“Do you know about Habakkuk in the book of Daniel?” I asked Uncle Albert.
“Only that he is taken up by his hair and dragged through the air from one place to another,” he said. “It must have had something to do with Daniel. I should remember,” Uncle Albert said, “but I don’t this morning.
“But you’re going to tell me, so I don’t need to this morning, do I?”
“No,” I admitted.
I told him I was playing like it happened at the end of the prophet’s book. He had gone through all he had gone through, asking God, Wasn’t it his job to rid Jerusalem of injustice? and God agreeing then adding, “Watch how!” and bringing the maleficent Babylonians in to do it, which in Habakkuk’s mind and from his experience on the ground, so to speak, was only to fight fire with fire — it wasn’t putting the injustice fire out, only making it worse, much worse, a house-fire into a block-fire, the whole city on fire. So back to God, saying “See? I don’t see justice, only more injustice — more greed, more violence, more drunkenness, sin blowing up all around. So? Is God countenancing sin?” And God agreeing again: No, he shouldn’t be. ‘Watch, they will get theirs, too.’ Tit-for-tat.”
“Lex talionis,” Uncle Albert said.
I took a second to remember what that meant.
“Yes,” I said. “And all that happens, or it doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t matter if it happens, because the prophet has decided that whatever has happened, whatever does happen or doesn’t — if the fig tree doesn’t blossom, there is no fruit on the fruit trees or olives on the olive trees, if there is no grain in the fields, no sheep in the fold, no cattle in the stalls — still he will rejoice in the God of his salvation.
“Whether he saves him or not.”
Uncle Albert had his left hand open and his right hand moved back and forth across it as if he were taking notes though clearly he was not.
“It’s then,” I said, “when the prophet is going to be faithful that God decides to test him but not with the orchards and grain fields and cattle of Judea dying but with this prank.
“Habakkuk has made a mess of soup and broken bread into the mess, and he is taking it to men working in the field, reaping so the crops are coming in, and an angel shows up: ‘Instead take it to Babylon, to Daniel,’ the angel says. ‘He is in the lions’ den.’ Habakkuk replies quite sanely, ‘But I have never been there. I have never seen Babylon. How would I find my way?’ Then ‘the angel of the Lord took him by the crown of his head and lifted him by his hair and set him down in Babylon, right over the den, with the rushing sound of the wind itself.’” I had picked up my Bible, and I read the verse to Uncle Albert, still scratching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right. He looked up for a moment, looked back down again.
“And the next thing Habakkuk knows he sees Daniel, and he finds himself shouting out, ‘Here. Here!’ and giving him the soup he had been taking to the men in the Judean field. And Daniel is thanking God and eating. And before he knows it, before he can see Daniel take a third bite, the prophet is back home. He ends up where he began, and everything is exactly the same and everything is completely different, as it always is from one moment to the next. But he is still going to be faithful and rejoice whatever happens, as he has promised. If he can, of course, because there is no telling for sure because everything is always changing.”
03.13.23
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