Chapter One

1. Superscription. 2–4. Complaints or laments of the prophet to God regarding the unpunished dominance of injustice and impiety in the land. 5–11. The first divine answer to the prophet’s laments—announcement of the terrible calamity of enslavement of the Judeans by the Chaldeans. 12–17. The impression of the answer on the prophet, new bewilderments, new laments and new questions to God.

Habakkuk 1:1. The prophetic vision which the prophet Habakkuk saw. The book of the prophet Habakkuk, like the book of the prophet Nahum, begins in the Hebrew original with the word massa, one of the basic meanings of which is: “burden,” “load.” Blessed Jerome, here as in the book of the prophet Nahum, renders this word with the Latin onus, burden. But in relation to the book of the prophet Habakkuk, massa has a more neutral meaning (prophecy in general) than a special one (announcement of threats, calamities),—since in this book the threatening and consolatory elements especially closely penetrate one another. Therefore, here the translation of the LXX better suits the content: lemma, which blessed Theodoret explains thus: “Vision (lemma) is called the rapture of the mind and passing from human works to divine revelation. Therefore, if the prophet spoke this through the action of the Spirit, then clearly not he himself suffered bewilderment, but he lays bare the wound of those suffering from it, and applies medicine” (p. 23). To this general or neutral understanding of massa here apparently inclines also blessed Jerome, when he remarks: “One must note also that the vision of the prophet is a lifting or burden, which, as we have already said, designates grave (calamities) and that he clearly understands his vision” (p. 131). One must also bear in mind that the superscription massa (Hab 1:1) can and does pertain only to the content of the first two chapters of the book of the prophet Habakkuk, since the third chapter has its own special superscription or heading: tefilah, prayer. This neutral sense of massa is thereby further confirmed. As in the first superscription (Hab 1:1), so in the second (Hab 3:1), to the proper name Habakkuk is added the designation nabi, prophete, prophet, which also occurs in the superscriptions of two prophetic books of Haggai (Hag 1:1) and Zechariah (Zech 1:1). But this circumstance in itself cannot at all indicate the late origin of the superscription of the book of the prophet Habakkuk (as Marti thinks, p. 331), but simply aims to indicate the office of Habakkuk among the members of the Old Testament church—he was a prophet both by office (munus propheticum) and by gift (donum propheticum),—and at the same time provide a pledge of the truthfulness of all revelation, give testimony to its origin from on high—that “he speaks not from his own heart, but communicates the word of God, as a prophet and filled with divine grace for this” (St. Cyril of Alexandria. See in prof. Golubev, p. 706). This latter corresponds to the basic meaning of the word nabi, by which “a prophet is a person speaking not from himself, but announcing the will of God and His revelation to men, moreover chosen by God and receiving from Him divine authority; the prophet appears as the interpreter and expositor not of anything whatever, but only of the will and words divine, appears as a mediator between God and men, a trusted person of God (Exod 7:1-2; Gen 20:7; Jer 26:9). (M. Verzbolovich, Prophetic Ministry in the Israelite (ten-tribe) Kingdom. Kiev. 1891, pp. 5–6. See more fully in R. E. Laur’a, Die Prophetennamen des Alten Testamentes. Ein Beitrag zur Theologie des Alten Testamentes. Freiburg (Switzerland) 1903, p. 2, particularly pp. 11–42).

