this prophecy’s three divisions obviously came from different times, though was all later fastened together coherently in a sense. That is, in chapter 2 the self-righteous and indignant Habakkuk waits at a tower for God to answer, and when God does so, he informs the prophet that justice will come after all, and that as far as Habakkuk is concerned, he should simply be righteous through his faithfulness by following the Torah. The final chapter consists of a prayer/hymn, which extols with hyperbolic description a dramatic image of God leading his people centuries earlier from Sinai into Edom, having to confront and defeat all the evil people. In the hymn, even the elements of earth are shaken and distorted by this Mighty One as the prophet sings and praises the Lord for his anticipated victory over the foe. Even more telling is the final addition, chapter 3, in which the prophet changes his attitude, now promising that he will quietly wait for this victory, even if everything God promised seems to collapse:
Though the fig tree do not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Hab. 3:17–18)
What an about-face! In other words, I will no longer accuse you (God) of being unfaithful to me, even if all your promises are negated by obliterating crop failures and deprivation. So we have to ask why the change? Habakkuk became embarrassed? Did it all come back to him that he expected too much from his special status, that he perhaps did not deserve all the benefits he thought he did? Or is the entire hymn of chapter 3 simply a change in the prophet’s tactics in trying to bribe God into responding? Or, when God told him that he was the one who needed to be “faithful” rather than accuse God of unfaithfulness, was this an awakening in the prophet, an awakening to the fact that he was a bit self-righteous, and perhaps the gross differences between his pride in himself and his terrible caricatures of the enemy were not factual?
Perhaps we cannot know what the answer is. But the problem is pretty obvious. Religion often creates a pride of being special, of a form of pietistic separatism, of being unrealistic if not a bit nationalistic and dishonest in evaluating humans, in one’s line-drawing that separates the people who are supposed to get the benefits and those who are not, or a line between degrees of righteousness or worthiness, which is really only relative with no clear evidence to support a distinction between the people that it contrasts. This may reveal a disappointment in God, or a person’s misunderstanding of the covenant with God, or a terrible self-righteousness—or perhaps all three. Maybe it also shows the folly of any such divisions of the “sheep” and “goats.”
The modern, less-exaggerated parallel would be in some religious person who becomes convinced that certain benefits she thought would be forthcoming from the religion and its connection with the Absolute have not been experienced. Whatever they may be, if they were propagated as valid promises or expectations she could rely on, none of which have been fulfilled, she may begin to doubt the validity of the privilege or benefits she has been told would be due her for belonging to the religion. So if the promise was of more life in every way, or even life beyond death, and it was conditioned upon the person manifesting the right character, faith, and obedient behavior or “works,” or whatever, when the extravagant promises seem to delay being fulfilled, or are simply not, the believer or devotee may question what is going on. The story is told that in a polytheistic culture, the devotee may upbraid her chosen deity and threaten to change gods if he doesn’t give her the boon she requests. Whether that is factual or not, in a monotheistic system, that will not work. So the believer might ask, “Did God really make the promise, and then violate it or ignore it?” Or, “Did God promise something that is impossible to fulfill or beyond God’s capacity or power to do?” Or, in other cases, she might ask, “Did the authorities who conveyed God’s will, demands, and promises actually exaggerate or create imaginary things simply to convert me?” That is enough to shake a person. Enough to make one examine precisely what his or her expectations were, or why he or she was so attracted to the offer, or why it would be just or right for anything to divide the world in such a way.
The whole package of promises or expectations attached to obeying or worshipping a certain god seems to evolve through history. By the first century, whether it was Jesus or “Matthew” or some unknown person, wrote in what some call the “Sermon on the Mount” that Jesus said “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:44–45). That stands in stark contradiction to the threats and promises given by Moses in Deuteronomy 28, in which one’s getting any sun or rain or any crops was completely dependent upon one’s meticulous obedience of all of God’s laws, and, conversely, if one failed to obey them, one could expect no sun, rain, or crops, but only drought, blight, dust, mildew, blasting heat, crop failure, starvation, no more calves, lambs, no more children, but rather scurvy, horror, confusion, madness, and the like. It is quite a contrast.
Significantly, the sun and rain at least were made available by the words in Matthew 5. Does that mean that the human race does not simply divide between the good and the evil? Certainly, some of the gospels depict that same Jesus accusing people of being too self-righteous, of distinguishing themselves from others as the most “faithful” and therefore most deserving. He is reported as having scolded people for claiming some ancient religious hero as their predecessor, as if worthiness or righteousness is passed on by one’s blood. He seems to have empathized with those classified as the “sinners,” and perhaps even associated with them more than with the special ones, the most religiously rigorous, and he warned against the kind of religious attitude that was simply for show, to gain status or praise. So perhaps the questions become more intense in rigorously religious cultures, the questions about whether the dividing line is just, realistic, or an insult from the self-righteous rather than from God?
Within groups which have become accustomed to thinking that God or the Absolute would provide special benefits to match their dedication, when the expected rewards failed to materialize and they began to despair of their plight (whether a lack of power, recognition, or wealth) or insisted on being vindicated, they often turned to a possible fulfillment in the future, to “apocalyptic” or “eschatology.”2 It became the vehicle of hope of vindication (if not vengeance at times) when one’s present had deteriorated and one could count on no government or military to rectify things. The book of Daniel is the most familiar Jewish and Christian example of this mentality, although a future reward was also well known in Eastern cultures too.
In a later Jewish apocalyptic work, Fourth Ezra, the more the author received a vision of the details of a promised impending divine judgment, described as “perishing” but also as an eternal “torment” in “Hell” in which the “unrighteous” will be forced to own up to their evil lives—the more he finally realized that he and others among God’s chosen were also imperfect, and always had been. He begins to try to intercede for those outsiders. He pleads with God:
Let it not be your will to destroy those who have had the ways of cattle; but regard those who have gloriously taught your Law. Be not angry with those who are deemed worse than beasts; but love those who have always put their trust in your glory. For we and our fathers have passed our lives in ways that bring death, but you, because of us sinners, are called merciful. For if you have desired to have pity on us, who have no works or righteousness, then you will be called merciful. For the righteous, who have many works laid up with you, shall receive their reward in consequence of their own deeds. But what is a man, that you are angry with him; or what is a mortal race, that you are so bitter against it? For in
