“I Hear, and Tremble”: The Book of Habakkuk and the Limits of Justice

 

Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, Dallas, Texas, March 1995. Revision of published as “Hearing the Children's Cries: Commentary, Deconstruction, Ethics, and the Book of Habakkuk,” Semeia 77 (1997): 75–89.

Summary

The book of Habakkuk unfolds as a dialogue between Habakkuk and Yahweh. First, Habakkuk asks how long Yahweh will ignore his cries for help, which come in response to the iniquity and trouble, violence and destruction, that Yahweh has forced Habakkuk to watch helplessly around him in Judahite society (1:2–4). Second, Yahweh answers that it will not be long, for Yahweh is raising up Chaldea, whose violence and destruction constitutes their justice and dignity, to punish Judah (1:5–11). Third, Habakkuk finds this unbelievable; he flatly contradicts God, asserting that “we will not die” and that it is the Chaldeans, not the Judahites, that God has scheduled for punishment (1:12–2:1). Habakkuk simply cannot accept God’s words, for he conceives Chaldea’s wave of conquest as wrongdoing and trouble, nothing less than internal Judahite injustice writ large. Fourth, Yahweh answers that the Chaldeans will indeed “get theirs”; for their violence and destruction against the earth and its inhabitants, Yahweh is going to ensure that Chaldea itself suffers violence and destruction. Finally, Habakkuk envisions God coming to save his people in a frightening theophany. Yahweh is preceded by pestilence, with plague bringing up the rear. When Yahweh walks, the earth shakes, mountains are toppled, dry land is flooded, and warriors are pierced with arrows. Habakkuk is utterly convinced of Chaldea’s imminent destruction by Yahweh (it is less clear if he is convinced of Judah’s imminent destruction by Chaldea).

The book of Habakkuk says that Chaldea’s defeat of Judah serves God’s justice, and while that defeat itself seems unjust, God’s ultimate destruction of Chaldea secures divine justice. But the book of Habakkuk does something different.

In his first speech, Habakkuk sets up the value judgment that forms the basis for his complaint against Judahite society: violence and destruction are the antithesis of justice. On the international scene, Chaldean violence is similarly condemned in the taunts of chapter 2, but labeled justice in Yahweh’s speech in chapter 1. Indeed, Yahweh takes credit in chapter 1 for the very violence that Yahweh condemns in chapter 2. Habakkuk’s hymn in chapter 3 celebrates Yahweh’s violence and destruction. The charge brought against Chaldea—violence and destruction against the earth and its inhabitants—indicts the Yahweh of chapter 3 more than it does the Chaldea of chapters 1–2.

Thus the book of Habakkuk does something quite different from what it says. The words of the text celebrate the violence of retributive justice. But the logic of the text deconstructs the opposition between just and unjust violence. The facade of valuation peels away until we are left only with violence. In this way, the book of Habakkuk mocks what it seems to celebrate. The fans of violence may prance on the heights with the Habakkuk of chapter 3, but my reading does not permit me to follow. Instead, it forces me back to chapter 2, violence calling forth not celebration but a stunned and horrified speechlessness.