Habakkuk 1:2–4. How long, O Lord, will I call out, and You will not hear? Will I cry to You concerning violence, and You will not save me? Why do You allow me to see wrongdoing, and look upon calamity? Plunder and violence are before me, and strife and contention arise. Because of this the law has lost its strength, and there is no true justice: since the wicked overpowers the righteous, therefore judgment comes out perverted. The laments depicted here of the prophet in his address to the God of the covenant—Iahweh—were caused, according to the opinion of some Jewish interpreters, and also blessed Jerome and some modern commentators (Philippson, Maurer, Rosenmüller, Ewald, and others), by expected or already factually occurring violence of the Babylonians or Chaldeans in Judea. “The prophet,” says blessed Jerome, “cries out against God regarding why Nebuchadnezzar will lay waste the temple and Judah, why Jerusalem will be subjected to destruction, although it is the city of God. Why does the prophet call out, but God does not hear him? He cries to the Lord oppressed by the Chaldeans, but does not receive salvation?” (p. 133) “The impious king Nebuchadnezzar prevailed against righteous Judah (2 Sam 24:1)... and the righteous king Josiah will be killed by the king of Egypt (2 Sam 23:29), and Daniel, Ananiah, Mishael, and Azariah will be in slavery (Dan 3), and the Babylonian ruler will be the master” (p. 135). In favor of such understanding modern supporters point out that the words met in v. 2 and 3—hamas, violence, and amal, oppression—are also met below in v. 9 and 13, where they unquestionably mean tyrannical actions of the Chaldeans. But besides these words, in the passage being examined in v. 3, the prophet uses still other words riv, lawsuit, quarrel, and madan, strife, discord; furthermore, in v. 4 it is said that the law, torah—clearly the Mosaic law—lost strength, that righteousness does not prevail, that judgment comes out perverted: all these features are unquestionably applicable only to the internal life of the people of Judah, as a people with positive law, torah, moreover one that sinned through frequent departures from the latter,—and on the contrary are completely inapplicable to the Chaldeans—a people that recognized no other law than their own will (Hab 1:7) and power, deified by them (v. 11, cf. v. 16). Moreover, if we agreed with the refuted interpretation of v. 2–4, then the subsequent v. 5–10, announcement about the invasion of the Chaldeans, as an entirely new and incredible event, and detailed description of them would have no meaning, remaining completely incomprehensible. On the contrary, when explaining v. 2–4 regarding the internal dissolution of the religious, moral and legal side of the life of the Jews themselves, contemporaries of the prophet, it is fully understandable, first of all, the general relation of this section to the subsequent v. 5–11: this is the relation of cause to consequence, transgression and punishment; then, in particular, the mentioned same naming (hamas, amal) of the crimes of the Jews and the manner of action of the Chaldeans is based in the deepest way on the idea of correspondence between divine retribution and the sin that caused it, according to the word of the Wise: “by what things a man sins, by these he is also tortured” (Wis 11:17). The sin of the Jews consisted in oppressions, in various kinds of trampling on the law (Hab 1:2-4); in the same divine punishment was to consist in the form of the invasion and violence of the Chaldeans (Hab 1:5-11), just as these latter for their godless oppressions against the people of God (Hab 1:12) awaited, by divine judgment, a similar ruinous fate (ch. II). See in prof. Golubev, p. 699–701, note. Thus, the prophet Habakkuk in v. 2–4, like the prophet Micah (Mic 7), expresses his deep sorrow regarding the impiety prevailing in his people in social life. As a deeply believing member of the theocratic community, more than that—as the divinely-appointed watchman of theocrasy (cf. Hab 2:1), the prophet in holy zeal for the “frozen” (Hebrew pug) as it were law, for trampled divine righteousness (Hab 1:4), with prayerful boldness (like the psalmists, for instance Ps 21:2) cries out to God about the long-awaited divine intervention in the life of his compatriots, not corresponding to divine law. Of course, the prophet complains about the general direction of life, not about individual wicked ones, much less about his personal oppressors.

Habakkuk 1:5–11. Look among the nations and gaze carefully, and you will be exceedingly astounded; for I will do in your days a work that you would not believe if it were told to you. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a people cruel and unrestrained, who march across the breadth of the earth to take possession of settlements not belonging to them. He is terrible and fearful; from himself come his judgments and his authority. His horses are swifter than leopards and quicker than evening wolves; his cavalry gallops far and wide; his horsemen come from afar, they fly like an eagle swooping for prey. He comes entirely for plunder; his face pressed forward he takes captives like sand. And he mocks at kings, and rulers are a mockery to him; he laughs at every fortress: he heaps up an earthwork and takes it. Then his spirit becomes proud and he transgresses; his might is his god. Here a divine answer is given to the sorrowful bewilderments of the prophet—without any special preparation—with the aim of convincing the prophet and all his contemporaries that the inattention of providence to what is occurring in the sphere of human relations (v. 2–4) is only seeming, and that soon the judgment of God