HABAKKUK CHAPTER 1 - 3

BOOK OF HABAKKUK

Nobody knows for sure if Habakkuk
Is the son born to one who came to look
To Elisha for help, the Shunemite.
At any rate he raises up in sight
The question why the good sink down in fright,
While wicked ones attack them without law
And without recourse to justice or claw.
The only answer that the prophet gives
Is that You are just to each one that lives,
And in Your time or Your eternity
All things shall be made right and all made free.
Beloved, that question still burns in the heart
Of atheist and faithful from the start,
An argument against You on their part.

HABAKKUK 1

1 The burden that Habakkuk saw
As prophet without a faux-pas.
2 YHWH, how long shall I cry, and you
Will not hear my complaint in view
Of violence, while You don’t save?
3 Why do you show me wicked wave
And make me see the grief like grave?
For spoil and violence by me
Raise up strife and contention’s fee.
4 That’s why law ceases and judgement
Never goes forth in right intent;
Since wicked take the upper hand
Above the righteous in the land
And so wrong judgement is present.

If Ali Riddha, the eighth in the line,
Is like Habakkuk sitting under vine,
He too might make complaint usurper takes
The grape and leaves nothing for eaters’ sakes.
The wicked takes the upper hand in glee
And promises a restitution’s fee
For future time, but that is all a foil,
A smokescreen to cover the coming spoil.
Beloved, I too have my experience
That tells me when I hear of love’s expense,
The next thing I know is the knife thrust in
The back, and my sinking before the din.
I run when love’s proclaimed to save my life,
And life of son and daughter, and of wife.

5 Look at the nations and behold
And marvel at the things untold,
For I’ll do a work in your days
Which you will not believe for praise.
6 See, I’ll raise up the Chaldeans,
That bitter, hasty nation’s plans,
And they shall march throughout the land
To take houses not theirs in hand.
7 They’re terrible and dreadful too,
Their judgement and their dignity
Shall go before them in the hue.
8 Their horses run faster than do
The leopards, and more fierce to see
Than wolves at evening; cavalry
Shall spread and horsemen come from far
To fly like eagles to the bar.
9 They shall come all for violence;
Their faces swallowing the tents
Of the east wind, to gather like
The sand captivity to strike.
10 They’ll scoff at kings and princes be
A scorn to them, they shall deride
Every strong fortress that they see,
For they’ll heap dust and so abide.
11 Then passed on will the spirit, and
He shall transgress, ascribe the hand
Of his power to his god’s stand.

The prophets whose writings were stored away
And kept safe and aground for rainy day
Were those who in minority laid bare
Prediction that Babylon had a share
In world empires to come. The other ones,
Though fawned upon by king in royal sway,
Were cast out for their failure on their buns.
But truth of their fulfilment was too late
To save the nation from the evil fate,
Or save the prophets who were right from all
The persecutions of the royal all.
It was too late for the most part to send
The false predictors to their deserved end.
Moral: stick with the royal hopes in stall.

12 Are you not from beginning, YHWH
My Ælohim, Holy One due?
We shall not die. O YHWH, You’ve set
For them judgement that will be met,
O Rock, for reproof You will get.
13 Too pure are Your eyes to behold
The evil, You cannot enfold
Iniquity, then why do You
Regard their treachery undue,
And hold Your tongue when wicked men
Consume the righteous in his den?
14 Do You make men like ocean fish,
Like creeping things, without the wish
Or rulers? 15 They take up all those
With the angle, they catch their toes
In their net and gather them in
Their drag, and rejoice in the din.
16 So they sacrifice to their net,
And burn incense to their drag set;
Because by them their profit’s fat
And their meat plenty in the vat.
17 Shall they therefore empty their net,
And stop always killing all met?

The truth is that it seems hazard of fate
Determines who succeeds and who is late.
Sometimes the wicked serve a curving ball
That sets the righteous out of house and stall.
Sometimes the righteous perish and sometimes
Live on in wealth and health and comely rhymes.
The faith that what goes round always comes back
Is not founded on empirical track.
The prophet sighs and wonders as do I
But neither of us know the truth of sky.
The human prophecy is hope’s despair,
And wandering on the desert and the air.
Beloved, though prophets here come cry and weep,
I merely return to Your house to sweep.

