The use and interpretation of the book of Habakkuk in the contemporary corpus of hymnographic texts of the Russian Orthodox Church

The article for the first time considers the use and interpretation of the entire book of Prophet Habbakuk in the Orthodox Liturgy on the example of the modern corpus of hymnographic books of the Russian Church. It is shown that this prophetic book is widely used in modern liturgical practice (247 hymnographic texts with allusions to the book are identified), and it is determined in which parts of the service and in what types of chants allusions to the book of the prophet are most often found. It has been established which particular words of the prophet were most often addressed by the hymn- writers and how they were interpreted. It is further established that the hymnographers borrowed the understanding of the prophetic words from the previous exegetical tradition, mainly the 1st half of the 1st millennium. Only a hymnographic interpretation of the most frequently used words in hymns, Hab 3:3, about the “mountain covered with thickets” (as an image of the Mother of God) appeared later, in the 7th-8th centuries (for the first time, presumably, in the Discourses of St. Andrew of Crete on the feasts of the Mother of God). The presented material also shows that in hymnography (at least in the modern corpus of hymnographic books), only a part of the available church interpretations of the book of the prophet Habakkuk is used.