Habakkuk 1: Questions & a difficult answer

[Preliminary Comments: This opening chapter has three simple divisions: Habakkuk’s questions, the Lord’s answer, and then more questions of Habakkuk.]

v.1-4 Habakkuk poses three questions to the Lord

v.1 The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received. 

v.2 How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? 

v.3 Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.

v.4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. 

[Note: Habakkuk looks at the state of his nation and asks the Lord how can He put up with it and do nothing about it.]

v.5-11 The Lord Answers – see what I’m doing

v.5 “Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. 

v.6 I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own. 

v.7 They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor. 

v.8 Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping to devour; 

v.9 they all come intent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand. 

v.10 They mock kings and scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities; by building earthen ramps they capture them. 

v.11 Then they sweep past like the wind and go on— guilty people, whose own strength is their god.” 

[Note: The Lord’s answer is that He is about to do something about it, He’s going to bring the Babylonians to discipline Israel.]

v.12-17 The troubling thoughts Habakkuk has over this answer

v.12 LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, you will never die. You, LORD, have appointed them to execute judgment; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish. 

v.13 Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? 

v.14 You have made people like the fish in the sea, like the sea creatures that have no ruler. 

v.15 The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net, he gathers them up in his dragnet; and so he rejoices and is glad. 

v.16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food. 

v.17 Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy?

[Note: That answer troubles Habakkuk because he is aware that the Lord is a holy God but from what he knows of the Babylonians they are more wicked than Israel, they are violent and plunder other nations, and take people like fishermen take fish from the sea, with little regard, and they seem to keep on doing it. How can God put up with such a people, let alone use them?]

[Additional Comments: The prophet confronts a problem that troubles many. How can God put up with evil and if He comes to deal with it, how can He use other evil people to do it? But the fact is that God does use evil people in the fallen world to achieve His purposes – see Acts 2:23]

For those who may wish to make a study of this chapter, to perhaps think some more about what you have been reading, use the link below: