Habakkuk offered his prophecy between 609-605, and one part may come from 600. He was a younger contemporary of Jeremiah. Habakkuk is different from the other biblical prophets in that he does not preach to the people. Instead, what we have is a transcript of a conversation between the prophet and God. In some ways, Habakkuk is our contemporary because he asks God the same kind of questions many of us ask: Why do you allow evil and injustice to go unpunished? Why do you allow someone who is evil to inflict suffering on someone who is not as evil? He will stress that Judah will not be able to withstand the assault of the Chaldeans. This happens because violence rules in Judah. Leaders have destroyed the just order of society. His social criticism is as sharp as Amos or Micah. The prophet attacks the one greedy for gain.[1] The oracle refers to a Judean tyrant and a foreign oppressor. There is another title at 3:1. He may have been one of the Levites who conducted temple worship in Jerusalem, suggested due to the many worship references in the book.[2] Habakkuk has the primary concern for the purposes of God and the realization of the will of God for the world. He was not a cult prophet. The prophet receives mention in the apocryphal addition to Daniel that discusses the god Bel and a dragon who is also a god. This prophet sees the coming judgment upon Judah at the hands of Babylon. However, he questions whether this is just. Though he can see the sin of Judah, it appears to him that the sins of Babylon are much greater. Thus, how can God justify using a wicked nation to punish a less wicked nation? He is raising the perennial question of whether his nation deserves this dark moment in its history. Although just a quip, Jack Benny once received an award. "I really don't deserve this. But I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either."
There are two complaints by the prophet, and there are two replies by the Lord. The answers are not satisfying. If he thinks the situation is bad now, it will get worse. However, the person who is just will survive. He offers a woe upon oppressors, especially those who amass goods that do not belong to them, ill-gotten gains, murder, drink, and idolatry. He offers a plea to the Lord to deliver Judah from the approaching menace from the East.[3]
In Habakkuk 1:1 we have the title of the book. The oracle (masa', suggesting a burden, a weighty thing, Zechariah 9 & 12, Malachi)[4] that the prophet Habakkuk saw (hazah). Some may find it odd that the book of Habakkuk as the "oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw." English speakers tend to think that oracles are things you hear, not things you see. The Hebrew word "to see" here, however, is not the common word to describe the visual sense (ra'ah). It is the word which means "to have a vision" in the prophetic sense.[5]
In Habakkuk 1:2-2:4 we find a dialogue between a prophet and his God. This section is a liturgical dialogue between the prophet and the Yahweh. Twice the prophet lays a complaint before Yahweh. It is difficult to tell if the complaint is against enemies within or without. The answer is surprising in that more judgment is coming. Things are getting worse. How can Yahweh do this? The answer is that those who are faithful will live. Note that this prophet takes the initiative, whereas Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and others, the Lord called first.[6]
In Habakkuk 1:2-4 the prophet offers his first complaint. The prophet is at prayer even while complaining of unanswered prayer. The concern is for justice (mishpat), the order ordained by God for the covenant people.[7] 2 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Despite unanswered prayer, the prophet continues to pray. God is present, even when the evidence is not there.[8] The prophet speaks on behalf of the whole community. Or cry to you “Violence!” in the sense of an enemy attacking, and you will not save? This brief book will have six references to violence (1:3, 9; 2:8, 17 twice). He refers to what he sees happening in Judah. His concern is the internal conflict he sees. His central complaint is that, as a prophet, the Lord makes him see the wrong and trouble, instead of receiving words and visions that speak of divine action. The violence of which the prophet cries occur in parallel with a series of synonyms in verse 3: “wrongdoing,” “trouble,” “[d]estruction,” “strife” and “contention.” The unrest is internal conflict, which would comport well with what little we know of the historical circumstances in which the prophet worked. In the last quarter of the seventh century and first decade of the sixth century B.C., the Chaldean Empire was reaching its zenith, marked by its defeat of an Egyptian force at Carchemish in 605 B.C. That defeat left the Chaldeans, under their most famous king, Nabu-kudurri-utsur II (biblical Nebuchadnezzar) as political heads of the region in which Judah was a bit player, struggling to remain nominally independent while being internally torn by pro-Egyptian and pro-Babylonian factions. From the perspective of a Yahwistic prophet such as Habakkuk, neither pro-Egyptian defiance nor pro-Babylonian appeasement represented faithful responses to Judah’s political crisis, which he viewed in terms of the covenant God had established with the people centuries before through Moses. 3 Why do you make me see (ra'ah) wrongdoing and look at (nabat, gaze) trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife (complaint brought to court) and contention (disagreement) arise. He may refer to to damage done before the courts. 