is about to be revealed over the unworthy generation of the chosen people of God. In His answer to the prophet God first of all (v. 5) demands attention from the Judeans to His revelation and thereby already shows its extraordinary importance: already terrible events hang over their heads, of which their life and history have never before known, and which are capable of astonishing and bringing terror to those over whom they burst (this supposed unexpectedness of the approaching calamity of enemy invasion clearly shows that previously, in v. 2–4, the discourse was not about the Chaldeans). The second word of v. 5—according to the accepted Hebrew text baggoyim, among the nations. Vulg. in gentibus, the LXX (and also the Peshitta) read differently,—apparently: bogedim, faithless ones, evildoers (as below Hab 1:13, cf. Zeph 3:4; Jer 12:1) and rendered: kataphronetai, Slavic “despicers.” Blessed Theodoret, accepting this reading of the LXX, in its explanation says: “the careless calls God those boldly violating the law and afflicted with insensitivity” (p. 23), and blessed Jerome, himself inclining toward the present reading of the Hebrew text and rendered in his translation the word in question in gentibus, at the same time in his commentary mentions two unnamed codices, in one of which the beginning of v. 5 read: “look at the scorners!” and in the other: “look at the rebels!” and remarks that with such reading “these words convict the audacity and contempt toward God of people on behalf of whom the prophet cried out, their bold rising up against the magnitude of God, their reckless words, their censure of divine providence and their departure from God with the reproach of His injustice” (pp. 136–137). Thus, the beginning of v. 5 in the LXX has more expressiveness than according to the accepted Hebrew text, the meaning of which, as explained by the same blessed Jerome,—is that “the prophet should look closely and see among the nations the injustice which, in his opinion, is only among Israel alone, and that to the Chaldeans are given over not only Judah and Israel, but also all the surrounding peoples” (p. 137). Then in the revealed “work” (poel v. 5) are indicated the following moments: its main source—the will of God, pronouncing his judicial sentence about the fate of the impious; its visible instrument, performer or executor at a given historical moment of the decrees of God—the people—the Chaldeans, as much severe and cruel as they are swift and mighty in executing their cruelties (Hab 1:6-10), finally, its consequence for the very performers, all together completely depicting the enormous power of the terrible calamity. The main thought of the first divine answer consists of the position stated at the beginning of v. 6, that the coming invasion of enemies upon Judah—a phenomenon not accidental, but one that must take place according to the almighty will of God; namely, God will raise up against Judah the Chaldeans, He will arm them with invincible power, but they must consider themselves only His instrument, and forgetting this will be ruinous for them. By the name “Chaldeans,” Hebrew Kasdim. LXX: chaldaioi, in the prophets, beginning with the prophet Habakkuk (Hab 1:6-11) and Jeremiah (Jer 21:4, 24 and others) is designated the nation, known in cuneiform records under the name Kaldu. Initially this tribe lived in the south of the biblical valley of Sennaar or Mesopotamia, along the shores of the Persian Gulf, but in the 7th century it became extremely strengthened, extended its conquering aspirations to the north, and in 625 B.C. the leader of the Chaldeans Nabopolassar on the ruins of the already perishing Assyria laid the foundation of the Chaldean-Babylonian or Neo-Chaldean kingdom. These Chaldeans were Semites, as the Bible testifies (Gen 22:22), and therefore cannot be identified with the Chaldeans of Kurdistan and Armenia, who were Aryans. According to both the Bible (Gen 22:22; Gen 11:28) and cuneiform documents, the name of the Chaldeans was known for several centuries before their appearance as world conquerors, but in this capacity they first appear in the prophecy of Habakkuk 1, and therefore he, first of all, specially warns his listeners and readers about the terrible event of their invasion (Hab 1:5), and then gives a very detailed characterization of the properties of these terrible conquerors (Hab 1:6-11). These properties to a certain extent completely correspond to the criminal properties of the Jews, and in this one cannot fail to see the punishing action of divine Providence. “Upon you, living in injustice and lawlessness, for whom those not knowing the laws of Providence grieve, I will bring fierce and unrestrained Chaldeans, who from greed for what is alien fight against all peoples” (blessed Theodoret, p. 24). For the characterization of the military nature of the Chaldeans the passage considered must be recognized as classical, just as Isa 5:26-30 gives a classical characterization of the Assyrians. “A people cruel,” Hebrew hagoy-hammar—bitter as wormwood, for everyone who tastes fellowship with them—a people fearful, lacking humanity, mercy (cf. Jer 50:42; Deut 28:50); “unrestrained,” hannigar, literally swift, LXX: tachinos, Vulg.: velocem, who march across the breadth of the earth to seize settlements not belonging to them” (cf. Hab 2:6)—a people foreign to settled life and culture, on the contrary, accustomed to rapine and robbery; “a most warlike and unrestrained people, witnesses of whose power and military valor were almost all Greeks who wrote the history of barbarians. And its affairs consist not in tilling the earth with a plow, but in living by the sword and robbery, and in capturing cities not