Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 113-116
Vetus
Testamentum
brill.com/vt
Janus Parallelism in Hab. Iii 4*
David Toshio Tsumura
Hamura, Tokyo
Hab. iii 4 is one of the long-standing cruces interpretum of the Hebrew Bible.
wənōgah kāʾôr tihyeh
qarnayim miyyādô lô
wəšām ḥebyôn ʿuzzōh
In fact, T. Hiebert in his detailed study of Hab. iii leaves the second line untranslated
as “Horns . . .” while drastically emending the first and the third lines.
He furthermore restructures the MT’s tricolon and understands the first line
(or colon) of v. 4 as the conclusion of the preceding tricolon.1 On the other
hand, J. J. M. Roberts keeps the MT “without radical emendation”.2 When so
many hypothetical readings of the “original” text are proposed and yet no
conclusive solution has been reached, it is certainly wise to keep the available
data, in our case the MT, as it stands,3 and to have a closer look at the text itself
by considering the basic structure of language, especially, in the case of poetry,
by noting the vertical grammar4 of parallelism.
* ) Hab. iii 4 is a “Janus parallelism”, where qarnayim in 4b corresponds to nōgah (“brightness”) in
4a with the meaning “rays” and to ʿuzzōh (“his power”) in 4c with the meaning “horns”.
1) T. Hiebert, God of My Victory: the Ancient Hymn in Habakkuk 3 (HSM 38; Atlanta, 1986), pp. 4
and 17-19.
2) J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, 1991), p. 152.
3) For example, the MT ʿuppelah of Hab. ii 4a has been emended in nearly twenty different ways.
But, one might come closer to a real solution by taking the MT text as it stands in the light of new
understandings of Hebrew parallelism; see D. T. Tsumura, “An Exegetical Consideration on Hab.
2:4a”, Tojo 15 (1985), pp. 1-26 [in Japanese; see English abstract in OTA 9 (1986), p. 201].
4) D. T. Tsumura, “Vertical Grammar: The Grammar of Parallelism Hebrew”, in Hamlet on a Hill.
Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday.
Ed. by M. F. J. Baasten and W. Th. van Peursen (OLA 118; Leuven, 2003), pp. 487-497.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 DOI: 10.1163/15685330-12340010