Habbakuk's Babylon

Habakkuk has two dialogues, H. 1:1-11 and H. 1:12-2:20. Despite some MT errors the book seems, overall, legible and free of deliberate redactions. I do incidentally wonder - as with John - if our prophet meant literal Babylon.

The first dialogue is short and basic, and is what mentions Babylon by name. The sequel H. 1:12-2:20 has no illusions as to the conquering power. This sequel is longer. In fact I don't even think it's a sequel.

Suppose us that we set ourselves beside the desk of the second chapter's author. Habbakuk - leave alone if that's his real name - was writing under a foreign occupation. He wrote H. 1:2-11 imagining how some earlier pre-Babylonian prophetic faction might pine for, exactly, that occupation. Jeremiah was caricatured in his lifetime as such a traitor. Jonah exists as a caricature of prophets generally. The book doesn't contest the stereotypes; it strawmans "Habbakuk" as a para-Jeremiah, to set the stage for the real prophecy.

This much I lay out for consensus upon the first chapter up to H. 2:1 - Habbakuk's author has inserted his avatar upon late-seventh-century Judah and is spinning-out the avatar's second-thoughts under the early-sixth-century Babylonian occupation of same.

In the second chapter, which vv.2f concludes the second dialogue, God tells Habakkuk that the evil empire - Babylon by context - shall be plundered by those she used to plunder. This didn't (at first) happen to Babylon; Cyrus treated Babylon as liberated, from the Chaldaeans. Although time would come, I think, when Babylon separated herself from Iran, that Darius the Achaemenid would be more brutal.

Habbakuk - if real - might be hoping for God's revenge upon literal Babylon, which (historically) God will provide - but in stages: first the loss of empire then the sack. Inasmuch as modern scholars know that the prophet is wrong, those scholars tend to take this book's word for it, that it was composed under a Babylonian occupation of the Levant. Habbakuk was a real prophet; albeit perhaps a Samaritan (hey, nobody has told us which Temple...).

But there's wrong from the past and there's wrong from the future. In the latter alternative Habbakuk's author is drawing upon lore about Babylon at a remove. He named the wicked empire in the first dialogue - but not in the sequel. In the alternative reading, that silence is a rhetorical device. The new (wicked) empire is implied as Babylon, but is abstracted.

I'll point out here that Habbakuk's MT text although imperfect doesn't reflect nearly the volatility as, say, Jeremiah or Ezekiel, or even Daniel. Maybe the Jews were just really really good at transcribing this one.

Or maybe it's a Ptolemaic text praying for the Seleucids. Or a Seleucid text praying for Parthia - or Maccabean, for Rome. It has ambiguities as can apply to any period; This Too Shall Pass.