Habakkuk
Introduction
Person of the Prophet. - Nothing certain is known as to the circumstances of Habakkuk's life. The name חבקּוּק, formed from חבק, to fold the hands, piel to embrace, by a repetition of the last radical with the vowel u, like נעצוּץ from נעץ, שׁערוּרה from שׁער, etc., and a reduplication of the penultimate (cf. Ewald, 157, a), signifies embracing; and as the name of a person, either one who embraces, or one who is embraced. Luther took the name in the first sense. “Habakkuk,” he says, “signifies an embracer, or one who embraces another, or takes him to his arms,” and interpreted it thus in a clever although not perfectly appropriate manner: “He embraces his people, and takes them to his arms, i.e., he comforts them and holds (lifts) them up, as one embraces a weeping child or person, to quiet it with the assurance that if God will it shall be better soon.” The lxx wrote the name ̓αμβακούμ, taking the word as pronounced הבּקוּק, and compensating for the doubling of the ב by the liquid μ, and changing the closing ק into μ. Jerome in his translation writes the name Habacuc. In the headings to his book (Hab 1:1 and Hab 3:1) Habakkuk is simply described by the epithet הוּביא, as a man who held the office of a prophet. From the conclusion to the psalm in ch. 3, “To the leader in the accompaniment to my playing upon stringed instruments” (Hab 3:19), we learn that he was officially qualified to take part in the liturgical singing of the temple, and therefore belonged to one of the Levitical families, who were charged with the maintenance of the temple music, and, like the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who sprang from priestly households, belonged to the tribe of Levi. This is supported by the superscription of the apocryphon of Bel and the dragon at
