Habakkuk 1 Commentary
Habakkuk has a lot of questions for the Creator God. But wait a minute, who doesn’t? We should all be interested in this book!
Habakkuk: How long do I have to cry out for help before you listen?
The LORD’s response is similar to the following: I heard you even before you prayed. Babylon is my answer to your question. Israel’s wickedness will be punished without any delay. The whip for Israel is already raised!
There is a difference between our perception and reality. The prophet saw zero action from Heaven and complained about it. The reality, however, is that Heaven saw the problem long before the prophet experienced it. Babylon was the LORD’s tool used to deal with the problem. It was a tool that the LORD nurtured until the right moment!
The prophet was told to ‘look’. The answer could be there already. The prophet needed to lift his head up and look.
Habakkuk: Ok. Fine. I get it. But isn’t that further injustice, the LORD using wickedness to punish wickedness? Check the site after Operation Justice and you still find injustice! What kind of justice is this? What about this new relationship between the Holy God and wickedness? The eyes of the LORD are too pure to look at evil, but here we are with the ‘Babylon’ solution!
Habakkuk doesn’t have to say it. The LORD knows already that the tool in His hand is another set of wickedness! Verse 11. In the prophet’s view, both Israel’s small wickedness and Babylon’s big wickedness must be punished.
Let’s wait for chapter two for the LORD’s answer to Habakkuk’s second question.
What is the point of this conversation between the LORD and the prophet? The prophet’s observation is also important. Injustice is nurtured by a law that cannot hold its own. When the threat of punishment attached to a law isn’t carried out, no one wants to keep that law. The righteous suffer and they must “look at evil everywhere”.
If evil is dirty, you can easily sweep it away and have a clean place again – the elimination method. We cannot wish ourselves the same method because none of us would be here to read these lines!
There is justice but also there is compassion. These are impossible elements to understand but let’s see what the LORD says tomorrow.
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