Habakkuk 1:12-17

Remonstrance over the Inhumanity of the Chaldeans. The execution of Divine judgment raises fresh questions: Why should the Holy One, whose eyes are too pure to look on evil, appoint as minister of justice a people still more faithless and corrupt than its victim? And why should He make the nations like leaderless swarms of fish, to be swept into the net, and gathered up in the seine (drag-net), then emptied out and slaughtered, while the oppressor in brutal joy offers sacrifice to his nets?

Habakkuk 1:12. Read probably, Yahweh, my Holy God, that diest not? (cf. mg.). The second part of the verse should also perhaps be taken interrogatively, Was it thou that didst ordain (appoint) him. for judgment? For tsur, Rock (which reads very awkwardly), Duhm suggests tsir, messenger or minister: thus, and established him as a minister of chastisement.

Habakkuk 1:14. creeping things: rather, swarming things (Genesis 1:20 *).

Habakkuk 1:16. The conqueror deifies his weapons of war (cf. Herodotus-' account of Scythian sacrifices to the scimitar, iv. 59f.)

Habakkuk 1:17. The word tamid, continually, should probably go with the first clause, Shall he be ever emptying his net, to slaughter nations unpitying?