Habakkuk Commentary

The Habakkuk Commentary or Pesher Habakkuk, labelled 1QpHab (Cave 1, Qumran, pesher, Habakkuk) was among the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 and published in 1951. Due to its early discovery and rapid publication, as well as its relatively pristine preservation, 1QpHab is one of the most frequently researched and analyzed scrolls of the several hundred now known.

The scroll is roughly 141 centimetres (56 in) from end to end, with thirteen columns of Herodian script written on two pieces of leather, sewn together with linen thread. Most of the columns are missing their lowest lines, the first column is nearly completely lost, and there is a hole through the center of the second column. The third chapter of Habakkuk is missing entirely from the pesher, but it was left out intentionally, not destroyed by aging (most of the last column of the scroll is blank, clearly showing that the text of the pesher was complete). Regardless, the scroll is still largely readable, and editors have filled the lacunae with reasonable confidence.

The scroll is a pesher (a type of commentary in Hebrew) written sometime in the later half of the 1st century BC. The author's situation was not unlike that of the prophet Habakkuk half a millennium before: Israel is threatened by gentile forces. For Habakkuk, the gentiles were the Babylonians, but in the pesher, the foreign power are the kittim, which translates to “westerners.” Kittim serves as code for “Romans” in the commentary. The pesher, then, is an eschatological template, with the author arguing for Habakkuk as a prophecy to be fulfilled in his time.

The pesher also relates several contemporary individuals to the prophecy, though they also are only referred to with titles instead of names. The hero or leader that the community should follow is called the Teacher of Righteousness, a figure found in some other Dead Sea scrolls. The pesher argues that the Teacher has directly communed with God and received the true meaning of the scriptures. The Teacher has not yet been successfully identified with any historical figure, though Robert Eisenman justifies this identification as James the Just in his 1997 book with that title.

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