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.
Why dost thou cause me to see iniquity, and lookest thou upon grievance? For spoiling and violence are before me; and there is strife, and contention riseth up.
The prophet watches wrongdoing run loose among God's own people. He asks God why He keeps this sight in front of his eyes. Two questions sit under the words: why does God let evil continue, and why does He make a faithful man look at it?
He does not just mutter about his times. He takes the whole scene to God.
Here then the prophet groans, but he does what the Jews did not do in Hosea — he groans to God. The LORD had other purposes. If He appears not to hear, and if He does not stretch out His arm to save, it is always to accomplish better things. But wherever there is real faith, it must always be tried.
These are not the questions of a man who has stopped believing.
Habakkuk was a man of faith, and his first word — "Lord, how long…" — shows this. However, his faith needed strengthening and enlightenment. It was mixed with weakness. And indeed, it found an answer full of mercy. God reprimands unbelief, but not the weakness of our human nature.
What crushed the prophet was not simply that evil existed. It was where he was seeing it.
But this was Habakkuk's distress: such a state of things among the people of God, and God delaying His answer... "Why do you make me see iniquity," if it is so deeply distressing? — iniquity in the very place where you would expect righteousness. It was among the people of God. This harassed him all the more. That the Gentiles should be full of iniquity was no wonder; that the Jews should be so was a deep trouble to his soul.
The verse lists destruction, violence, strife and contention. One writer traces this whole cluster back to Genesis.
The prophet was a witness who stood apart from the people. He himself did not suffer under the violence, as the remnant will. He was a spectator and watched the suffering. The problem here was not Israel's idolatry. It was what has marked man corrupted by sin ever since the beginning of his history (Gen. 6:11): violence, and with it injustice, oppression, destruction, discord, and disunity among the people (vv. 2-3).
The verse ends with strife and contention. One writer finds the same fault among God's people.
Consider the unhappy contentions and divisions found among the people of God. Contentions always signal trouble. Christ sets up the light of His gospel to walk and work by, not to fight and quarrel by. So it would be no wonder at all if He put it out and ended the dispute.
The verse asks why God looks at wrong without acting. One writer warns that when we cry like this, our motives are mixed.
This cry does express our love for the believers who live through these disastrous times. Even so, our weakness shows a touch of self-interest!
Why does God allow the evil? How can He seem to forget His own, who are defenceless among the wicked systems of man? The prophet would soon receive the answer, but a different one than he expected. First he had to go through a sorrowful time of training. That training would become a rich blessing for his soul. Only then did he understand what God would bring about in the hearts of His own in days of trial.
God does answer the complaint of verse 3 — by naming an invading army as His instrument.
He then lets the prophet know that this iniquity would not go unpunished. It had been troubling his soul, and he had been crying to God about it. The Chaldean sword would soon enter the land, sent to avenge His holiness.
The complaint was not where Habakkuk stopped.
Habakkuk's confusion led him to cry to the LORD. He came into His presence and asked Him about the things he mourned over. As a result, he got a wonderful view of the day of Christ. He learned what God's path was for His people until that day came. So he was let into the secret of how to be an overcomer in an age that looked dark indeed. To faith that same age was bright with the golden light of promises, and those promises fixed heart and hope on One who was yet to come.
- Sight — the prophet watches as a spectator, not a victim. He sees violence, and with it injustice, oppression, destruction and division.
- Sting — the pain is where the evil sits. It is among God's own people, in the place where righteousness belonged.
- Cry — he takes the sight to God instead of complaining about God. Real faith is always tried, and the trial proves it is real.
- Mercy — his faith was weak and mixed. God rebukes unbelief, not weakness, so He answers him with mercy.
- Answer — God replies, but not as expected. He sends judgment through the Chaldeans, and a training that turns a troubled man into an overcomer whose hope is fixed on Christ.
Therefore the law is powerless, and justice doth never go forth; for the wicked encompasseth the righteous; therefore judgment goeth forth perverted.
Habakkuk looks at his own nation and sees justice jammed. The law has no grip, and verdicts come out backwards. His complaint raises a question many believers ask: why does God let evil run wild among the people who bear His name?
The prophet's pain is not that the world is wicked. It is that the wickedness is at home.
In the opening verses we learn the prophet's anguish of soul as he confesses to the LORD the low condition of the people of God. His spirit is troubled, not simply by the wickedness of the nations, but because of the evil among the people of God. That circle should have shown gentleness and righteousness, peace and harmony. Instead he sees violence and corruption, strife and contention.
The place of the sin, not the sin itself, was the sting.
There was iniquity in the very place where righteousness might have been looked for. It was among the people of God, and this weighed on him all the more. That the Gentiles should be wicked was no wonder; that the Jews should be so was a deep trouble to his soul.
The law is "paralyzed" — older translations read "powerless." God gave it for a purpose, and that purpose is now blocked.
