An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 182 War Is Stupid. Plus: the Chaldeans have the best horses (Habbakuk 1-3)

Habbakuk 1-3
War Is Stupid. Plus: the Chaldeans have the best horses.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Habbakuk 1
“The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.”

Habbakuk the prophet bemoans that the wicked prosper at the expense of the good, and God answers him that He will raise up the Chaldeans, whose “horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves” who will run roughshod over everything. There’s a neat little fishing metaphor at the end, although it’s not clear if it applies to the Chaldeans or the other wrong-doers, that they make mankind like fish without any kind of leadership or purpose, and then scoop up those people in nets.

So far, so familiar, although Habbakuk turns a nice phrase. There’s nothing in this chapter to given an indication of when this was written, and how close to the fall of the Israelite kingdoms we are. Perhaps this will come later, or if not I might cheat and look at Matthew Henry’s notes, although to be honest it doesn’t matter too much.

Habbakuk 2

“Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD'S right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory.”

Well, quite. In this chapter Habbakuk harangues the wrong-doers, with particular disdain for drunks and makers of idols. I liked the phrase “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood”, an indictment of warmongers and conquerers everywhere, I think. Although there’s mention that the “violence of Lebanon” will overtake these people, Habbakuk doesn’t dwell on vengeance and destruction like some of the other prophets. Here, his tone seems to be that all this kind of behaviour is pointless and will come to naught because “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea”, echoing some of the ideas in Ecclesiastes about wasting time with earthly vanities in the face of the divine, which I think is an interesting variant.

Habbakuk 3
“God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.”

This chapter is billed as a “prayer of Habbakuk” and bears a lot in common with the psalms, including the word “Selah” and an instruction at the end to the “chief musician”, so evidently Habbakuk was somebody of importance. It describes God walking abroad on the earth, with His radiance causing mountains to tremble and rivers to stand still “And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power”. Like others before him, Habbakuk is shaken by this vision, “rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself”, but is left with a sense of rejoicing and the belief that this God will lead him to salvation. I’ll note here as well that the “horns” seem to refer to “rays”, something I’ll have to remember when I review the horned beasts in Revelation.

Like the bulk of the psalms it gives a very personal sense of the man’s faith, and the contradictory nature of an all-powerful deity that is very distressing for mortals to behold or comprehend, but also exudes some kind of benevolence. I don’t know why this wasn’t bundled in with the other psalms, but I guess Habbakuk doesn’t have much other material so it helps pad his book out a bit.

And that’s it for Habbakuk. I rather liked it; nicely direct but without losing some good poetry. There’s not a lot to make it stand out amongst the minor prophets though, and these last few books feel more like an exercise in completism than providing much in the way of new insights.

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