belonging to them” (blessed Jerome, p. 138). Indeed, in the depiction of the Chaldeans, for example in Xenophon (Cyropaedia III, 2), the features of the prophet’s description of the Chaldeans are as it were very accurately reproduced. Naturally, such a people “is terrible and fearful” to all neighboring peoples—“through cruelty, through uncontrollableness in anger, through impregnability of heart, through ferocity in punishments” (St. Cyril of Alexandria)—most of all because it recognizes no other law over itself than its own, and believes that only to itself, and to no one else, is it obliged for its superiority over other peoples: “from itself (and not from God, as in Ps 16:2) comes his judgment (mishpat, rule, norm of action) and his authority (seut, greatness, LXX: lemma, Slavic: “taking,” Vulg.: onus) his” (v. 7)—“makes law of what comes into its mind” (blessed Theodoret, p. 24): like their ancient ancestors, who dreamed of building the Tower of Babylon to make themselves a name (Gen 11:4), and especially following the self-deifying king Nebuchadnezzar (Isa 14:13), the Chaldeans do not acknowledge that their power and authority are given from the Lord (see Hab 1:11-12). The unlimited power of the Chaldeans appears all the more alive and unobstructed in their thrust for plunder: “his horses are swifter than leopards”—an animal as predatory as a lion (Jer 5:6; Isa 11:6; Hos 13:7), but endowed with greater, compared to it, ease of motion, similar to a whirlwind in him, so that it is almost impossible for prey to escape from him; “and quicker than evening wolves”—exhausted by long, throughout the day, hunger and fruitless search for food, and therefore with greater greed rushing at food found in the evening and by morning leaving nothing of it (in the LXX here, as also in Zeph 3:3, instead of “evening,” Hebrew erev, stands “Arabian,” tes Arabias, so the Slavic LXX also read, apparently, not erev, but arab, Arabia). The long journey (“from afar,” that is, from Babylon, Isa 39:3; cf. Jer 5:15) does not weary them, on the contrary, like eagles they swiftly fly at rich prey and, like eagles, without difficulty take possession of it (v. 8, cf. Deut 28:49; Jer 4:13; Ezek 17:3). “By all this the Prophet depicted their power, courage and swiftness. For such is among winged creatures the eagle, to which he compared the horsemen, such among beasts are the leopards and Arabian wolves, to whose swiftness he compared the swiftness of horses” (blessed Theodoret, p. 24). The success of the Chaldeans is certain and decisive: “all of them (without exception) come for plunder; the thrust (Hebrew megammat) of their face forward” (kadima)—ever farther they surge in greed for what is alien (v. 9). The first half of v. 9, very obscure both in the Hebrew Masoretic text and in the LXX and in the Vulgate, was more clearly expressed by Symmachus: “all will become plunder of covetousness, the appearance of their faces a scorching wind. Just as the swiftness of horses and horsemen the prophet depicted in similes, so the ferocity of faces he compared to a simile of a scorching wind; for just as this wind burns exposed bodies, so the very sight of the Chaldeans is enough that in those who see them all brightness would fade” (blessed Theodoret, p. 24). “He captures captives like sand” (v. 9, cf. Hab 2:5), that is, in great multitude (cf. Gen 32:12; Hos 1 and others). The hopes of the Judeans will be in vain for alliances with earthly kings, for the support of princes, for the impregnability of fortresses,—nothing will terrify, nothing will stop the conquering movement of the enemy, mocking every attempt to defend against him (v. 10). “Playing rather than exerting any effort, he will destroy both legitimate kingdoms and illegitimate dominions! Drawing around ramparts and employing battering machines in action, he will lay waste to their very foundations every fortified stronghold” (blessed Theodoret, p. 25); “he will be so powerful and proud that he will think to conquer nature itself and take cities by the force of his army, even the most fortified. For he will come to Tyre and, making an embankment in the sea, out of an island will make a peninsula and from land will prepare for himself an entrance into the city among the waves of the sea. Therefore he will mock at every fortification” (blessed Jerome, p. 139). In all this unbreakable power of the universal conqueror, of course, the almightiness of God—Iahweh, the Lord mighty in war (Ps 23:8)—acts. But the victor will not understand this. Just as formerly Assyria (Isa 10:5-15), so this new conqueror will forget to see in himself only the rod or instrument of the wrath of God: “then—following extraordinary success—his spirit will change, he will transgress (the limit of humility, modesty) and will sin; his might will become his god” (v. 11) or, as blessed Jerome explains (p. 140), “when nothing more will hinder his powers, then his spirit will change toward pride, and, thinking that he is God, he will set up for himself a golden image in Babylon, and to worship it will summon all peoples”; thus the greatest impiety of the victor-enemy will consist in the fact that he will not thank God Almighty for his might, who owns the kingdom of men and according to His will gives both kingdom and authority and power (Dan 4:14; see Hab 3:14-15), but will deify his very own might, will make it an object of reverence and worship (cf. Hab 1:16), finally, as if will declare himself to be god (cf. Job 12:6; Ezek 28:2). With this mention of the manifestation of the greatest impiety of the victor-enemy as a consequence of his greatest might, ends the transmission of the first, threatening answer of God to the laments of the prophet.

