Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Behold, ye despisers - There is a remarkable difference here between the Hebrew text in Habakkuk, and that in the Septuagint, which is a little abridged here by St. Paul. I shall exhibit the three texts. Heb: -
\ri720 Reu bagoyim vehabitu vehitammehu ; temehu ; ki poal poel bimeycem , lo teaminu hi yesupar .
\ri720 \cf1 Behold, ye among the heathen, (nations), and regard, and be astonished; be astonished, for I am working a work in your days, which; when it shall be told, ye will not credit.
See Houbigant.
Sept.
\ri720 ̔ , , , · ̔ ̔, ̔ Ϛ, ̔ .
\ri720 \cf1 See, ye despisers, and look attentively, and be astonished, (or hide yourselves), for I work a work in your days, which, if any one will tell to you, ye will not believe.
St. Luke.
\ri720 ̔ , [ ] , , [ ] , · ̔ ̔ ̔, ̔ͅ Ϛ, ̔ .
\ri720 \cf1 Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and be astonished, (or hide yourselves), for I work a work in your days, which, if any one will tell unto you, ye will not believe.
I have taken Luke' s quotation from the best MSS., and I have quoted the Septuagint according to the Codex Alexandrinus; and the quotations are exactly the same, not only in words, but almost in letters, with the exception of and which the evangelist omits, and which I have included in crotchets in the text of St. Luke, merely that the place of the omission may be the better seen. It may now be necessary to inquire how St. Luke and the Septuagint should substitute ye despisers, for ye among the heathen, in the Hebrew text?
Without troubling myself or my readers with laborious criticisms on these words, with which many learned men have loaded the text, I will simply state my opinion, that the prophet, instead of bagoyim , among the heathen, wrote bogadim , despisers, or transgressors: a word which differs only in a single letter, daleth , for vau ; the latter of which might easily be mistaken by a transcriber for the other, especially if the horizontal stroke of the daleth happened to be a little faint towards the left; as, in that case, it would wear the appearance of a vau ; and this is not unfrequently the case, not only in MSS., but even in printed books. It seems as evident as it can well be that this gives the word which the Septuagint found in the copy from which they translated: their evidence, and that of the apostle, joined to the consideration that the interchange of the two letters mentioned above might have been easily made, is quite sufficient to legitimate the reading for which I contend. Houbigant and several others are of the same mind.
The word , which we translate perish, signifies more properly disappear, or hide yourselves; as people, astonished and alarmed at some coming evil, betake themselves to flight, and hide themselves in order to avoid it.
Other Adam Clarke entries containing Acts 13:41:
Habakkuk 1:5
Matthew 2:23
Acts 13:52
2 Timothy 3:11
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