Sad to say I am still working on this (man how life can get in the way of school), and wondering if you had any luck with identifying reasons or just insights. I’d love to be able to take a look at some of your thoughts from the paper you were working on, or at least which authors you found most insightful.

Certainly those other factors may shed light on this but ultimately we have painfully little evidence on which to build those theories. One might be able to tentatively date the poem, but to start building theories on that becomes tenuous, in my opinion. Of course, perhaps you have a new proposal for dating Hab 3 that I haven’t considered.

The other potential problem is that, even if large portions of the poem are borrowed from elsewhere (and I find that a feasible possibility), it still had to be understandable to whoever composed Habakkuk 3. In other words, the differing verbal forms needed to mean something–unless one argues that the verbal forms in classical Hebrew are undistinctive–to the original audience.

I’m in the midst of moving, but I hope to return to some posts on Habakkuk 3 in the near future. The grammar of the poem is very interesting, even apart from verbal forms. It is complex, but fits together in interesting ways.

Dr. Cook, I’m interested in what qatals you would consider “converted” in Hab 3. I’m not saying that couldn’t be the case, I’m just not sure I’ve noticed any instances in Hab 3 where I could say that one of the qatals would *have* to be considered “converted.”