resolved that the punctuator shows (as always elsewhere) the deepest insight into the relation of these words to the preceding, as well as into their meaning, whilst the Targums, Talmud, and Midrash have wholly lost the key, and vent the silliest stuff? The tradition which the Targumist had at his command reaches back certainly beyond the Christian era, and yet we are to believe the punctuation of the text to be a work of the school at Tiberias! One who is acquainted with the expositions of Scripture in the Targum and Talmud will scarcely think possible such a fixing of its sense by written signs at a time when scriptural interpretation had long been converted by the Midrash into the plaything of a capricious fancy." (P. 202.)

Few data remain to us for settling the date of Habakkuk's prophecy; of his life we have none but apocryphal accounts. From chap. i. 5, it appears that the same generation which heard the prediction of the Chaldee invasion should witness its fulfil ment. The corruption complained of (chap. i. 2-4) is described in too general terms to furnish a criterion of the period referred to; indeed, there is nothing further from which a hint can be gathered unless it be that the subscription to chapter iii., in the last clause of verse 19, implies that it was not during a suspension of the temple service. Delitzsch principally relies in the determination of this question upon a combination of Hab. ii. 20 with Zeph. i. 7, entering into an extremely ingenious and well-conducted argument to show that the former is the original passage, and the latter built upon it; whence he concludes that Habakkuk must have preceded Zephaniah, and could not have written later than the reign of Josiah (Zeph. i. 1); that he could not have written before his reign is settled by Hab. i. 5; and from various circumstances it is probable that this prophecy was delivered shortly after the reformation in Josiah's twelfth year. The premises for this last argument are altogether too narrow, however, for any but a German mind to build on them with great confidence. And we are disposed to adopt his conclusion, less because we are carried along by the stringency of the proof, than because we see no sufficient reason for departing from the presumption, furnished by the position of the book in the collection of the minor prophets, that Habakkuk preceded Zephaniah (Zeph. i. 1), and followed Micah and Nahum.-(Mic. i. 1.) We do not look upon this as a point of very great moment, however, or one on which any thing of consequence depends, in whatever way it is settled; and we should not feel much difficulty in conceding to Hitzig and Maurer the date for which they contend, in the sixth year of Jehoiakim, if they had but a better reason for their belief. But we can never sanction such a ground as that

which they urge, viz., that the prediction of the advance of the Chaldees could not have been made before they had commenced their march, and the result was already plain to ordinary foresight, any more than we can follow Hirzel in the assumption of a vaticinium post eventum, and date it after all had taken place. These writers should, for consistency's sake, have fixed its composition after the destruction of Babylon, if not after the yet future conversion of the world.-(Chap. ii. 14.)

The form of this whole prophecy is striking from its dramatic character, in which the speakers are alternately the prophet and God, and future events are not so much predicted as pourtrayed. There is first an address to God by the prophet (i. 2-4), then the Lord's reply (ver. 5-11); the prophet again speaks to God (ver. 12-17), to himself (ii. 1); the Lord again replies (ii. 2-20.) This last reply, which sums up in five emphatic woes the fate of Babylon, is the real centre, the marrow of the whole prophecy, the burden from which it takes its name (i. 1), to which what preceded was introductory, as presenting its justification; and it is followed by chap. iii., an impassioned psalm, more nearly approaching in its character to the compositions of the days of David than any thing else to be found in the writings of the prophets, in which we hear the echo from the depths of the prophet's heart, or from the heart of the church, to the revelation now received.

The book opens somewhat abruptly with the prophet's earnest complaint to God respecting the violence, injustice, and oppression, which was prevailing around him, and from which he (either the prophet personally, or the pious portion of the people in whose name he speaks) had long suffered without the prospect of deliverance. This violence is not that of the Chaldean invasion already begun, but is in conformity with the usual course of prophecy, in which a statement of the sin precedes the enunciation of the judgment. That the disorders consequent on the invasion of the Chaldees are subsequently described in similar terms (ver. 9, 13), proves only that in the punishment of Israel there was observed that law of divine recompense which assimilates the penalty to the transgression, a law which should take effect subsequently on the Chaldeans likewise. (Chap. ii.) It is the corruption prevailing in Judah, and described by other prophets of this period in similar terms, which is here intended. In answer to the prophet's complaint, the Lord makes known to him, and not only to him but to the people, the astonishing and incredible judgment which he had decreed, and which should be executed in their days. Already (in prophetic vision) it was appearing in sight, and they are called to look out upon the heathen world and behold breaking forth thence upon them the impetuous and resistless Chaldeans,