"Therefore the law is powerless." The purpose of the law, earlier given by the Lord Himself, was to break the will of man. Man should have learned to apply "justice" under the protection of the law. But it "never goes forth." On the contrary, "the wicked surround the righteous." Take special note of that phrase, "the righteous." We meet it again in chapter 2.
The failure is not in the standard but in those who hold it. They still have God's word. They will not use it.
He also sees that there is no power among the people of God to deal with the evil. They fail to use the word of God. He has to admit that "the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth." The wicked have the upper hand, so any judgments they reach are wrong or perverted.
The verse ends worse than it began. Justice is not just delayed. When it speaks at last, it says the opposite of what it should.
How can it be that "justice never goes forth"? And when judgment does come, why is it "perverted" — the opposite of what a God-fearing, righteous soul would expect? No matter where the faithful believer turns, everywhere he meets injustice and ungodliness.
Rossier follows that crooked verdict to its worst point: the nation's trial of its own Messiah.
The nation had neither known the Lord Jesus nor understood the voice of the prophets who had announced Him. Worse: it had condemned its Messiah and in doing so had fulfilled what Habakkuk had said of them: "justice goes forth perverted" (1:4).
The verse names the group being hemmed in: "the righteous." So who counts?
The Lord would soon answer. Meanwhile, the righteous one can only conclude what God has seen ever since sin entered the world. Apart from those who have been justified through faith, there is not one righteous person in this world.
The New Testament reaches back to this same prophet to prove that no one is put right with God by keeping the law.
"Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" This quotation is taken from a prophet who was no lawgiver like Moses. In his day he mourned to see the law utterly disgraced, as all his fellow prophets did in theirs. He turned for salvation to his holy One, whose word of gracious promise would not always delay (Hab. 1:3-4; 2:1-4).
Habakkuk does not swallow his confusion or broadcast it. He carries it to God, and that is what changes everything.
Habakkuk's confusion led him to cry to the LORD. He came into His presence to ask Him about the things he mourned over. As a result, he got a wonderful view of the day of Christ. He learned what God's path was for His people until that day should come. In this way he learned the secret of how to overcome. To sight and sense his age was dark indeed. But to faith it was bright with the golden light of promises that fixed heart and hope on One who was yet to come.
- Where — the grief is not the world's wickedness. It is violence and strife inside the circle that should have shown peace and righteousness.
- Why — the law has not failed. God's people refuse to use His word, so they have no power to deal with the evil.
- How far — justice does not just stall. It reverses. That same perverted judgment reached its peak when the nation condemned its own Messiah.
- Who — "the righteous" surrounded here are those justified through faith. Apart from them, no one on earth is righteous.
- What next — the confusion is not the end. Habakkuk carried it into God's presence, and it opened a view of the day of Christ and taught him how to overcome in a dark age.
See ye among the nations, and behold, and wonder marvellously; for [I] work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be declared [to you].
The prophet has just cried out over violence and twisted justice. God answers — but not with rescue. He points to a work of His own, so staggering that His people will not believe it when they hear of it.
The prophet had been staring at the wreckage around him. God's reply redirects his eyes.
In Habakkuk's day the people of God had fallen, and the nations were marked by violence and corruption. In the middle of these evils God calls the prophet to look at His solemn work of judgment. Behind all that was taking place among men, God was working. The man of God is to look beyond the works of men to see the work of God.
God's answer also replies to the prophet's earlier cry that God does not save.
Here we find the answer to the prophet's question. It is not aimed at him, but at the wicked ones he had complained about. They had better "see among the nations" and observe with amazement how the Lord would repay their deeds. … At the same time, the prophet received an answer to his cry: "I cry to You, 'Violence!' and You will not save." By this the Lord showed His servant that if He did not deliver the righteous from the violence of the wicked, it is because they will soon be chastised by Him.
The command to look outward has a point. The blow forming among the nations will land on Judah.
The Lord speaks and answers the complaint of His servant. He is going to raise up the Chaldeans to chastise His wayward people. The meaning is that they — the faithless ones among the Jews — should look around among the nations. They would see how the storm would gather and finally break over the head of the house of Judah. He would work a judgment work, which they would not believe. It would be an event without parallel, amazing and terrible.
The order to look "among the nations" carries a sting. God ranks His own people with the pagans. Their unbelief will prove that is where they belong.
He challenges His people as "heathen." That is what they would prove themselves to be, by refusing to believe the work He Himself planned to do among them. He counts their circumcision as uncircumcision. The apostle, quoting this word from our prophet, calls them "despisers" (Acts 13:41). So the Lord first follows the story of Israel's sins, which the prophet had been listing. Then He looks ahead to their great crowning, closing sin — the rejection of His word and work through unbelief.
The verse is not an isolated warning. It sets the theme of everything that follows.