HABAKKUK 2

1 I will stand up upon my watch
And set myself up in the crotch
Of a tower and will stand to see
What He will speak then against me,
And what I may reply to him
Reproving me for what is dim.
2 And YHWH answered me and said “Write
The vision and make it plain sight
Upon the tables, so he may
Run that reads it, not go astray.
3 “The vision’s an appointed time,
But at the end it shall give mime
And not lie; thought it seem to take
A long time, wait there in its wake,
Because it will come surely and
It will not tarry in the land.”
4 See the presumptuous one, he’s not
Upright within, but Huguenot
Shall live by his steadfastness’ plot.

Is any man steadfast, Beloved, in face
Of limitation of the human race?
The flesh and blood itself’s ephemeral,
Subject to the winds and the bitter gall
Of fleeting life. Beloved, steadfastness here
Is not a human thing to grasp in fear.
The faith that inspires human breast
Is always presumptuous at its best,
If only in the hope that one more breath
Will grace the consciousness before one’s death.
Beloved, I grasp the words and feel the rope
Burn in my hands before I know its hope.
Your universe is too sharp on the heel
For human heart, Beloved, a world of steel.

5 Also because wine’s treacherous,
A man is haughty and makes fuss
To leave his house, make large desire
As is sheol and as death’s mire,
And cannot be satisfied then,
But gathers to himself all men
Of all nations and makes a heap
For himself of all people deep.
6 Do not these, all of them, take up
A parable against the tup,
A moral of sharp saying when
They say “Woe to him who draws in
The wealth that is not his to bin,
Till when he also multiplies
To himself heavy pledges’ sighs.”
7 Shall they not rise up suddenly
That shall bite you and awake free
What can only trouble you here,
And you shall be spoiled at their ear?
8 Since you have spoiled all nations dear,
The remnant of the folk appear
To spoil you; because of men’s blood,
And for ground’s violence in mud,
Of the city and all who dwell
Within its gates to cast a spell.
9 Woe to the one who covets what
Is evil to his house in glut,
So he may set his nest up high,
And be delivered from the spy
Of evil power in what is shut.
10 You have come here to consult shame
For your house by cutting off name
Of many peoples, and have sinned
Against your own soul in the wind.
11 The stone shall cry out of the wall,
The bean out of the timbered stall
Shall answer it and tell it all.
12 Woe to the one who builds a town
With blood and sets a city down
By his iniquity in crown.
13 See, is it now from YHWH of hosts
That people labour in the boasts
Of very fire, and the folk tire
Themselves for an idol’s vain hire?
14 For full is the earth of the true
Knowledge of the honour of YHWH,
As water covers the sea’s view.

Woe to the one who builds a town on blood,
And yet in every place after the flood
All towns are built on blood and on deceit.
Every land claim in New York is a cheat
With California at end of the street.
Beloved, have mercy on the men to take
The livelihood of others and in wake
Leave widows, orphans and their dogs in stake
Of hunger and of pestilence and death.
Have mercy on all men who still draw breath.
I cry You mercy, my Beloved, by right
Of one who has not by a hand of sleight
Found prey among my neighbours. Fit the bill
To bring peace down on earth and let it fill.

15 Woe to the one who gives to drink
To his neighbour, from bottle’s stink
To make drunk and have sex, just think!
16 You’re filled with shame instead of glory,
So drink up also, let your gory
Foreskin be exposed, and the cup
Of YHWH’s right hand shall turn to sup
For you, and shameful spewing be
On you, your honour and glory.
17 For violence of Lebanon
Shall cover you, and spoil anon
Of beasts become afraid to smell
The blood of men and so to tell
The violence of the land and
Of the city and all who stand.
18 What profits the idol to those
Who made it graven to the toes,
The molten image, taught by lies,
That its maker trusts in its eyes,
Though it can see nothing that goes?
19 Woe to the one who says to wood,
“Wake up!” To the dumb stone it should
Get up and teach. See it is laid
Over with gold and silver paid,
And there’s no breath in it at all.
20 And YHWH is in His temple stall,
Be still before Him, earth in thrall.

How many of the famous and the right
Who dine in festival here in my sight
Serve liquor and wine to their own delight
And that of leaders of the left and night!
Your prophet speaks in curses on the high
And noble of the country where I lie
And of the one from which I also spring.
We are a world of drunkards at the spring
Of the water of life. That’s why we sing
More of the pit than of celestial ring.
Beloved, forgive me that as time goes by
I don’t replace grandfather’s sign, whereby
Each passer-by read well the imprecations
On those who drank their alcoholic rations.