4 So the law (torah) becomes slack, showing they have already forgotten the religious reform under Josiah and are neglecting their traditions, and justice never prevails. In the historical circumstances the prophet is seeing, justice is weak. The wicked, which could represent either the pro-Egyptian or pro-Babylonian party, given that both had abandoned the Lord as their true leader in their desire to placate either the Egyptian or Babylonian ruler, surround the righteous, who are the adherents of traditional Yahwism—therefore judgment comes forth perverted. The result is chaos and oppression. The faithful are helpless, see Jeremiah 5:1-9. The complaint is that there is no order in society. Nevertheless, the Lord is interested in justice at all levels. Therefore, he turns to God, but God does not hear. He has prayed for peace but received woe. He is one with those who have grown weary of the world's wickedness. Is God doing nothing? The faithful know God's blessings and long for all the families of the earth to experience them. The complaint is that there is no order in society. The complaint is that law and justice are losing their battles with evil. This violates the expected order when one believes one is living in a covenant relation with the Lord. The Lord does not seem to live up to the covenant relationship, even while the prophet has been faithful.
One sign of the "burdensome" nature of the prophetic task for Nahum is his use of the "disputation" form. This is a subset of the larger form traditionally called "the covenant lawsuit," or in Hebrew, the riv. When the prophet cries "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you 'Violence!' and you will not save?," the implication is that under the covenant, God is supposed to hear the cries of the faithful and save them. That is God's part of the bargain. It is the job of humans to remain faithful. It is the job of the prophet to see visions, receive words from the Lord and transmit them, but Habakkuk's dispute with God centers on the fact that God has not allowed him to see anything but "wrongdoing" and "trouble."
Law and justice, which are qualities imparted to human beings by God, are losing their battles such that evil is conquering righteousness. This violates the expected order in the universe when one believes one is in covenant with a God who has promised to be God. In the disputation format, we see not only the prophetic complaint that God is not upholding his part of the bargain, but we also see God's answer as to what is happening and why. In other words, God enters the dispute by making a countercharge under the law. Seen like this, the prophet's original charge is 1:2-4. God's statement of the divine act of judgment in sending the Babylonians to destroy Judah is 1:5-11, and the prophet's attempt to dissuade God from this course of action is 1:12-17.
In Habakkuk 2:1-4 we find the second answer of the Lord. 2:1 I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart. We find here a symbol of constant openness to the divine word.[9] The prophet respects the divine freedom here.[10] Further, Jeremiah 42:7 shows the prophet waiting for ten days. I will keep watch (tzafah) to see (ra’ah ) what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. The most telling evidence of this imagery of sight's importance to Habakkuk is the fact that the prophet draws himself into the picture as a lookout standing upon the walls of the doomed city, scanning the horizon for both signs of the enemy and signs of divine deliverance. The prophet pledges that he will wait for a reply. He has no control over when the inspired answer will come. One way to understand the instruction of writing so that a runner may read it is that God wanted his message to be written plainly and briefly enough that a person could read the message briefly — on the run. In our day, studies have shown that drivers spend no more than a few seconds looking at a roadside ad, so one must boil down the message to six or seven words. There is something to be said for important messages that can be boiled down to just a few words. If nothing else, that makes it possible for more people to remember them, and, one can hope, apply them in the appropriate circumstances. 2 Then the Lordanswered me and said: Write the vision (hazon); make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. The command to write a prophecy is rare. The prophet refers to the tablets of the Torah, which we also see in Isaiah 30:8 and Jeremiah 17:1. In that sense, what the prophet writes is as ironclad as the original covenant. Tablets, usually made of stone, are not standard writing equipment in Israel as were the clay tablets used in Babylon. The implication is that the waiting that the people must do for the time when God accomplishes the vision of God’s restoration will arrive in Babylon. A more likely interpretation is that the record of this vision of God's promise is to be permanent, so it can withstand the years of waiting for its fulfillment. 