IT

is a very foolish fancy of some of the Jewish rabbin that this prophet

was the son of the Shunamite woman that was at first miraculously

given, and afterwards raised to life, by Elisha

(2 Kings iv.),

as they say also that the prophet Jonah was the son of the widow of

Zarephath, which Elijah raised to life. It is a more probable

conjecture of their modern chronologers that he lived and prophesied in

the reign of king Manasseh, when wickedness abounded, and destruction

was hastening on, destruction by the Chaldeans, whom this prophet

mentions as the instruments of God’s judgments; and Manasseh was

himself carried to Babylon, as an earnest of what should come

afterwards. In the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon mention is

made of Habakkuk the prophet in the land of Judah, who was carried

thence by an angel to Babylon, to feed Daniel in the den; those who

give credit to that story take pains to reconcile our prophet’s living

before the captivity, and foretelling it, with that. Huetius thinks

that that was another of the same name, a prophet, this of the tribe of

Simeon, that of Levi; others that he lived so long as to the end of

that captivity, though he prophesied of it before it came. And some

have imagined that Habakkuk’s feeding Daniel in the den is to be

understood mystically, that Daniel then lived by faith, as

Habakkuk had said the just should do; he was fed by that

word,

Hab. ii. 4.

The prophecy of this book is a mixture of the prophet’s addresses to

God in the people’s name and to the people in God’s name; for it is the

office of the prophet to carry messages both ways. We have in it a

lively representation of the intercourse and communion between a

gracious God and a gracious soul. The whole refers particularly to the

invasion of the land of Judah by the Chaldeans, which brought spoil

upon the people of God, a just punishment of the spoil they had been

guilty of among themselves; but it is of general use, especially to

help us through that great temptation with which good men have in all

ages been exercised, arising from the power and prosperity of the

wicked and the sufferings of the righteous by it.