Bible Study - Book of Habakkuk - Habakkuk 1:1-2:1

We began with prayer and a quick review of what was troubling the prophet Habakkuk as he spoke with God in Habakkuk 1:1-4. Jehoiakim was the King of Judah and was an evil man. The people were following him in going against God and His will.

Habakkuk was seeing much evil and violence and cried out to God, but it was as if his prayers for help were not heard or that God did not care about all the strife and contention and wrongdoing Habakkuk saw. This silence of God seemed to contradict what God had said in Isaiah 1:13, for example: “I cannot endure iniquity.”

There were some godly people, but they were surrounded by the wicked and their perversion of justice and the Law of God. (Does this not sound like what we see and hear about evil and violence brought upon people in Ukraine and in so many other places and in our own country, too? We pray, and the law is “paralyzed” - literally, has grown cold and numb - and God seems to be doing nothing and letting it all happen.)

Do note that what Habakkuk said was directed to the LORD, the one true God of Israel. It was, as the commentator Roehrs says, “a cry of faith, a troubled, groping faith, but still faith.” Habakkuk believed in God as a just God, but could not understand why God was not intervening and helping His faithful people. Habakkuk was speaking up on behalf of himself, but also on behalf of other believers in Judah.

God’s answer in Habakkuk 1:5-6 was that He was already at work, but not in the way Habakkuk had expected. Habakkuk was to “look among the nations” around him; and God then named the Chaldeans, the people of the new Babylonian empire that He “was raising up.” They were the ones who would bring judgment upon the evil people of Judah and its king. They were already know as a “bitter and hasty nation,” quickly destroying the Assyrian empire and Nineveh and winning victories over the Egyptians and now threatening the Kingdom of Judah, too. They could go and capture whatever they wished as they “marched through the breadth of the earth,” seizing whatever they wanted. (Historically, they would soon surround Judah and Jerusalem and make them and their king subservient to Babylon and force them to pay high taxes and give away a lot of their wealth to the Babylonians. They would also carry away promising young men of Judah, including Daniel and his friends, and make them serve the Babylonian kings. The Babylonians would not destroy Judah and Jerusalem until 587-586 BC, though.)

All this was coming, because of the sin and rebellion of God’s own people. Habakkuk then described in vivid images the “dreaded and fearsome” ways of the Babylonians and their own evil kind of “justice” that they would bring upon the Jews and other nations (Habakkuk 1:7). (My understanding of Hebrew is not the best, but scholars say that what Habakkuk wrote here was very good, poetic Hebrew that influenced later Hebrew prophets and writers, as God inspired them all.)

What God predicted here was really not something new. Read Deuteronomy 28:45-50, where God had already warned through Moses long before that if His people rebelled and refused to listen to His voice, another nation would be a “sign and wonder” against them and bring God’s judgment upon them. Read Habakkuk’s description in Habakkuk 1:8 of the Babylonian conquerors, using images of leopards, wolves, horsemen and eagles. Read also Jeremiah 4:13 and 5:6-9, and notice the similarities to what Habakkuk had written. These two prophets lived close in time to each other, but Jeremiah probably wrote a little later than Habakkuk. Both were predicting God’s use of the Babylonians to bring judgment on Judah and Jerusalem, though.

Habakkuk also described the Babylonian tactics in “picture” ways, quoting the Lord, just as history describes these ways. See Habakkuk 1:9-11. Habakkuk thought the people of Judah were very “violent” in what they did to each other. The Babylonians were even worse. They “gathered captives like sand” (Habakkuk 1:9), a way of saying how numerous their captives were, whom they deported to Babylon and other places, as they eventually did with many Jews, even as God had described the descendants of Abraham as “sand”  in a similar way in Genesis 22:17-18. (The New Testament says that all believers, including us, are part of that countless group of spiritual descendants of Abraham by faith in Christ, no matter what our background is. See Galatians 3:28-29.)

The Babylonians laughed at their enemies and enemy fortresses. They built up huge earthen ramps to get over the walls of cities without having to knock the walls down. They conquered with great speed. The people of Judah were guilty of many sins, including worship of false gods. The Babylonians were guilty of that much and more. They worshipped themselves and their own power and pride as their primary god, along with other false gods (Habakkuk 1:10-11).