So much the worse for the Jew if he did not believe what God made known to him beyond all the world. … We see that every chapter throughout the prophecy has for its kernel the folly of unbelief and the value of faith. The apostle Paul quoted this among the Jews, when they were in danger of letting the blessing slip because of its very greatness.
Paul draws a parallel between two works of God, both refused.
God's people were in such a low state that they would not believe God's testimony to His own work. They refused to see God's hand behind the enemies He was using to chastise them. We know that the apostle quotes this passage when preaching the gospel at Antioch. There he announced the grace of God that proclaims forgiveness through Christ, and that all who believe are justified from all things. Then at once he quotes Habakkuk. He warns them not to despise this work of grace through unbelief, as their forefathers had despised God's work of judgment through unbelief.
What God did in Paul's day was a different kind of work.
God did the work, and it was not judgment. The apostle announced the great salvation first to the Jews. If they despised it, and so proved to be despisers, he would turn to the Gentiles.
The verse reaches beyond the invasion it announced.
Paul's use of it shows that God had more in mind when He spoke these words than His dealings in judgment through the Chaldean. It is in Christ that these words find their real fulfilment. He is the One that God always has in view, whatever the work to which He puts His hand may be.
- Look up. God answers the prophet's complaint about violence with a command: look past men's works to His.
- Look out. The nations are the stage: the Chaldeans are the instrument God is raising to chastise His own people.
- Look at yourselves. God calls His own people "heathen." Unbelief erases the line between them and the pagans.
- Look forward. Paul quotes the verse in Acts 13. There the work is no longer judgment but forgiveness through Christ.
- Look to Christ. Whether the work is judgment or grace, God has Christ in view.
For behold, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation, which marcheth through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling-places that are not theirs.
Habakkuk had just complained to God about the wrongdoing among His own people. God's answer names the instrument He is about to use: the Chaldeans, the rising power of Babylon. The shock is not that judgment is coming. It is who will carry it — a foreign power more brutal than the people it will punish.
God claims the action as His. The Chaldeans do not rise on their own; He raises them. One writer traces what God was breaking down, and how far He would let the invaders go:
The prophet hears from the LORD that He was going to raise up the Chaldeans. Everyone knew this was the judgment then close at hand. But it is far from all that awaits the Jew in this way… They were plunderers whom God used in His providence to break down Judah's turning away from Him, and also to chastise the pride of other nations… God allowed the Chaldean scourge to prevail for a certain time. But they forgot that He was using them to deal with those who had offended His name and glory. They credited their power to their own god instead of to God's sovereign will. Then the true God would take them in hand.
God can use a nation without approving it. Nothing good in these people drew Him to them:
The Lord took care that the prophet would learn another lesson. When He raised up the Chaldeans it was not because He had discovered any spiritual or moral good in them. Rather the contrary; they were a cruel nation. How could God ever appreciate this? They were hasty, striking first in attack. They advanced over the breadth of the earth and conquered the countries of the world. They took possession of inhabited regions that were not theirs.
Seizing homes that belong to others marks a people who accept no rule but their own appetite:
This nation of the Chaldeans is described as a bitter and hasty nation, marked by cruelty and violence. With aggressive energy they marched through the earth to seize dwellings not their own. Their acts of terror spread fear and dread. In them they were a law to themselves, with no respect for the customs of the nations. They had sunk below the level of natural men. So wild and fierce animals picture the inhuman cruelty with which they would prey upon the nations.
If God will not tolerate sin in His own people, how can He hand them over to a nation whose sin is worse? One writer sums up the book's answer:
Habakkuk complains of the sin of God's people. He then develops the chastening that will fall on them. Those still more wicked than they will carry it out — the Chaldeans. Because they give free rein to their violence, they become in their turn objects of the judgment of the LORD. But God will show His glory and His righteousness in both the one and the other, pictures of the Jewish people and of the world.
With this announcement, rule itself passes out of Jewish hands into Gentile ones:
At that moment the Assyrian power had not yet fallen. The Lord would, however, raise up the Chaldean. He would put the other nations under this power, and His own people first of all… There was a still more terrible judgment. The Lord would take the kingdom from Israel and give it to Babylon, to "the golden head" of the Gentile empire.
The Chaldean invasion was not the last word. Commentators read it as a preview:
Here, as in the explanation of every prophecy, it is important to see that the near judgment by the Chaldeans foreshadowed a future judgment.
- Raised, not risen. God says, "I am raising up" — the invading army is His act, not an accident of history that caught Him off guard.
- Raised without merit. The nation He raises is cruel and grasping. Usefulness to God is never a certificate of goodness.
- Raised against His own. The rod falls first on His people for their turning away, and then on the pride of the surrounding nations.
- Raised, then judged. The Chaldeans give free rein to their violence, so they too fall under judgment. God shows His righteousness in both.
- Raised, and rule changes hands. God takes the kingdom from Israel and gives it to Babylon, the golden head. That near judgment pictures a greater one still ahead.