchadnezzar over Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer. xlvi. 2), since he announces the bringing up of this people to execute judgment upon Judah as something still in the future (ch. i. 5 sqq.). Opinions are divided as to the precise date at which he lived. Leaving out of sight the opinions of those who deny the supernatural character of prophecy, and therefore maintain that the prophet did not prophesy till the Chaldzeans were coming against Jerusalem after the defeat of Necho, or had alteady eciead there, the only question that can arise is, whether Habakkuk lived and laboured in the reign of Josiah or in the closing years of Manasseh. Many have found a decisive proof that he lived in the reign of Josiah in ch. i. 5, viz. in the fact that the prophet there foretels the Chaldean judgment as a work which God will perform during the lifetime of the persons to whom his words are addressed (“in your days”); and they have inferred from this that we must not at any rate go beyond Josiah’s reign, because the prophet is not speaking to the children, but to the adults, z.e. to those who have reached the age of manhood. But the measure of time by which to interpret D32%2)3 cannot be obtained either from Joel i. 2, where the days of the persons addressed are distinguished from the days of the fathers and grandchildren, or from Jer. xvi. 9 and Ezek. xii. 25; but this expression is quite a relative one, especially in prophetic addresses, and may embrace either a few years only, or a complete lifetime, and even more. Now, as there were only thirty-eight years between the death of Manasseh and the first invasion of the Chaldeans, the Chaldean judgment might very well be announced during the last years of that king to the then existing generation as one that would happen in their days. We are precluded from placing the announcement in the time immediately preceding the appearance of the Chaldzans in Hither Asia, say in the first years of Jehoiakim or the closing years of Josiah’s reign, by the fact that Habakkuk represents this work of God as an incredible one: “ Ye would not believe it, if it were told you” (ch.i. 5). Moreover, it is expressly related in 2 Kings xxi. 10-16 and 2 Chron. xxxiii. 10, that in the time of Nimiansch Jehovah caused His prophets to announce the coming of such a calamity, “that both ears of all who heard it would tingle”—namely, the destruction of Jerusalem and rejection of Judah. In all probability, one of these prophets was Habakkuk, who was the first of all the prophets known to us to announce this horrible judgment. » Zephaniah and Jeremiah both appeared with the announcement of the same judgment in the reign of Josiah, and both took notice of Habakkuk in their threatenings.. Thus Zephaniah quite as certainly borrowed the rae mim 28 36 DA in ch. i. 7 from Hab. ii. 20, as Zechariah did the words min? 251 swabs BS im eh. i. 17%);
and Jeremiah formed the expressions yD oynwia oP in ch. iv. 13 and Mia AN? in ch. v. 6 on the basis of YDID 131 bp Ty as MN in Hab. i. 8, not to mention other passages of Jeremiah that have the ring of our prophet, which Delitzsch has collected in his Der Pr ae Hab. ausgelegt (p. xu.). This decidedly upsets the theory that Habakkuk did not begin to prophesy till the reign of Jehoiakim; although, as such resemblances and allusions do not preclude the contemporaneous ministry of the prophets, there still remains the possibility that Habakkuk may not have prophesied till the time of Josiah, and indeed not before the twelfth year of Josiah’s reign, when he commenced the extermination of idolatry and the restoration of the worship of Jehovah, since Habakkuk’s prayer, which was intended according to the subscription for use in the temple, presupposes the restoration of the Jehovah-worship with the liturgical service of song. But the possibility is not yet raised into a certainty by these circumstances. Manasseh also caused the idols to be cleared away from the temple after his return from imprisonment in Babylon, and not only restored the altar of Jehovah, and ordered praise-offerings and thank-offerings to be presented upon it, but commanded the people to serve Jehovah the God of Israel (2 Chron. xxxiii. 15, 16). Consequently Habakkuk might have composed his’ psalm at that time for use in the temple service. And this conjecture as to its age acquires extreme probability when we look carefully at the contents and form of the prophecy. Apart from the rather more distinct and special description of the wild, warlike, and predatory nature of the Chaldzeans, the contents retain throughout an ideal character, without any allusion to particular historical relations, such as we find for example in great abundance in Jeremiah, who prophesied in the thirteenth year of Josiah, and which are not altogether wanting in Zephaniah, notwithstanding the comprehensive character of his prophecy. If we look at the form, Habakkuk’s prophecy still bears completely the antique stamp of the earlier prophetic literature. “ His
