The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.
Habakkuk's book opens with one line: it names the writer, calls him a prophet, and calls his message an oracle — the word older translations render "burden." Scripture tells us nothing else about him: no date, no father's name, no audience, only a man and the weight he carries.
Habakkuk is not the only book to open with this word.
This word has an everyday use. It also appears at the start of several prophecies, such as "The burden of Babylon" and "the burden of Moab" (Isaiah 13:1; Isaiah 15:1). Scholars do not agree on the force of massa in these places. Its natural meaning would be "a judgment that lies heavy on the people," but some take it to mean "an oracle or sentence pronounced against them."
The heaviness in the word points back to God Himself.
The word burden carries the thought of a weight heavy to bear, for God is bringing His displeasure to bear on mankind, and He intends people to feel it.
Habakkuk gives us his title and nothing else, and even that is unusual.
Habakkuk, Obadiah and Malachi are the only three of the Minor Prophets about whom we know nothing except their names. Along with Zechariah and Haggai, he is one of the only prophets in Scripture who call themselves "prophet" (Habakkuk 1:1).
Commentators read his name as a picture of what he does in the book.
His name means "to embrace." It carries a double sense: "to embrace" and "being embraced." He embraced his own people, and he embraced God in prayer. Then God embraced him in return and answered him. Martin Luther gave a striking definition of his name, and no one can improve on it: "Habakkuk means an embracer, or one who embraces another and takes him into his arms. He embraces his people and takes them into his arms. That is, he comforts them and holds them up. He is like a man who embraces a weeping child to quiet it, assuring the child that if God wills, things will soon be better."
Commentators differ over when Habakkuk wrote. One writer treats the gap in the record as deliberate.
Everything in Scripture is given for our learning, both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid. It tells us nothing about Habakkuk himself, nor about the time of his prophecy. The critics have studied the date of his writing with great care, and they have reached conflicting conclusions… But when God does not speak, the work of scholars is of limited value to the Christian, however interesting it may be.
The missing detail widens the book's reach.
Scripture leaves out every historical detail. So we see at once that we are dealing with principles that govern us today just as they governed the people of Habakkuk's day.
What follows the heading sets Habakkuk apart from the other prophets.
Among the twelve shorter prophetic books, none is more distinctive than Habakkuk. Its main feature is no longer the enemy, though it does mention the enemy. Its prominent subject is the soul of the prophet himself, standing for the faithful among the Jews, brought into deep inward struggle. The book reads like a conversation between God Himself and the prophet. It sets out both what troubled his heart and the divine comfort and exulting hope into which the Spirit of God led him.
The burden he saw was not first the sin of foreign nations.
In the opening verses we learn the prophet's anguish of soul. He confesses to the LORD the low condition of the people of God. What troubles his spirit is not simply the wickedness of the nations, but the evil among the people of God. In the very circle that should have shown gentleness and righteousness, peace and harmony, he sees violence and corruption, strife and contention.
The book does not leave him under that weight; it moves him through it.
Habakkuk is the expression of faith in the LORD in spite of everything, and of God's ways in the history of the people. The prophet complains of the wickedness surrounding him in Israel. God shows him the Chaldeans, whom He is bringing to visit the land in judgment because of that wickedness. Then the prophet's affection for the people awakens, and he complains about the Chaldeans. God shows him that he must live by faith.
- Burden — commentators read the opening word as a heavy judgment or a sentence pronounced; either way, a weight God means people to feel.
- Borne — his name means "embracer": he holds his people and holds on to God.
- Blank — no date, no history, no biography; the silence lifts the book out of one century into every one.
- Between — what follows is not preaching at a nation but a conversation, the prophet's own soul laid open before God.
- Beyond — God does not lift the weight; He answers it. The man who cries out learns to live by faith.
Jehovah, how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear? I cry out unto thee, Violence! and thou dost not save.
Habakkuk opens his book with a complaint aimed straight at God: he has been crying out about violence, and nothing has changed. Why God stays silent while violence runs on is the question the rest of the book answers.
The violence he names is not the cruelty of other nations. It is wrongdoing among God's own people, and that is what made it unbearable.
Habakkuk was distressed by three things. Such a state of things existed among the people of God. God delayed His answer. And He could not rightly send out salvation as the outward deliverance I have just described. There was wrongdoing in the very place where you would expect righteousness. It was among the people of God. This troubled him all the more. That the other nations should be full of wrongdoing was no wonder; that the Jews should be so was a deep trouble to his soul.
Notice the direction of his words. He does not vent sideways to other people. He pours it out to God. That difference is the lesson for anyone burdened by what they see.
As he faces all these sorrows the prophet groans in spirit, for God's word allows a groan, but never a grumble (Rom. 8:22-27). What is more, the prophet speaks his groans to the Lord. Sadly, we believers too often discuss the failures of God's people among ourselves. We do it with such bitterness that the groaning becomes mere grumbling, or complaining about what God allows in His dealings with His people. So complaining to one another may reveal a hidden spirit of rebellion against God. Or it may be an effort to lift ourselves up by putting others down. It is good for us if we escape these traps by pouring out the anguish of our spirits, and the exercises of our souls, before the LORD.
The words sound like doubt. They are the opposite: only someone who expects an answer asks when it will come.
The expression "How long" is a cry of faith that we often meet in the psalms and prophets. It expresses faith in the certainty that God, when the time has come, will answer. In the meantime, it accepts the trouble as a necessary trial.
His faith was real but weak. God deals with weak faith differently from unbelief.
Habakkuk was a man of faith and his first word: "Lord, how long…" shows this. However, his faith needed strengthening and enlightening. It was mixed with weakness. And indeed, it found an answer full of mercy, for God reprimands unbelief, but not the weakness of our human nature.
When he says God does not save, he is not talking about the salvation of the soul. He wants a visible rescue now.
The issue here is not a spiritual salvation, but a temporal deliverance. The anxious soul would like to see peace restored, and the violent ones judged and taken away. The violence is there, it happens under our eyes, and — God does not answer! We repeat: this is not a lack of faith. It is the cry of alarm from a heart not yet firmly settled in trusting faith. It faces a problem that so far has no solution in his eyes.
The delay was not neglect. God had a purpose in it, and the testing itself shows that faith is there.
Jehovah had other purposes. If He appears not to hear, and if He does not put out His arm to save, it is always to accomplish better things. Salvation here means salvation by external power, or deliverances shown on the earth… But without exception, wherever there is real faith, it must be tried. So the trial comes even before the faith is clearly in evidence. Yet without real faith underneath, we may be sure there would have been no such test.
What God said to Habakkuk later answers the assumption behind this opening cry.
How could he ever have said such words: "You will not hear"? In all the instruction the Lord gave him afterwards, He showed him that He had heard and always hears. With almost fatherly feeling He made it clear that these judgments were righteous. He had to allow them over His people and over the enemies of His people. But God also showed him that the righteous person still has help while going through the judgments, for he shall live by his faith.
The book's own shape is the proof:
He began by wailing and finished by rejoicing.
- Cry. "How long" is not doubt but faith — it asks when, because it is sure an answer is coming.
- Grief. Evil crushed him most in the one place he expected righteousness: among God's own people.
- Groan. God's word allows a groan but never a grumble; the test is whether you take the burden to Him or to each other.
- Silence. His seeming inaction serves better purposes, and real faith is always put to the proof.
- Song. God heard him all along; the prophet who opens in tears closes in joy.