That will not prove false!
If it should tarry – wait for it!
It shall surely arrive; it will not be delayed in coming.
For he is weak who is not inwardly upright,
But the righteous will survive by virtue of his steadfastness.^6The prophet’s counsel to Judah and Jerusalem would seem to indicate that he was
speaking when it was already too late to decide against rebellion, because the destruction
of Jerusalem had already occurred. Now, all that can be enlisted in the struggle for
survival is to wait upon the God of Israel, and to retain a steadfast commitment to
a just society. This message is followed in the continuation of Habakkuk 2 , by an
open condemnation of the Chaldeans. They sought to oppress all nations and to
plunder them, but the time will come when Yahweh of Hosts will bring them down.
EPILOGUEGenesis 11 relates that Abram (later Abraham), the first Patriarch, hailed from “Ur
of Chaldees,” Hebrew: ûr kas ́dîm, and that he migrated to Canaan with his extended
family. Of his brother, Haran, it is written that he died during his father’s lifetime
“in the land of his birth, in Ur of Chaldees” (Gen 11 : 28 ). In the covenant theophany
of Genesis 15 , Yahweh informs Abram that it was he who had brought him out of
Ur of Chaldees to live in Canaan (cf. Neh 9 : 7 ). This is only one of several biblical
traditions on the origins of the Israelites, and it is ostensibly anachronistic, and fraught
with historical problems. And yet, it testifies to a perception on the part of at least
one biblical author that the earliest Israelites originated in southern Mesopotamia.
One can only speculate as to what this identification connotes ethnographically,
but it certainly projects a subtle irony. The father of the Israelites abandoned his
homeland, Ur of Chaldees, to found a new nation in Canaan, only to be exiled from
that land in stages at a later time; first by the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia,
and then by Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldean king of Babylonia.
NOTES1 I am grateful to my esteemed colleague, Hayim Tadmor, for his learned critique of an earlier
draft of this study.
2 Having found no single Bible translation that is, in my view, both felicitous and precise in all
instances, I have adopted the practice of translating all citations from the Hebrew Bible afresh,
with considerable help from existing translations.
3 Except, indeed, in so far as it is exemplified in his own personal experience, in the impunity,
namely, enjoyed by his own enemies (xii. 1 – 6 ).
4 Roberts, 1991 : 101 explains that the Masoretic reading lo ̄na ̄ mût “We shall not die,” represents
one of “eighteen corrections of the Scribes,” introduced out of reverence. There could be no
suggestion that God might die, even if the biblical verse in question actually negates that
possibility. Hence, we deduce an original: lo ̄ta ̄ mût “You do not die.”
5 In Hab 1 : 7 , the given translation: “He makes his own laws and rules” is functional. Literally,
the text reads, “From him does his judgment and authority go out.” The sense is that the
Babylonians have changed the rules of war and government for the worse, and cannot be counted
on to behave with decency. In Hab 1 : 8 , read, instead of ze’e ̄bêi ‘ereb “wolves of the evening,”
ze’e ̄bêi ‘ara ̄ b[ôt] “wolves of the steppes,” based on the occurrence of this expression in Jer 5 : 6.
— The view from Jerusalem —