Habakkuk

Overview

Habakkuk does not preach at people; he argues with God, and the book is the transcript. How long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear? Why do you tolerate this?

God answers: I am raising up the Chaldeans. That answer is worse than the question, and Habakkuk says so — how can a holy God use a crueler nation to punish a bad one? Then he climbs his watchtower to wait, and what he receives turns into one of the great statements of faith in Scripture.

Background

Assyria was finished and Babylon was rising fast. Judah had had one good king in Josiah and then slid back, and the courts and streets Habakkuk describes are full of violence that nobody punishes.

Within a few years Babylon would be at the gates. The prophet is asking his questions on the edge of the disaster, not after it.

Key themes

• It is not wrong to bring hard questions to God.
• The just shall live by his faith.
• God works through history in ways that offend our sense of fairness.
• The proud will not stand; the earth will be filled with the knowledge of His glory.
• Joy is possible when everything fails, because it rests on God Himself.

Outline

1. Two complaintsChapter 1

   Why do you not act? — and then, how can you use them?

2. The answer, and five woesChapter 2

   Wait for it; the just shall live by his faith — and woe to the plunderer, the drunkard, the idol-maker.

3. A prayer and a songChapter 3

   God remembered in His mighty acts, and rejoicing though the fig tree does not blossom.

Key passages

• Habakkuk 1:2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear!
• Habakkuk 1:13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil.
• Habakkuk 2:1 I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower.
• Habakkuk 2:4 The just shall live by his faith.
• Habakkuk 2:14 The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD.
• Habakkuk 2:20 The LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence.
• Habakkuk 3:17-18 Although the fig tree shall not blossom — yet I will rejoice in the LORD.

Christ in Habakkuk

The just shall live by his faith is quoted three times in the New Testament — in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews — and became the sentence that reshaped the Reformation. Habakkuk asked how a holy God could overlook sin; the answer the New Testament gives is the cross, where He did not overlook it.

Reading it

• Read it as a conversation, marking who is speaking in each section.
• Chapter 3 was written to be sung; read it aloud.
• Look up the three New Testament quotations of 2:4 and note what each writer does with it.