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Habakkuk 2:2–4 in the Light of Recent Philological Advances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

J. Gerald Janzen
J. Gerald Janzen
Affiliation:
Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, IN 46208
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Extract

The concluding line of the short eschatological passage in Hab 2:2–4 is a locus classicus both within the biblical tradition and for subsequent theological reflection in the light of that tradition. Within the Bible it connects by well-beaten paths with other classic loci such as Gen 15:6, Rom 1:16–17 and Heb 11:1 (through the latter's contiguity with Heb 10:37–39). Beyond the Bible its importance is perhaps best known, within the Christian tradition, through Martin Luther's sola fide interpretation of it as quoted in Romans.

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Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 73 , Issue 1-2 , April 1980 , pp. 53 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1980

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References

1 This paper has benefitted from the critique of the members of the Colloquium for Old Testament Research, 1978 (now the Colloquium for Biblical Research), and of Dr. Paula Bowes and Ms. Louise Bela.

2 Ehrlich, Arnold B., Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912) 5. 302Google Scholar.

3 Dahood, Mitchell S.J., The Psalms (A.B.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1965) 1. 169.Google Scholar

4 Loewenstamm, Samuel E., “yāpîaḥ, yāpiaḥ, yāpēaḥ” Leshonenu 26 (1962–1963) 205–8. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Arieh Friedler of Tel Aviv, who kindly translated Loewenstamm's article for me.Google Scholar

5 In passing, one may suggest that the dilemma confronting Israel in the conflict between contradictory prophets was a specific form of the general dilemma confronting the prototypical pair in Genesis 3—which “word” is the true expression of reality? For, until Gen 2:17, all appearances in the garden could be taken at face value as corresponding to reality (see explicitly 2:9); and even after 2:17 the same assumption could be made concerning the “word” of 2:17 as a true and reliable statement of the way things should be. The role and function of the snake in the garden serves to question this naive and unreflective assumption, and to throw the human community into confrontation with the critical question: where does the true and reliable testimony to reality lie? Given the prominence in Israel of the question of true and false prophecy, and the prominence in the Hebrew Bible of the prophetic traditions, it may be that such an approach to Gen 2:9, 2:17 and 3:1–7 is an important key to understanding the Garden Story as a whole.

6 As in Genesis 2 and 3 (see previous note), though this time in different order, that is, by the deceiving word first and the true word second.

7 In Psalm 12, the psalmist complains that everyone is misrepresenting him, and that there is no “faithful” person to stand up for him. Later in the Psalm, Yahweh answers the prayer, in words which have exercised interpreters for a long time: ’āśît bĕyes̆‘yāpîaḥ lô. In the light of the usage clarified by Dahood's and Loewenstamm's work, I would suggest that the line means “I will appoint salvation as a testifier for him” or “I will appoint a testifier for his salvation,” or the like. However one contrues the syntax, the reference here surely is to a testifier whom Yahweh will raise up in answer to the complaint that there is no reliable witness to the psalmist's true character.

8 Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974). Usages such as Ezek 18:20, “The soul (nepeš) that sins shall die,” do not establish a moral function to the nepeš as an aspect of the person, for they display a use of the term to refer to the person as a living whole. One could not say, in Hebrew “the heart that sins shall die,” for “heart” in Hebrew refers to a certain aspect or activity of a person, partly overlapped by the term “soul”; whereas in instances such as Ezek 18:20, nepeš refers to the person as living, but as contingent, and in this instance doomed to death.

9 The terms “lexical meaning” and “speaker's meaning” are used in the sense given them in Owen Barfield, Speaker's Meaning (Rudolph Steiner, 1967).Google Scholar They refer, respectively, to the range of meanings which a word bears at a given point in its history, a range of meanings reflected in a lexicon at that point; and, the fresh nuance introduced into a word by its use in a novel way, a nuance which in turn may eventually enter into the lexicon through wider use, or which may remain peculiar to one author. Barfield illustrates with the word “gravity,” which earlier meant simply heaviness or weight, but which through Newton's “speaker's meaning” came to mean “a force or law operative not only in the sublunary sphere but throughout the wide spaces of the universe” (p. 41); and with the word “focus,” which in Latin was the word for hearth and the fire burning there, until it acquired a “speaker's meaning” when Kepler used the word for his own astronomical and geometric purposes, when it entered the lexicon. Compare, e.g., Isaiah's apparently novel use of the term tôrâ for specific dialectical purposes, as argued in Joseph Jensen's recent study The Use of tôrâ by Isaiah: His Debate with the Wisdom Tradition (CBQMS 3; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1973)Google Scholar. In connection with my reading of Habakkuk I would argue, against Jensen, that Isaiah's “speaker's meaning” for tôrâ did not fall to the ground, but was taken up and used again by Habakkuk, and perhaps even by Second Isaiah. But this must be reserved for argument elsewhere.

10 Figurally qṣr nepeš connotes, among other things, coming to the end of one's resources of endurance and hope and willingness to go on in a way earlier indicated or opened out to expectation; as for example in Exod 6:9, where the people, who had initially responded with enthusiasm to Moses' announcement of Yahweh's intention to deliver, begin to complain and to disbelieve the divine intention when Pharaoh intensifies the conditions of their bondage.

11 The term ‘āṣēl, sluggard, elsewhere occurs fourteen times in Proverbs, and only in Proverbs, where it is used to present a stock image of a certain kind of person. That a usage otherwise peculiar to one biblical genre or stratum can appear just once elsewhere is illustrated by the expression nātan lipnê, “to give up before,” which occurs (as a cliché) only in the Deuteronomic history—except for Isa 41:2.