language,” to use the words of Delitzsch, “is classical throughout, full of rare and select words and turns, which are to some extent exclusively his own, whilst his view and mode of presentation bear the seal of independent force and finished beauty. Notwithstanding the violent rush and lofty soaring of the thoughts, his prophecy forms a finely organized and artistically rounded whole. Like Isaiah, he is, comparatively speaking, much more independent of his predecessors, both in contents and form, than any other of the prophets. Everything reflects the time when prophecy was in its greatest glory, when the place of the sacred lyrics, in which the religious life of the church had hitherto expressed itself, was occupied, through a’ still mightier interposition on the part of God, by prophetic poetry with its trumpet voice, to reawaken in the church, now spiritually dead, the consciousness of God which had so utterly disappeared.” On the other hand, the turning-point came as
early as Zechariah, and from that time forwards the poetic swing of the prophetic addresses declines and gradually disappears, the dependence upon the earlier predecessors becomes more predominant; and even with such thoroughly original natures as Ezekiel and Zechariah, their style of composition cannot rise very far above simple prose.
2. Tue Boox or HaBakKvxK contains neither a collection of oracles, nor the condensation into one discourse of the essential contents of several prophetic addresses, but one single prophecy arranged in two parts. In the first part (ch. i. and ii.), under the form of a conversation between God and the prophet, we have first of all an announcement of the judgment which God is about to bring upon the degenerate covenant nation through the medium of the Chaldeans; and secondly, an announcement of the overthrow of the Chaldean, who has lifted himself up even to the deification of his own power. To this there is appended in ch. iii., as a second part, the prophet’s prayer for the fulfilment of the judgment; and an exalted lyric psalm, in which Habakkuk depicts the coming of the Lord in the terrible glory of the Almighty, at whose wrath the universe is terrified, to destroy the wicked and save His people and His anointed, and gives utterance to the feelings which the judgment of God will awaken in the hearts of the righteous. The whole of the prophecy has an ideal and universal stamp. Not even Judah and Jerusalem are mentioned, and the Chaldeans who are mentioned by name are simply introduced as the existing possessors of the imperial power of the world, which was bent upon the destruction of the kingdom of God, or as the sinners who swallow up the righteous man. ‘The announcement of judgment is simply a detailed expansion of the thought that the unjust man and the sinner perish, whilst the just will live through his faith (ch. i1.4). This prophecy hastens on towards its fulfilment, and even though it should tarry, will assuredly take place at the appointed time (ch. ii. 2, 3). Through the judgment upon the godless ones in Judah and upon the Chaldeans, the righteousness of the holy God will be manifested, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord (ch. ii. 14). Although the fact that the Chaldeans are mentioned by name leaves no doubt whatever that the judgment will burst upon Judah through this wild conquering people, the prophecy rises immediately from this particular judgment to a view of the universal judgment upon all nations, yea, upon the whole of the ungodly world, to proclaim their destruction and the dawning of salvation for the people of the Lord and the Lord’s anointed; so that the trembling at the terrors of judgment is resolved at the close into joy and exultation in the God of salvation. There can be no doubt as to the unity of the book; and the attempt to interpret the threat of judgment in ch. ii. by applying it to particular historical persons and facts, has utterly failed.
For the exegetical works on Habakkuk, see my Einleitung in das alte Testament, § 802-3,
The lamentation of the prophet over the dominion of wickedness and violence (vers. 2-4) is answered thus by the Lord: He will raise up the Chaldeeans, who are to execute the judgment, as a terrible, world-conquering people, but who will offend by making their might into their god (vers. 5-11); whereupon the prophet, trusting in the Lord, who has proved Himself to His people from time immemorial to be a holy and righteous God, expresses the hope that this chastisement will not lead to death, and addresses the question to God, whether with His holiness He can look calmly upon the wickedness of this people, in gathering men into their net like fishes, and continuing in the most unsparing manner to slay the nations (vers. 12-17).