3 For there is still a vision (hazon) for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay 4 Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them. They puff themselves up, relying upon their own self, a false reliance on military, and so on. As concerned as he was with the external threat to Israel, he also saw the threat of the behavior of the people of God. A group called “Proxy Pickets” advertises that its services are available for any kind of demonstration and that so many pickets may be rented by the hour for so much. Thus, if people do not want to march, they can have this organization do the marching for them. There are some who would like the church to operate like that! What about a new organization called "proxy-worshippers?" All you must do is pay someone to go to church for you. [11] However, the righteous, those who fulfill the demands of the relationship, live by their faith. The heart of God’s response to Habakkuk’s question could be translated “the righteous person will live by steadfast endurance” (eight words) or, as the Revised English Bible renders it, “the righteous will live by being faithful” (seven words). Hebrews 10:38 refers to this passage. Paul uses it in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11. Habakkuk does not receive an answer to his specific complaint. However, he tells us that he is listening for God. He calls upon people to remain faithful to right living. He counsels perseverance. An explanation of why God was using the Babylonians to punish Judah might have been interesting, but how would it have helped the Judahites when the Babylonian hordes were overrunning Jerusalem, killing their defenders, and setting fire to their homes? The response God did give — that faithfulness would enable them to get through the troubles that could not be avoided — was of far greater use than an explanation. In effect, God was telling Habakkuk that during the period when the wicked Babylonians would be in control and God’s promise to restore Judah was not yet fulfilled, Habakkuk was to trust God’s assurance and rely on God’s strength to persevere. This command, shorthanded as “the righteous will live by being faithful” was the main point of the vision God gave to Habakkuk. The point here is that the silence of God does not mean that God is dead. Human beings always live between what God has already done and what faith expects God to do. Faith says that the answer will not fail. He summarizes the manner of faithful life. Faithfulness is placing one's whole life in God's answer, despite all outward circumstances. The answer is that God's vision for the earth truly comes. The appointed time will come. God's purposes are speeding toward their conclusion. Though God foresees the end, the faithful cannot yet determine the course of events to get there. Think of it this way. Faith has need of hope, which we can see from the innumerable temptations that assail and shake those who would cling to the Word of God. We see here the delay of God in the fulfillment of the promises of God. Look at the proud. Habakkuk shows most concern with the conduct of the righteous in times of trial.[12] For the one who believes, the day of the Lord will not be a day of darkness. Rather, it will be a day in which the one who believes or has faith will remain alive in virtue of that faith. [13] In other words, God was telling Habakkuk that he would continue to live in a time when justice would be hard to find, but he should trust the vision of a fully just time yet to come. "If it seems to tarry, wait for it." Thus, for Habakkuk, living by faith meant carrying on in belief in that vision.
Perseverance is not a popular topic in today’s culture. The assumption that anything worthwhile one can acquire quickly and efficiently is dangerous. Our culture has little patience for the acquisition of virtue and little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in holiness. Such perseverance becomes a long obedience in the same direction (Nietzsche). The long obedience of faithfulness is not an experience of constant buoyancy. In each of us, faithfulness may ebb and flow in our minds and hearts and emotions. Our fragile faithfulness will need tending repeatedly, especially when we are facing great losses. It will need the support of fellow Christians and a caring congregation. It will need to be rethought and held onto. But with God’s help, we will live by faithfulness. In addition, obedience has become a bad word. It seems incompatible with good words like “independence,” “individualism,” and “freedom.” The emphasis is all on doing your own thing and doing it your own way. What you are supposed to obey is authority, and authority has come to be confused with “the authorities” — people in uniform or with PhDs or earning 10 times a year more than you do. Who wants to obey them? However, we will need to continue to live by faith, given that our circumstances will always contain enough misfortune to make us live in a separate way. Life is unfair. We might prefer life to be without demanding times. What do we do when we must face them? Some people get cynical. Andy Rooney referred to the talks between Gorbachev and Reagan, which failed. He said these kinds of talks do about as much good as the Pope praying for peace every Easter. The Atheist magazine offered to pay $1000 to anyone who could move ten pounds of dirt twenty feet solely by the power of prayer. "Tell your preacher about this," the article concludes, "Watch him squirm and make excuses."
Does prayer accomplish anything? The prophet faced challenging times. "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and thou will not hear?" The answer he receives is that things are going to get worse. The Babylonians are coming, and they are going to be God's judgment upon Judah. Yet, Babylon is wicked, so how can the Lord do this?