HABAKKUK 3

1 A prayer of Habakkuk Nabi
Upon Shigionoth to see.
2 O YHWH, I’ve heard Your speech, and fear,
O YHWH, revive Your work and hear,
In the midst of the years make known;
In wrath remember mercy grown.
3 Allah from Teman comes, the Holy
One from Mount Paran, no place lowly.
His glory fills the face of sky,
The earth runs with His praise to vie.
4 The brightness is as light to see;
He had horns from His hand to be;
And even then full blast of power
Was lying hidden at that hour.
5 Before Him went the pestilence,
And burning coals from His feet hence.
6 He stood and measured off the earth;
He saw the melted nations’ worth;
The ancient mountains crushed in berth.
The hills of the world bowed down by
The journeys of eternity.
7 Under sorrow I’ve seen the tents
Of Cushan, tremble do the vents
Of Midian land amidst her rents.

Not only David’s voice rises to show
The height of Psalmistry upon the glow
Of day and night, the east and western flow
Of comfort and delight, of warning’s bow.
No Psalm more beautiful that this is writ
Within the sacred Scriptures and the fit,
The melting words of pestilence and pain,
The flights eternal into sun and rain.
Beloved, indeed the world runs full of all
The power and pleasures of the divine call,
The hidden and the revealed in the stall.
So then revive, Beloved, Your work in me
That makes creation seem eternity,
And colours mereness with exquisitry.

8 Was YHWH displeased against the streams?
Was Your anger against their beams?
Was Your wrath set against the sea
That You rode on Your cavalry
And chariots of salvation’s fee?
9 Your bow was made bare by the oaths
Of the tribes, by Your word and quoths.
You split the earth with streams and sea.
10 The mountains saw You, trembling stood;
The overflowing waters could
Pass by; the deep uttered its voice,
Lifting up its hands to rejoice.
11 The sun and moon stood still where they
Dwell; at the light your arrows flay,
At shining of Your spear to play.
12 You marched through the land in Your wrath,
You threshed the heathen in Your path.
13 You went out to save Your own folk,
Save Your anointed, at a stroke
You wounded the head of the house
Of wickedness, uncovered mouse
Up to the neck and laid in yoke.
14 You pierced with his staves still the head
Of his leaders, and they are spread
In tumult against me, their cry
Exults to consume poor man’s rye.
15 You passed through the waters and sea
In a heap by Your cavalry.

When Joshua commands, the story goes,
The sun and moon stand still above the throes
Of death-shakes on the wicked with their bows
All broken by Your chosen ones in rows.
Beloved, the rending of the air presumes
Too much on human sight and ears’ costumes.
Though time may be a stable or then not,
The proof is not in what men see in lot.
The horror of the moment makes the sun
Stand still for an eternity, then run
Beyond the stars anguished looking for fun.
Beloved, save Your anointed one indeed,
Whoever he may be, the woman’s seed
Or one born in the stable like a weed.

16 When I hear, my belly would quake;
My lips quivered at the voice’ sake;
My bones trembled corrupted there,
And quaked in myself for the rest
In the day of trouble to nest,
When he arrives to find the folk
With troops invading at a stroke.
17 Though the fig tree does not bear flower,
Nor come fruit on vines in that hour,
The labour of the olive fail,
The field yield no food for a meal,
The flock cut off from very fold,
No herd found in the stall unsold;
18 Yet I’ll rejoice in YHWH, I’ll joy
In God of my salvation’s ploy.
19 YHWH Ælohim’s become my strength,
And He will make my feet at length
Like feet of hinds, and He will make
Me walk in my high places’ stake.
To the chief singer this is sent
To play on my stringed instrument.

The trembling of the fearful and the dance
Of those who rejoice join in penitrance
Of Your creative power to make earth stand
Or else to fall prostrated by command.
Though no corn blows upon the place where I
Remain to stand, to breathe, or live or die,
Let me rejoice as long as I stand here,
Whether in hope and comfort or in fear.
Your name alone is worthy of my joy.
The fleeting powers about me all employ
Illusions for the faint, the beating cloy
Of melodies ephemeral and quaint.
Beloved, I go beyond tinsel and paint,
Beyond the bread and water that appear.

AUTHOR: THOMAS G. MCELWAIN

Copyright © 2007 Adams & McElwain Publishers and Thomas McElwain First Published in two volumes, The Beloved and I 2005, and Led of the Beloved, 2006. Second Edition, 2010 Third and revised edition, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this verse commentary on the sacred Scriptures may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from publisher.

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