in the speed and the ease of their advancement to universal conquest. Transported now to the scene just depicted, it, the ideal present, affects the prophet as deeply as, in verses 2-4, he had been affected by the actual present. And beholding these fierce invaders in the wide havoc they were making, their treachery, their massacres, their proud impiety, with a holy indignation and a wrestling faith he pleads with Israel's everlasting, covenant-keeping, and holy God, whether he will not put a speedy stop to these iniquities and devastations which threaten to engulph his people. His prayer uttered, the prophet stands with silent attention upon his watch-tower to learn what answer God will give; not that we have here any locality to which he outwardly repairs, but as men ascend to some high point that they may see far off in the distance, so he in spirit, to gather the first indication of the divine will, or catch the earliest glimpse of the coming future. He received a vision, which he is commanded to write, and to make it plain upon the tables, viz., those which he would naturally use for the purpose; not tablets standing in some conspicuous position of the city, whereon matters of great consequence might be recorded for public information (Ewald), for of the existence of vacant tablets for the purpose we have no evidence; nor tables of stone, which is a needless supposition, and which the length of the vision to be recorded (not verse 4 simply, which would not require tables, but verses 4-20) renders improbable. The command to write it was not a merely symbolical one, to be performed only in vision, and designed to set forth the great importance of the things communicated (Hengstenberg), but intended to be literally obeyed. It should be written so plainly, that they who read it might run rapidly over it, impeded by no obscurity. The reason why it should be committed to writing was, that the period for its accomplishment, though certain, was remote, that it might meanwhile confirm the faithful in a confident expectation of the event. And thus we come to the main prediction of the book. That in i. 5-11 was one of judgment upon Israel, and was introductory to this, which is one of destruction to their foes, of mercy to them. Its opening verse (ver. 4) condenses in its two clauses this its double aspect, and has in both a backward as well as a forward reference; it introduces the answer to the question in i. 17, and contains already an intimation of what the full answer will be. The Chaldean is not indeed expressly named in the first clause; but the person spoken of in the answer cannot well be any other than the one respecting whom the question was propounded. It is, as it were, the divine assent to the promises (ver. 15, 16), on which the prophet grounded his inquiry, that his easy and resistless victories had led to arro

gant self-exaltation. "Behold, lifted up, not upright (or not straight, level), is his soul in him." This is indeed so, as the prophet had assumed, and this assertion judicially from the mouth of God is of itself enough to indicate the doom he must expect, a conclusion which is riveted by what immediately follows. The second clause, although in form the annunciation of a general truth, derives a specialty of meaning from its connection with what precedes. The "just" is the same that (i. 4) suffered from the wicked of his own people, and (i. 13) on the breaking in of the well-merited chastisement upon the people generally, was again made the prey of the unrighteous Chaldees; and the declaration that we shall live by faith is the divine sanction to the confiding trust expressed (i. 12), "we shall not die." This finds its confirmation, too, in the succeeding verses, inasmuch as the fall of the ungodly contains an implicit assurance of the life of the just, and the future establishment and glory of the kingdom of God is positively declared.-(Ver. 14.) The next verse (ver. 5) continues the description of the Chaldee punishment. His impious self-exaltation we have already had (ver. 4); here his drunkenness, his pride, his insatiable lust of conquest; and then the song put into the mouth of the nations from ver. 6, onward, with its five stanzas containing each a separate woe, takes these up in the reverse order, ver. 6-8, insatiable conquest; ver. 9-11, and ver. 12-14, pride displayed in his buildings; ver. 15-17, ver. 18-20, impiety and idolatry (comp. i. 11.) This regularity is not perhaps from preconceived plan, nor with any design of making thus a division of the subject logically exact; but in the natural flow of thought it connects itself with that last said, and returns by successive steps back to the point whence it

set out.

This song is addressed to the Chaldee, the king of Babylon, and in him his people; not to some individual king in particular, as Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, or Belshazzar,-much less partly to one of these, partly to the king of Judah, Jehoiakim, or some one else, but to the king of Babylon absolutely. It differs from the passage, Isa. xvi. 4, &c., to which in many respects it bears a marked similarity, inasmuch as that is a song of triumph exulting over the divine judgment as already accomplished, while this denounces it as impending. That was to be spoken by Israel when freed from his hard bondage: this is put into the mouth of all the nations still under the yoke of his grasping domination; and that not as unbelievers, but evidently, according to the intention of the prophet (ver. 13,

* Our author's earnest and able defence of this passage, in the sense in which it is several times cited by the apostle Paul, cannot be here transcribed, but deserves at least this passing notice.

14, 20), as believers. Unless we suppose an incongruity in the song with the persons uttering it, they are the true Israel, consisting of the faithful in Israel according to the flesh and among the Gentiles. And these are in fact the only ones who can properly be opposed to this universal monarchy; all else is amalgamated in it. It is the kingdom of this world oppressing the kingdom of God; and the destruction of the former and the establishment of the latter are certain. This grand idea lies at the basis of the song; and yet it is throughout prophetic not of general truths merely, but of the particu lar fate of the Chaldees, delineating as it does, even to minute details, and in a manner which is surprisingly confirmed by history, the sins by which they should work their downfall; while behind the fall of the Chaldees lies, in conformity with the usual structure of Old Testament prophecy, the glory of the Messianic times. For every great monarchy by which the people of God were subdued and oppressed was to the prophets the world's empire absolutely that great colossal kingdom, whose overthrow should make way for the coming in of the latter-day glory. It awakens in their minds the distinction of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. Each is identified with its representative in the present: and no distinction is made, no detail is given, of the various forms in which this ungodly power, really identical in character, should successively appear. Daniel is the first to whom it was given to see distinguished the four great empires of the world in their chronological succession. In the prediction before us, the prophet's eye looking upon Babylon identifies it as a part with the whole of what is in spirit and in destiny most intimately connected with it; and in its fall he sees the fall of all that opposes the kingdom of God. This great ungodly power must be removed out of the way, in order to the introduction and complete establishment of the kingdom of God. Its fall was one of the many successive crises which should occur in the progress of that grand event-one great step toward its accomplishment. He hurries at once away from the destruction of Babylon to the latter-day glory, which looms up be yond it, as the brightness of the sun breaking in over the dark mountains that gird the horizon. As in perspective, he sees them lying together before him without having revealed to him the interval by which they are actually separated, or being enabled to take any thing like a bird's eye view of the events that intervene. The prophet has not omniscience; he can only declare the future so far as God has been pleased to make it known to him. And he has chosen to make it known, not in that way in which it might most completely gratify those who with a vain curiosity would pry into the future, but