The prophet refers to God appointing a time and an end, telling the prophet to wait and watch for it. All of this leads me to reflect upon a simple but difficult bit of theological wisdom: God's sense of timing is not like our sense of timing. We as human beings prefer to make the straight canal. God makes the winding rivers.[14] Suppose we think of our temporality like that? We would like a straight line from point A to point B., while history is more like fractals in mathematics. Yes, we can mathematize the pattern, so we can still see order of random lines. To use another image, life has many detours. Yet, living by faith while in those detours is what makes for a faithful life.
Here is another way of thinking about God’s sense of timing. A country newspaper ran articles on the value of church attendance. One day, a letter intended to end the discussion was received: "Print this if you dare. I have been trying an experiment. I have a field of corn which I plowed on Sunday. I planted it on Sunday. I did all the cultivating on Sunday. I gathered the crops on Sunday. I hauled it to my barn on Sunday. I find now that I have more corn per acre than any of my neighbors during this October. Where was God all this time?" The editor added: God does not always settle accounts in October.
William Carey, the father of modern missions, labored 14 years in India before he baptized his first convert. Adoniram Judson labored faithfully seven years in Burma before he baptized his first convert. Robert Morrison, a missionary China, also labored many years before he saw any evidence of his work being successful. Adam Clark spent forty years writing his commentary on the scriptures. Noah Webster worked 36 years on his dictionary, crossing the ocean twice to collect material. Edward Gibbon spent 26 years writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Charles Goodyear worked 10 years in poverty and ridicule perfecting rubber before he could make it into a tire. And George Stephenson worked 15 years developing the locomotive.
There is an old Chinese saying, "Who could have guessed it was a blessing in disguise when the old man on the frontier lost his mare?" It means a loss may turn out to be a gain, or misfortune may be a blessing in disguise. It is now a common adage. This saying originally comes from a story in "Lessons from the Human World" of Hua Nan Zi compiled by Liu An in the West Han dynasty. The story is as follows.
Once upon a time, there was a man living on the northern border of China who was very good at raising horses. Everyone called him Sai Wong (meaning "an old man on the border"). One day, one of Sai Wong's horses escaped from the stable and ran across the border straight into the territory of the Hu people. Upon hearing this news, all his neighbors came to comfort Sai Wong, and hoped he wouldn't be too upset about the news. To everyone's surprise, Sai Wong was not at all affected by the news, and said with a smile, "A horse running off might turn out to be a good blessing in disguise."
Several months later, this runaway horse returned with a fine horse from the Hu territory. When his neighbors heard the news, one after another they came by to congratulate Sai Wong. This time, Sai Wong frowned and said to everyone, "Getting a fine horse for nothing is probably a bad omen in disguise."
Sai Wong had a son who enjoyed horseback riding. One day his son went riding on this fine horse from the Hu territory for an excursion and accidentally fell off the horse and broke a leg. So Sai Wong's neighbors came to comfort him. They asked him not to take it too hard. Surprisingly, Sai Wong said to everyone peacefully, "My son breaking a leg might be a blessing in disguise!" His neighbors were all puzzled by his response and decided Sai Wong must have lost his senses due to grief.
However, shortly thereafter the Hu people began a large-scale invasion against China. The leaders of China summoned all the young men to join the army and defend the country. Because the Hu people were very swift, daring and skillful at fighting, most of those young men died on the battlefield. Yet, Sai Wong's son survived the war because he did not have to join the army due to his broken leg. It was only then that Sai Wong's neighbors discovered the wisdom hidden in his words.
The moral of the story is as follows: Everything may be a blessing or a misfortune in disguise, meaning that you cannot just superficially judge whether something is a blessing or misfortune. One should just let nature run its course and not pursue outcomes. Try not to be too complacent when things go smoothly and too discouraged and depressed when you run into troubles.[15]
Although some Christians do not like to use the word “luck,” I think a song uses the word in a way like this discussion. "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," from the musical, Guys and Dolls, is aware of good and bad fortune. Frank Sinatra and others have made it famous as a pop song. Here are a couple of stanzas:
Luck let a gentleman see
Just how nice a dame you can be
I know the way you've treated other guys you've been with
Luck be a lady with me.