Habakkuk 1:12–17. But are not You from of old, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We will not die! O Lord, You have appointed him for judgment; O Rock, You have established him for punishment. Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil, and to look upon wrong You cannot; why then do You look upon the treacherous and remain silent when the wicked swallows up one more righteous than he, and leaves men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler? All of them he drags off with a hook, catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet, and therefore he rejoices and is glad. On account of this he sacrifices to his net and burns offerings to his dragnet, because by them his portion becomes rich and his food sumptuous. Is he therefore to keep emptying his net and continually slay nations without pity? Upon receiving a strange answer from God (Hab 1:5-11), in the spirit of the prophet not understanding God’s decrees, although deeply believing, there inevitably arises a new bewilderment: why did God decide to punish the Judeans precisely through the Chaldeans, whose greater criminality compared with the former is already evident from the first divine account? How can one reconcile the destructive work of the hands of the wicked with divine election of Israel, with the holiness, mercy and righteousness of God? In this feeling of bewilderment the prophet once again with the boldness of faith questions God: to what limit will the dominion of impious pagans extend over the God-chosen people (v. 12–17), as before he asked about the predominance of the wicked over the righteous in his own people (Hab 1:2-4). The basis of the prophet’s bold new address to God is provided by the special, gracious relations of God-Iahweh with Israel, which began long ago—at the Sinai Covenant (Exod 19:4-6), as well as the true understanding of God and His properties given in Old Testament revelation and to the highest degree inherent in the prophets. The supreme, infinite perfections of God serve the theocratic community as the surest pledge and guarantee of its salvation by the power and mercy of God. The true God of Israel exists “from of old” Hebrew mikkedem, Greek ap arches, Vulg. a principio—this property of His is known to Israel from the first moment of its existence (cf. Ps 73:12), but it pertains to Him always, as the eternal God (Deut 32:27). He, furthermore, is Iahweh—a being self-subsistent and in all His words and deeds equal to Himself, true and unchangeable (Exod 3:14; 1 Cor 1:9), “higher than all that exists” (blessed Theodoret, p. 25). In the most vivid feeling and consciousness of his belonging to the God-chosen people, to whom a terrible threat of God has been pronounced, the prophet calls Iahweh his God, his Holy One, meaning himself, of course, not in an individual sense—against which the immediately following plural verb “we will not die” would speak—but as a representative of the whole people, on behalf of whom, as a people of the covenant, he cries out to the God of the covenant: “Is it not You, O Lord my God, my Holy One,—and this is said with a feeling of gentleness, humility and repentance,—not You, who created us from the beginning and by whose mercy we are sustained until now” (blessed Jerome, p. 144). But the chief support of the hope of the prophet (and in his person of all the people of God) is the property of divine holiness: “my Holy One,” that is, the Holy One of Israel—an expression occurring especially frequently in the prophet Isaiah (Isa 1:4 and others). Divine holiness means not only the unapproachability, infinite exaltation of God above all earthly things (1 Sam 6:20) and the awe and reverence inspired by Him in men (Ps 98:3), equally and the fact that His name cannot with impunity be subjected to dishonor (Ezek 39:7) and He does not tolerate sin and loves only righteousness (Isa 5:16), but also in general the highest perfection of God (Isa 6:3), more narrowly the boundless goodness, love and mercy of God (1 Sam 2:2; Isa 57:15; Hos 11:9). Divine holiness—deadly terror for the sinner, but for the believer, for the righteous it is—the foundation of hope “in the holy name” of God (Ps 32:21), hope for life from God—therefore the prophet for himself and all believers in his people (cf. Hab 2:4) confidently cries out: “we will not die!” cannot be that we—the people of the Holy and Living God—shall be completely