_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, Strife comes and quarrel arises.[347] So the Law is benumbed, and judgment never gets forth:[348] For the wicked beleaguers the righteous, So judgment comes forth perverted._[349]
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_Art not Thou of old, Jehovah, my God, my Holy One?...[350] Purer of eyes than to behold evil, And that canst not gaze upon trouble! Why gazest Thou upon traitors,[351] Art dumb when the wicked swallows him that is more righteous than he?[352] Thou hast let men be made[353] like fish of the sea, Like worms that have no ruler![354] He lifts the whole of it with his angle; Draws it in with his net, sweeps it in his drag-net: So rejoices and exults. So he sacrifices to his net, and offers incense to his drag-net; For by them is his portion fat, and his food rich. Shall he for ever draw his sword,[355] And ceaselessly, ruthlessly massacre nations?[356]_
_Upon my watch-tower I will stand, And take my post on the rampart.[357] I will watch to see what He will say to me, And what answer I[358] get back to my plea._
_And Jehovah answered me and said: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets, That he may run who reads it. For[359] the vision is for a time yet to be fixed, Yet it hurries[360] to the end, and shall not fail: Though it linger, wait thou for it; Coming it shall come, and shall not be behind.[361] Lo! swollen,[362] not level is his[363] soul within him; But the righteous shall live by his faithfulness.[364]_
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_Look[365] round among the heathen, and look well, Shudder and be shocked;[366] For I am[367] about to do a work in your days, Ye shall not believe it when told. For, lo, I am about to raise up the Kasdim,[368] A people the most bitter and the most hasty, That traverse the breadths of the earth, To possess dwelling-places not their own. Awful and terrible are they; From themselves[369] start their purpose and rising. Fleeter than leopards their steeds, Swifter than night-wolves. Their horsemen leap[370] from afar; They swoop like the eagle a-haste to devour. All for wrong do they[371] come; The set of their faces is forward,[372] And they sweep up captives like sand. They—at kings do they scoff, And princes are sport to them. They—they laugh at each fortress, Heap dust up and take it! Then the wind shifts,[373] and they pass! But doomed are those whose own strength is their god![374]_
The difficulty of deciding between the various arrangements of the two chapters of Habakkuk does not, fortunately, prevent us from appreciating his argument. What he feels throughout (this is obvious, however you arrange his verses) is the tyranny of a great heathen power,[375] be it Assyrian, Egyptian or Chaldean. The prophet’s horizon is filled with wrong:[376] Israel thrown into disorder, revelation paralysed, justice perverted.[377] But, like Nahum, Habakkuk feels not for Israel alone. The Tyrant has outraged humanity.[378] He _sweeps peoples into his net_, and as soon as he empties this, he fills it again _ceaselessly_, as if there were no just God above. He exults in his vast cruelty, and has success so unbroken that he worships the very means of it. In itself such impiety is gross enough, but to a heart that believes in God it is a problem of exquisite pain. Habakkuk’s is the burden of the finest faith. He illustrates the great commonplace of religious doubt, that problems arise and become rigorous in proportion to the purity and tenderness of a man’s conception of God. It is not the coarsest but the finest temperaments which are exposed to scepticism. Every advance in assurance of God or in appreciation of His character develops new perplexities in face of the facts of experience, and faith becomes her own most cruel troubler. Habakkuk’s questions are not due to any cooling of the religious temper in Israel, but are begotten of the very heat and ardour of prophecy in its encounter with experience. His tremulousness, for instance, is impossible without the high knowledge of God’s purity and faithfulness, which older prophets had achieved in Israel:—