12 The words mô‘ēd, “appointed time,” and qēṣ, “end,” are juxtaposed first by Habakkuk. Indeed, in the sense they bear here—of an end to a historical era, determined by divine appointment— each of these words has an antecedent use only in Amos. The vindication of Amos' message, presented in a passage with recognized wisdom features, begins with the question “Do two walk together, // unless they have made an appointment (nô‘ādû)?” (Amos 3:3). Given the climax of the series of questions, and the tenor of the images which occur in the questions in 3:3–8, it is clear in retrospect that the appointment or rendezvous has ominous overtones. In passing, it may be suggested that Amos' use of the verb “make an appointment” for God's judgment on Israel is tellingly apt. For the nation, by its ethical and religious behavior, has had as much to do with making the appointment (and, willy-nilly, will have as much to do with keeping the appointment) as has God; therefore it is most appropriate to have the verb in the third person plural— “unless [both parties] have made an appointment.” But this means that the double vector of Hab 2:2–4, with its verbs of divine and human participation, is implicit already in Amos 3:3–8. Amos' use of the word qēṣ, of course, involves the famous play on words: “Thus the LORD God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit (qayiṣ). And he said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’ Then the LORD said to me, ‘The end (qēṣ) has come upon my people Israel’” (Amos 8:1–2). Is it too much to suggest that this fateful pun would impart to the word qēṣ, when used to refer to the end of an era, a continuing overtone of the end of an agricultural season? There is, of course, no way to be sure that Hab 2:2–4 consciously draws Amos' two words together from Amos 3:3 and 8:2, in mô‘ēd//qēṣ, but the fit reader of the vision in Habakkuk (that is, the reader informed by the tradition) would perhaps overhear the connection. Further, it may be noted that of those proverbs which portray the sluggard as too lazy to work toward the time of harvest, the most extensively developed proverb (Prov 6:6–11) includes the couplet “[the ant] prepares her food in summer (qayiṣ) // and gathers her sustenance in harvest (qāṣîr).” If Habakkuk's use of mô‘ēd//qeṣ betrays any overtones of the sort introduced by the qēṣ//qayiṣ pun in Amos 8:2, then the appropriateness of the term ‘āṣēl and its overtones for Hab 2:2–4 is so much the clearer.

13 Incidentally, by the novel use of ‘āṣēl in 2:4a, the author also prepares the way for a use of ṣaddîq which will add to the latter's general semantic range a “speaker's meaning” by association: the ṣaddîq, for this passage, is specifically one who comports himself as herein described vis-à-vis the vision and in contrast to the ‘āṣēl. That is to say, a ṣaddîq in this context is a ṣaddîq by virtue of a certain eschatological stance and orientation and movement. See further the next note, below.

14 A further comment is in order here, concerning the apparent inconsistency in the interpretation of the preposition b- in the two successive and parallel lines 2:4a and 2:4b. I have argued that, in the first line, the preposition has the meaning “in accordance with” or the like; and now I am arguing that in the second line the meaning of the same preposition has shifted to indicate instrumentality or causality. In this connection, however, one should note a similar shift in the use of this preposition in Lev 18:4–5, and in the reflex of this verse in Ezek 20:13, 21 (cf. also vv 11, 25). The usage in these instances may be exemplified by Ezek 20:13: “They did not walk in (b-) my statues, but rejected my ordinances which, if a man do them, he shall live by (b-) them.” As is generally recognized, the verb “he shall live” in this context describes the result of the person's walking in (sic) the statutes. But also, by virtue of the character of the statutes as given by God for Israel's well-being, the result “he shall live” may also be said to come through the efficacy of the statutes. It is as though the statutes have the power to secure the life of the one who walks in them. The formal parallel with Hab 2:2–4 is both obvious and arresting. But this would seem to meet any objection to my reading of Hab 2:4 as displaying a shift in the meaning of the preposition. It may be observed, further (and see end of n. 13, above), that whereas Lev 18:4–5 and Ezekiel 20 establish the statutes of God as the institution in accordance with which one conducts oneself and through which one shall live, Hab 2:2–4 establishes the eschatological vision given by God as such a saving institution. This observation reinforces the suggestion made in the previous note concerning the fresh nuance imparted to the term ṣaddîq by its antithetical juxtaposition with ‘āṣēl.

15 As I will argue elsewhere, the opening questions in Hab 1:2–4, and specifically the meaning of the words tôrâ and mišpāṭ in 1:4, are to be determined with reference to the usage of the term tôrâ in Isaiah.

16 Brownlee, William H., “The Placarded Revelation of Habakkuk,” JBL 82/83 (1963) 319–25.Google Scholar

17 An identification of these two lines in Hab 2:3 as referring to Yahweh's coming would not dismantle the vectoral analysis here offered, but only modify it. For in this case the two lines as a whole would represent the ḥāzôn. Indeed, such an analysis would disclose an effective sequence in the movement of this vector, proceeding from twofold announcement to climactic presentation in the third instance: (1) the word ḥāzôn, followed by pronominal references; (2) the word ḥāzôn, followed by pronominal references; (3) the ḥāzôn itself. Coming just before the concluding couplet with its contrasting lines climaxing the second, subdominant vector (concerning human response to the vision), this presentation of the content of the vision would effectively set the stage for that response.