Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/1136

 For further particulars as to the apocryphal legends, see Delitzsch, ''De Habacuci proph. vita atque aetate commentat.'', ed. ii., Lps. 1842. These legends do not even help us to fix the date of Habakkuk's life. All that can be gathered with any certainty from his own writings is that he prophesied before the arrival of the Chaldaeans in Palestine, i.e., before the victory gained by Nebuchadnezzar over Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer 46:2), since he announces the bringing up of this people to execute judgment upon Judah as something still in the future (Hab 1:5.). Opinions are divided as to the precise date at which he lived. Leaving out of sight the opinions of those who deny the supernatural character of prophecy, and therefore maintain that the prophet did not prophesy till the Chaldaeans were coming against Jerusalem after the defeat of Necho, or had already arrived there, the only question that can arise is, whether Habakkuk lived and laboured in the reign of Josiah or in the closing years of Manasseh. Many have found a decisive proof that he lived in the reign of Josiah in Hab 1:5, viz., in the fact that the prophet there foretells the Chaldaean judgment as a work which God will perform during the lifetime of the persons to whom his words are addressed (“in your days”); and they have inferred from this that we must not at any rate go beyond Josiah's reign, because the prophet is not speaking to the children, but to the adults, i.e., to those who have reached the age of manhood. But the measure of time by which to interpret בּימיכם cannot be obtained either from Joe 1:2, where the days of the persons addressed are distinguished from the days of the fathers and grandchildren, or from Jer 16:9 and Eze 12:25; but this expression is quite a relative one, especially in prophetic addresses, and may embrace either a few years only, or a complete lifetime, and even more. Now, as there were only thirty-eight years between the death of Manasseh and the first invasion of the Chaldaeans, the Chaldaean judgment might very well be announced during the last years of that king to the then existing generation as one that would happen in their days. We are precluded from placing the announcement in the time immediately preceding the appearance of the Chaldaeans in Hither Asia, say in the first years of Jehoiakim or the closing