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This study reexamines the Book of Habakkuk through the lens of theodicy, exploring it not as a philosophical attempt to rationalize evil but as a theological dynamic of protest, waiting, and trust amidst divine silence. Rather than offering a logical resolution to the problem of evil, this paper argues that the book presents a ‘practical theodicy’—a response shaped by the existential struggle of the faith community. Through a literary-theological analysis of the book’s structure and genre, the study demonstrates how the text constructs a profound movement from dialogic lament to doxological resolution. Chapters 1 and 2 frame theodicy as a fierce dialogue, where the prophet’s complaint and God’s response reveal the tension between divine justice and historical violence. Here, Habakkuk 2:4 (“the righteous shall live by his faith”) serves as the theological pivot, transforming the demand for an immediate answer into a call for ethical fidelity. Crucially, the study posits that this journey culminates in Chapter 3, not with a logical explanation, but with a liturgical participation. The shift from complaint to hymn signifies that the ultimate response to theodicy is found in the “Theodicy Deferred”—a solution postponed to the eschatological future but anticipated in the present through worship. By remembering God’s past acts as the Divine Warrior, the community learns to endure the absurdity of the present. In conclusion, Habakkuk redefines theodicy not as an intellectual doctrine but as a faith-shaped mode of enduring. The book invites readers into a liturgical journey where the silence of God is overcome not by arguments, but by the ‘song of the heights’ (3:19), witnessing to God’s sovereignty through lived endurance and praise.

This study is an integration of biblical theology and modern aesthetics, examining the aesthetic tension and theological implications between Job’s language of resistance and God’s silence. Pointing out that attempts to unilaterally explain and dogmatize suffering can become an oppressive measure against the sufferer, this paper reads the Book of Job from a macroscopic, aesthetic perspective by utilizing philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s concepts of ‘the negativity of roughness’ and the ‘aesthetic of hiddenness.’ This study first identifies the retributive logic defended by Job’s friends as a ‘smooth lie’ and a form of consumer religion that eliminates the negativity of suffering. In contrast, it argues that Job’s unfamiliar language of resistance possesses an ‘aesthetic of roughness’ that shatters the falsehoods of conventional theology and reveals the truth. Amid this conflict, God’s silence acts not as the absence of the divine, but as an active rhetoric and a negativity of hiddenness that draws out Job’s chaos to the end. Furthermore, God’s theophany in the storm overwhelms Job with the sublimity and wonder of the untamable created order rather than explaining the reasons for his suffering. Job’s subsequent repentance (42:6) is not a submission to doctrine, but a voluntary and active "aesthetic correction" of one thoroughly overwhelmed by the eeriness and beauty of the universe. Ultimately, this discussion rebels against a fictitious faith that seeks only positivity without pain. God’s anger toward the friends who enforced smooth positivity and His final approval of Job, who confronted the rough truth, corroborate this. This paper argues that only when confronting abrasive disharmony and God's hiddenness can one ultimately reach the beauty of salvation and the essence of wisdom theology concealed within suffering.

The Lex Talionis in Leviticus 24 from Legal-Historical and Literary Perspectives This paper examines the lex talionis in Leviticus 24 from two complementary perspectives: legal-historical and literary-structural. While the lex talionis has long been recognized as a legal principle shared between the ancient Near East and the Pentateuch, the distinctive literary characteristics of its formulation in Leviticus 24 have rarely been subjected to systematic legal-historical analysis. This study aims to fill this lacuna by situating Leviticus 24 within the broader trajectory of ancient Near Eastern legal traditions and demonstrating how its redactor transformed inherited legal forms into a vehicle for a distinctive theological expression. The paper proceeds in three stages. First, it conducts a diachronic analysis of the lex talionis across six ancient Near Eastern law collections, establishing that the lex talionis was not a universal principle but a selectively adopted one, consistently subordinated to social hierarchy and expressed through quantitative monetary compensation. Second, it compares the three Pentateuchal texts containing the lex talionis — Exodus 21, Deuteronomy 19, and Leviticus 24 — identifying the unique transformative trajectory of each. Third, it analyzes the formal and substantive peculiarities of Leviticus 24 in depth. The analysis reveals that Leviticus 24 exhibits two layers of differentiation. Formally, it integrates narrative and legal prescription within a single unit — a feature unattested in ancient Near Eastern law collections — and organizes its legal content through a sophisticated chiastic structure. Substantively, this chiasm serves as a legal reasoning system that ranks crimes hierarchically according to their theological gravity rather than their economic value, incorporates blasphemy within the domain of the lex talionis, and extends equal legal standing to resident aliens. The paper concludes that in Leviticus 24, the redactor appropriated the legal language of the ancient Near East while fundamentally reconstituting its conceptual foundations, establishing Leviticus 24 as the most theologically sophisticated expression of the lex talionis in the Pentateuch.