HABAKKUK (Embrace) was a younger contemporary of Jeremiah, and prophesied in Judah during the first half of the reign of Jehoiakim, when the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar was imminent. He did not accompany the captives, but, like Jeremiah, he lamented the iniquities of his country amongst its ruins. He then foretells the destruction of the Chaldeans, pourtraying their pride and self-confidence; expostulates with God for destroying His own people by such wicked instruments; and on a re-assurance of the final triumph of faith, he pours forth a sublime song of praise for the power and mercy of Jehovah, with a prayer for the redemption of His people, and confidence in His mercy. This book is quoted in Acts xiii. 41; Rom. i. 17; Gal. iii. 11; Heb. x. 37.

The subscription, "to the chief singer on my stringed instruments," shews that it was used as an oratorio, in which the prophet took a part, and was incorporated into the Temple service. Hence Habakkuk must have been a Levite. The whole is a colloquy between him and God. It opens with a plaintive recitative of "the faithful," struggling under the painful spectacle of the good among God's people suffering from the oppression of the evil, interspersed with God's answer of judgment awaiting them from the Chaldees. This is followed by the prophet's appeal for the righteous who will suffer with the wicked, which swells into a vivid picture of the Chaldean scourge sweeping irresistibly before him; and then there is a brief silence of expectation for the reply, which (chap, ii.) reveals the judgment upon Chaldea. Then rises the note of prayer, which introduces the great hymn of faith, recounting the miraculous deliverances of old as earnests of future ones, and closing with the vision of all nature desolate, and God's enemies prostrate, but faith exultant in the God of salvation.

Date. The Rabbis fix the time of this prophecy in the reign of Manasseh, with which its subject seems to accord; but modern German critics prefer that of Josiah, while others have made Habakkuk contemporary with Ezekiel and Daniel in Babylonia, and with Haggai and Zechariah in Judea.