Habakkuk 1:1-2:1

Tomorrow I read NRSV Habakkuk 1. NRSV manages to get punishment into the text in verse 12. About half the modern translations use punish for the root ick (no that's not the origin of the English word, icky). The root is pronounced roughly as ykhach - i.e. the i (yod) is a consonant, the c (kaf) is a hard c with some air, and the k (chet) is ch as in loch.

Why is it that we have such punishment on the brain? ick signifies correction, reproof, and so on. It is a key word for understanding the book of Job. Such things are not punishment but they are evidence of presence. What if translators cooperated with God rather than imputing to God things that are not in God's character?

I do not like the NRSV. I am happy that scholars try, and I use whatever results of scholarship that seem useful that come across my desk. I am not anti-scholarship. Is my prejudice that God does not punish worse than the prejudice that God is one who punishes? Did you believe them when they said, "This will hurt me more than it does you"? 

That was a false statement by the wielders of corporal punishment. They were fighting the last war. Perhaps I am a losing battle.

The committees I suspect have a bias towards doctrines like penal substitution. I am Christian but I don't accept this idea of punishment since reading the Old Testament. There is no Hebrew root that has punishment as its dominant sense. We can certainly read that into several words but their other senses give the lie to our readings. I've gone on about this before.

Anyway - here is Habakkuk 1:1-2:1 - ick (reprove, correct) occurs in Hab 2:1 also and the NRSV renders it as complaint. What! Where did the committee get that gloss from? Must have been a dusty shelf they pulled it off at random. None of the glossaries derived from the last 400 years of English translation give complaint as a gloss for ick.

There is no simple rule to follow when glossing a word in Hebrew. Several of them have multiple senses, often related, but distinguishing different things. In Hab 1:12 and Hab 2:1 there are two words that are shared, ick and xvr. The second is rock, or fortification. You can see all my choices for glosses at the links.

So what will I read tomorrow? Last time I read I read my own translation of Ecclesiastes 11-12 (aka Qohelet). This time is it too different?

There is another change in verse 12 - 'we will not die' (Hebrew) is rendered as 'you will not die'. Apparently this is one of the scribal corrections to the text. (According to Wiki at least.) Some scholars put it down to a squeamish pious scribe who can't see that the prophet would appeal to the deathlessness of God. I doubt it. As far as I can see, and that's not far, this reading goes back to the Aleppo codex. The Greek is first person plural. So if it reflects the text prior to the common era, the change must have been very early indeed. I can't see a notification of this reading as a correction from the Habakkuk in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

Anyone out there got any advice? (Other than just do as you're told, MacDonald.)

This is my translation. 

1 The load which Habakkuk the prophet gazed on.

2 How long please, Yahweh, will I cry and you will not hear?
Will I appeal to you of violence and you will not save?

3 ♪B Why do you show me mischief and misery you make me notice, and devastation and violence before me?
And there is contention and sentence borne.

4 Therefore numbed is instruction and lasting judgment fails to emerge,
for wickedness encircles the righteous one, therefore crooked judgment emerges.

5 See among the nations and take note and marvel with astonishment,
for he worked a work in your days you would not have believed though it were recounted.

6 For note me well, I raise up the Chaldeans, the bitter and swift nation,
to rush into the broad land to possess dwellings that are not theirs.

7 Horrible and feared it is.
From this its judgment and its forbearance will emerge.

8 And fleeter than leopards are its horses, and keener than wolves of evening, its cavaliers frisk about.
And its cavaliers come from afar. They fly like an eagle hurrying to eat.

9 All for violence it comes, their faces pumped up as the east wind,
and it gathers captives as in a dance.

10 And it, among sovereigns, ridicules them, and the rule-makers laugh at it.
Itself, at all enclosure it laughs and it accumulates dust and catches it.

11 ♪B Then it is renewed in spirit when it has passed through and been declared guilty.
This is its power for its god.

12 Are not you from the east, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We will not die.
Yahweh, for judgment, you have set it up, and for a rock of correction you have founded it.

13 Too clean of eyes than to see evil and you cannot notice misery?
Why do you notice the treacherous? You are silent when wickedness swallows one more righteous than itself.

14 And you make humanity as the fish of the sea,
as a creeper that has no governor over it.

15 All of it with a fishhook brought up, it gullets them in utter destruction, and it gathers them into its own cravings,
therefore it will be glad and it will rejoice.

16 Therefore it will offer its utter destruction and burn incense to its own cravings,
for in them is the oil of its share and its plenteous food.

17 ♪f Will it therefore empty its utter destruction,
and continually slay nations without pity?

1 On my watch I will stand and I will station myself on the fortification.
And I will be on lookout to see what he will speak in me and what I will bring back concerning my correction.

This translation is part of the English guide to the SimHebrew Bible. The whole Bible in Simulated Hebrew with English, verse by verse is available through this link. Look around, there are good deals available.