A lady never leaves her escort
It isn't fair, it isn't nice
A lady doesn't wander all over the room
And blow on some other guy's dice.
The street toughs implore Luck with their plaintive song before they throw their dice. They are under no illusions about the trustworthiness of this "lady." She is equally capable of bringing them wealth or woe.
Here is an important piece of wisdom concerning human life. Life has its twists and turns. Life has its up moments and its down moments. Our knowledge has its limits, especially when it comes to the future. Yet, living by faith may well mean that we entrust our lives, the lives of friends and family, the nation, and even human history, into the hands of the God who in Jesus Christ has demonstrated that we are in gracious, loving, and friendly hands.
If we consider Habakkuk from this perspective, we need to be open to applying such wisdom in the dark times in which he lived. Was the Babylonian conquest of Judah a good or bad thing? If you were one of those killed in the invasion or marched off into captivity, you would be hard-pressed to label it good. Yet from the perspective of history, it may look different. This explains why the question of why God allows suffering requires some discernment. Suffering and pain in our lives and in human history often lead to positive outcomes. It may well be that finite and reasoning persons require at least some pain and suffering to learn. In this case, for one thing, separated from the temple, which now lay in ruins in Jerusalem, the Jews could no longer offer sacrifices, but they continued to worship God. They discovered that their religion was not dependent on location and the temple. The captives came to understand that Judaism was a faith that could survive and that they could learn to practice it in any geographical setting and culture. For a second thing, the Jewish leaders increased their literary production. Scholars will tell us that they produced much of our Old Testament in the exilic period. Their scholars completed the history of Israel in the Promised Land (Deuteronomy-II Kings). They wrote down and preserved the sayings of the prophets to that date. Third, and most importantly, they proclaimed that only one God exists, and thus took idolatry seriously.
Although the apostle Paul did not write these words until centuries later, the exiles were learning the truth that, as Paul said, "All things work together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28). And therein is the lesson for us. We often simply cannot see the positive side of many things at first ... or perhaps never in this life. However, if we are to live faithfully, we trust that, since we have given ourselves to God, what befalls us is fortuitous -- in the hands of God -- and that is good enough to get us by from day to day.
[1] Klaus Koch (The Prophets)
[2] Watts
[3] Achtemeier
[4] Habakkuk, however, as well as Amos, Micah and Nahum combine the two ways of describing prophecy by calling their works "oracles" or "words" which they envisioned (hazah). Other prophets who label their prophecies with the technical term masa' or oracle are Zechariah (chapters 9 & 12) and Malachi. The word "oracle" (masa') is also a suggestive term in that it comes from the root which means "to carry or bear" (nasa') as one would carry a burden or a load. In fact, it is identical to the word that means "burden." This implies that a prophet's revelation from God was a weighty thing. It was something one must carry with responsibility. It was something not always easy to bear.
[5] In Habakkuk, however, more common words related to sight also occur frequently. In addition to the three references to the prophet's "vision" (: 1:1, 2:2, 2:3), the common verbs "to see" (ra'ah) "to gaze" (nabat), and "to look out" (tsafah) occur often. "To see" and "to gaze" are paired in three successive verses (1:3, 5) and also occur alone elsewhere (ra'ah 1:13; 2:1; 3:6, 7; 3:10; nabat 2:15; tzafah 2:1). Most prophetic books pick either the language of hearing or the language of seeing when the introductory "labels" are given to their contents in the first few verses. Isaiah and Obadiah's books are each called a "vision" (hazon). Oddly, the great visionary Ezekiel says that he saw the heavens opened and witnessed a miraculous "sight," but his book uses the common verb for sight, ra'ah, rather than a more theologically loaded term like "vision." Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Zephaniah, Jonah, Haggai and Zechariah all favor the language of speaking and hearing by describing their prophecy as the "word of YHWH that came" to them.
[6] Von Rad (Old Testament Theology)
[7] Achtemeier
[8] Watts
[9] Achtemeier
[10] Watts
[11] Bishop Gerald Kennedy
[12] Barth Church Dogmatics IV.3 [73.1] 913.
[13] Barth Church Dogmatics II.1 [30.2] 390.
[14] John Oman
[15] --Translated from: zhengjian.org. See: Shi Shuwen, "Chinese idiom: Misfortune may be a blessing in disguise," pureinsight.org, October 20, 2003. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
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