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Document Details :

Title: How the Sheep of Judah Became Fish
Subtitle: Habakkuk 1,14 and the Davidic Monarchy
Author(s): WHITEKETTLE, Richard
Journal: Biblica
Volume: 96    Issue: 2   Date: 2015   
Pages: 273-281
DOI: 10.2143/BIB.96.2.3183421

Abstract :
In Hab 1,14, Habakkuk complained that God had made the human targets of Babylonian aggression to be like leaderless aquatic animals. Aquatic animals are leaderless, not because they have a leader who is absent or inept, but because they simply have no leaders. Habakkuk was complaining then that God had made the targets of Babylonian aggression to have no governance system of their own. He was complaining, therefore, about the cataclysm of 586 BCE, when the native political system in Judah - the Davidic monarchy and its administrative apparatus - ceased to exist and the people of Judah were absorbed into the Babylonian Empire.


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