Habakuk 1:12

Habakkuk Voices Some Concerns

1:12 Lord, you have been active from ancient times; ¹ 

my sovereign God, ²  you are immortal. ³ 

Lord, you have made them ⁴  your instrument of judgment. ⁵ 

Protector, ⁶  you have appointed them as your instrument of punishment. ⁷ 

Habakuk 2:3

2:3 For the message is a witness to what is decreed; ⁸ 

it gives reliable testimony about how matters will turn out. ⁹ 

Even if the message ¹⁰  is not fulfilled right away, wait patiently; ¹¹ 

for it will certainly come to pass – it will not arrive late.

[1:12]  ¹ tn Heb “Are you not from antiquity, O Lord?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, of course.” The present translation reflects the force of the rhetorical question, rendering it as an affirmation. When used in a temporal sense the phrase מִקֶדֶם (miqedem) means “from antiquity, ancient times,” often referring to earlier periods in Israel’s history. See its use in Neh 12:46; Pss 74:12; 77:11; Isa 45:21; 46:10; Mic 5:2.

[1:12]  ² tn Heb “My God, my holy one.” God’s “holiness” in this context is his sovereign transcendence as the righteous judge of the world (see vv. 12b-13a), thus the translation “My sovereign God.”

[1:12]  ³ tc The MT reads, “we will not die,” but an ancient scribal tradition has “you [i.e., God] will not die.” This is preferred as a more difficult reading that can explain the rise of the other variant. Later scribes who copied the manuscripts did not want to associate the idea of death with God in any way, so they softened the statement to refer to humanity.

[1:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “him,” a collective singular referring to the Babylonians. The plural pronoun “them” has been used in the translation in keeping with contemporary English style.

[1:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “for judgment.”

[1:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “Rock” or “Cliff.” This divine epithet views God as a place where one can go to be safe from danger. The translation “Protector” conveys the force of the metaphor (cf. KJV, NEB “O mighty God”).

[1:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “to correct, reprove.”

[2:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “For the vision is still for the appointed time.” The Hebrew word עוֹד (’od, “still”) is better emended to עֵד (’ed, “witness”) in light of the parallelism (see the note on the word “turn out” in the following line). The “appointed time” refers to the time when the divine judgment anticipated in vv. 6-20 will be realized.

[2:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “and a witness to the end and it does not lie.” The Hebrew term יָפֵחַ (yafeakh) has been traditionally understood as a verb form from the root פּוּחַ (puakh, “puff, blow”; cf. NEB “it will come in breathless haste”; NASB “it hastens toward the goal”) but recent scholarship has demonstrated that it is actually a noun meaning “witness” (cf. NIV “it speaks of the end / and will not prove false”; NRSV “it speaks of the end, and does not lie”). See J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 106. “The end” corresponds to “the appointed time” of the preceding line and refers to the time when the prophecy to follow will be fulfilled.

[2:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “it”; the referent (the message) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[2:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “If it should delay, wait for it.” The Hebrew word חָזוֹן (khazon, “vision, message”) is the subject of the third person verbs in v. 3 and the antecedent of the pronominal suffix in the phrase “for it.”