Pause for a moment and note that some of what we just read is quoted in the New Testament and applied to new situations, too. The phrase in Habakkuk 1:6 about the Babylonians “marching through the breadth of the earth” in battling others, including the people of Judah, is quoted in Revelation 20:9 regarding Satan and the forces against Christ “marching up over the broad plain of the earth” and then being utterly defeated by Christ and His power and cast into hell forever. As we will see, God did use the Babylonians to bring judgment and humbling of the people of Judah; but later, the Babylonians themselves would be judged and humbled and utterly defeated because of their own terrible wickedness and unbelief.

Habakkuk 1:5 is also quoted in the New Testament in Acts 13:40-41. The Babylonians being used to humble God’s people was an astounding surprise for Habakkuk, which we will hear more about. In the same way, God’s plan of salvation through the death and resurrection of His own Son was an astounding surprise for many Jewish people. Many thought that the coming Messiah would be a conquering hero who would overthrow the hated Romans. Instead, God the Son came as a true man, as well as God, to be a suffering servant, who would die for the sins of the world and then defeat death and rise in victory, and free people from the condemnation of the law of Moses, which no one could fully keep, except Jesus. (Read the whole context of Acts 13 to see how this was taught. Forgiveness of sins that brings eternal life, not political liberation, was to be the greatest gift of God, also for us.) 

Go back now to Habakkuk 1:12. Habakkuk confessed again that he was talking with the one true God. He called God the LORD and his “Holy One” - a term used often by the prophet Isaiah in the past. (See, for example, Isaiah 31:1-3, where God’s people were turning to Egyptians, who were only men, and their horses, for help, instead of trusting “the Holy One of Israel.”) Habakkuk’s God is the “Everlasting” God. (See Psalm 90:1-2, words of God through Moses.) God was Habakkuk’s “Rock,” and Habakkuk seemed to understand now that God really did plan to bring “judgment” and “reproof” to Judah through the evil Chaldeans, the Babylonians.

That raised more questions for Habakkuk, though, as we hear in Habakkuk 1:13-17. How could the pure and holy God see all the evil and wrongdoing of the Babylonians and “remain silent, when the wicked swallow up” God’s own people, who were surely “more righteous” than the pagan Chaldeans. It made no sense to Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:14).

Habakkuk went on to say that the Babylonians were like those catching fish in the sea or crawling things in a net and “mercilessly killing nations,” including Judah, in the process. The Babylonians only cared about themselves and “living in luxury” and having “rich food” and having their own “joy and gladness.” They were worshiping themselves, “sacrificing” and “making offerings” to themselves, in honor of their own power.

Habakkuk even mentioned “hooks” that both the Assyrians and the Babylonians would actually put into the noses and other parts of captives to keep them under control as they moved them from place to place. (Habakkuk was horrified by such atrocities; but he also seemed to forget or downplay the warnings that he and others had been giving for a long time about the consequences of their own evil and sins. See Amos 4:1-2, for example, where God warned through the prophet Amos that even fellow Jews could eventually be “taken away with hooks” if they kept rejecting God’s will and kept abusing others, including the poor and needy (Habakkuk 1:14-17).)

Habakkuk then said he would stand and watch for God’s answer to him about his complaint to Him. The word for “complaint” is a strong one. It is almost as if Habakkuk felt he needed to “contradict” God’s plan and “correct” God’s thinking (Habakkuk 2:1).

Do we react in the same way to God sometimes? Why does He allow things to happen in our lives that seem so unfair? I think back to the 9/11 events in the US. There were some who dared to say, “Could God be trying to wake us up and tell us something?” The great majority of people, though, seemed to think that God would never use Islamic terrorists  to say something to us. The bigger question for most was “Why would God or anyone else allow this to happen to our good country?”

We will look at God’s response to Habakkuk, and maybe to us, too, next week, as we read on in Habakkuk, Chapter 2. Think about two last things, too. Some point to the fact that Jesus Himself told a parable about a net in Matthew 13:47-50. This time, though, it is the Lord and His angels, on the last day, perfectly sorting out and rescuing the “righteous” believers and putting away the evil into “the fiery furnace.” Does this parable say anything to what we are talking about and the struggles that we and Habakkuk have, at times, in understanding and responding to God’s will

Finally, remember the words of Habakkuk in Habakkuk 1:12. In the midst of his questions and confusion about all that was going on around him, and what God was doing, he could still say, “We shall not die.” He knew that his everlasting Lord would care for him through this life, and even if he faced physical death, to everlasting life. That is our hope, too, in Christ our Savior, even if we do not have all the answers we wish to have. We have God and His promises to sustain us. We will hear more of that, above all, as our study continues. May we continue to hope in the Lord, above all, too.