Are you not from everlasting,
Habakkuk 1:12
O LORD my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die.
O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment,
and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.
The Lord has just revealed to Habakkuk his shocking plans: he is sending the Babylonians to punish the people of Israel. How does Habakkuk respond to this news? He begins by reminding God who he is.
From the East
The prophet first rhetorically asks, “Are you not from everlasting?” The word everlasting is kedem (קֶדֶם). There’s a related word in verse nine: “forward” (kadim, קָדִים). The common root verb means to meet or confront. For instance, God’s steadfast love “will meet” the Psalmist (Psalm 59:10). Or, in dire straights, “the snares of death confronted me” (Psalm 18:5). Which way do you face when meeting someone? You face forward.
However, there’s more to this word. Kedem and kadim can both be translated “east” (e.g. Genesis 2:8) or an “east wind” (e.g. Exodus 10:13). They are directional words. The typical mindset of someone in the Ancient Near East is that the default direction is eastward. While our maps put north at the top, they rotate east to the top.
We have similar directional words in English: orient and orientation. Then there’s a place: the Orient (East). Which way do you orient? Towards (or in regards to) the Orient, of course!
Which Way to the Past?
We have seen how these words describe direction, but what does this have to do with God being everlasting? Shouldn’t the verse instead be translated as “Are you not from the East?” While that could be literally valid, there’s another nuance that needs to be understood.
The East is also an idiom for the past. To those in the Ancient Near East, you face the past and slowly back into the future (the West). Those cultures value tradition. They respect their elders. They resist change. Why east? That’s where the sun rises, beginning a new day. It sets in the west (the future, literally “sea” because the Mediterranean Sea is on the west; e.g. Genesis 12:8).
This idea is found throughout the Hebrew Bible. For instance, “the days of old (kedem)” (Micah 7:20, Psalm 44:1, Lamentations 1:7, 5:21). God promises that after the exile, the people will be “as they were of old (kedem)” (Jeremiah 30:20).
Side note: other words translated “east” and “west” are more literally “sunrise” and “sunset” (like Psalm 103:12). There’s also another word which is translated “ancient” or “everlasting”: olam. While similar to kedem, it carries the idea of a long duration (past or future). He will encounter this word in Habakkuk 3:6.
To Ponder…
Which way do you metaphorically face? Do you look to the past, the present, or the future? How do we face the past and learn from it while not forfeiting the future?
What does it mean for God to be “of old”? What does that tell us about his character?
Yet God my King is from of old (kedem),
Psalm 74:12
working salvation in the midst of the earth.