Introduction to the Prophet Habakkuk

What the prophet saw and heard in the presence of the Lord is nothing short of profound in its implications. Francis Andersen comments:

It should be remembered, however, that the prophetic vision was an experience in which the prophet typically saw the Lord in the divine assembly (1 Kings 22:19; Isaiah 6; Jer 1:11; Ezekiel 1; etc.) and so was able to hear what the Lord said. The report of the Lord’s proclamation is then the burden to be carried by the prophet to the people from his meeting with Yahweh. (Andersen, Habakkuk, 88)

Habakkuk had a vision of the Lord in which he (Habakkuk) was allowed to dialogue with the Lord about his struggles and perplexities. While the prophet knows that the Lord is sovereign, his daily experience appears to reflect something quite different. He is struggling to rightly interpret his daily realities. The prophecy of Habakkuk is a deeply personal testament of a believer’s battle with the disobedience of sinners and the doubts of the soul (Andersen, Habakkuk, 88).

The words hearing and seeing are the language of divine revelation, and they reflect the concept of understanding. What the prophet heard and saw and understood is the message of divine revelation. Having been in the presence of the Lord, the prophet has a message for God’s people. The prophet Isaiah was in the presence of the Lord and received the call to go to God’s people and proclaim the divinely inspired prophetic message (Isa 6). What the prophet Habakkuk saw he communicated to God’s people.

Habakkuk’s prophecy deals with the justice of God in light of the wickedness of God’s people and the surrounding nations. The prophet Habakkuk ministered during the final days of the Assyrian Empire and the rise of the Babylonian Empire. This makes Habakkuk a near contemporary of the prophet Nahum. Nahum certainly saw the coming of the end of the Assyrian Empire, but Habakkuk witnessed the end of Assyria and the ascendancy of Babylonia as the new superpower of the ancient Near East.

Scholars disagree as to the date of the prophecy of Habakkuk. The best hypothesis is that Habakkuk’s prophecy took place between the Babylonian defeat of the Egyptian army at Carchemish in 605 BC and Nebuchadnezzar’s first capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC. This is the period in which the Neo-Babylonian Empire had begun to establish its hegemony throughout the region of Syria-Palestine. This is a period of significant political instability among the smaller states of Syria-Palestine due to the recent collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the ascendancy of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Judah was one of a number of smaller states struggling to navigate the dangerous political and military crosscurrents of the day. The prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of Habakkuk, had also prophesied the demise of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians (Jer 1:14).