destroyed, and the word of God’s promises has not come to pass for us because of the greed of enemies. “We will not die!” Many ancient and modern interpreters in this “lo namut” saw one of the examples of the so-called “tiqqune sopherim,” corrections of scribes; they supposed that the original reading was: lo tamut—You will not die, and then this expression, seeming offensive, was replaced by the one standing in the text (see A. Geiger. Urschrift u. Uebersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwicklung des Judenthums. Breslau 1857, p. 309). However, this conjecture is supported by nothing; on the contrary, the ancient translations apparently read namut, so in the LXX stands ou me apothanomen. In the second half of v. 12 the prophet develops the same assurance from the positive side: like other divinely-inspired men of his people (cf. for instance Ps 117:18; Jer 46:28), he expresses the conviction that the grievous calamity of Chaldean enslavement will be only temporary, pursuing the goal of correction and instruction of Israel, not its destruction. He connects this hope here with the name of God—Tzur, rock, fortress, a concept that figuratively denotes the same as is directly expressed in the name Iahweh (cf. Deut 32:4; 2 Sam 22:2; Ps 17:32). Beginning with v. 13, the prophet from his look at the chosen people (v. 12) turns to the impious people—the instrument of the wrath of Iahweh, and thereby strengthens himself even more in his bold prayer to Him who judges righteously the peoples and tribes of the earth (Ps 65:5). And first of all, dwelling again on the mentioned earlier (v. 12) property of divine holiness, the prophet asserts (like the psalmist, Ps 5:5-6), that everything morally unclean is unworthy of the sight of the brightest eyes of the Most Holy God, and from this (as above v. 3) concludes that God cannot look with indifference at the extreme oppression (devouring, Hebrew bala in II) of the righteous Judeans by the wicked, who, despite all their guilt before divine justice, are nevertheless more righteous than their enslavers. “This does not mean that the oppressed is completely righteous, but only that he is more righteous than his oppressor” (blessed Jerome); “just as Sodom and Gomorrah seem righteous when compared to Jerusalem (cf. Matt 11:24), and as the publican in the Gospel is justified more in comparison with the Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14), so here the oppressed is indeed sinful; nevertheless he is more righteous than the one who oppresses him” (he, p. 149). This prophetic (and at the same time of all the people) bewilderment unfolds further, to the end of the chapter (v. 14–17). In v. 14–15 the notion of complete helplessness of peoples in general and Israel in particular before the rapacity of the Chaldeans is expressed in the image comparison of the victims of their rapacity with fish, living as if in anarchy, and therefore easily captured (cf. Amos 4:2). If in these two verses the notion is expressed in images, directly stated in part already above in v. 10, then verse 16 represents a similar image expression of the thought about the self-deification of the Chaldeans, stated earlier in v. 11; that the Chaldean-Babylonians actually offered sacrifices to instruments of war (as such is known, for instance, about the Scythians and Sarmatians from accounts of Herodotus, Histor. IV, 59, 62, and Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. 64), nothing is known from history. Blessed Theodoret in explaining v. 16 says “having fallen into the passion of pride, the enemy—the Chaldeans—considers the cause of what they do to be their own power alone, and commands that divine honors be rendered to it. More clearly revealed this to us divine Daniel, saying that the king of Babylon erected a golden image, and forced all multitude of his subjects to worship it” (p. 23). V. 17 represents a summarizing of the preceding questions of the prophet’s bewilderment as a conclusion: “will there be no end to the slaying of peoples?” * * * In the book of the prophet Daniel (Dan 2:2) the name Chaldeans is given to the class of Chaldean wise men—astrologers, since Chaldea was considered the birthplace of astrology: in such meaning the term is also known to the classics. The addition eis hymas, to you, is essentially correct (cf. 2 Sam 12:11; Amos 6:14) and stands in the codices of the LXX: 26, 106, 239 in Holmes.