The Perplexities of the Prophet Habakkuk

In today’s world there is no shortage of people who worship the work of their own hands. Their success is their god. Like the Babylonians, they have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worship and serve created things rather than the Creator, who is praised forever (Rom 1:25). People were created to worship God only, but if they refuse to worship Him, they will certainly worship something or someone.

Verse 17. The next question Habakkuk poses is whether the wicked Babylonians will be allowed to continue their brutal reign of dominance over the world. Will God continue to watch Babylon invade nation after nation, and especially God’s people, without intervening? The prophet is grappling with God’s apparent silence regarding their brutality. The question in verse 17 is rhetorical. Will God continue to allow their wickedness to go unpunished while they punish everyone else, including Judah? It is clear that the prophet is having difficulty reconciling these realities in his mind and heart. Habakkuk is being tested to the core concerning everything he has believed about God. He is struggling to affirm that Babylon’s day of accountability and reckoning is not a matter of if, but only a matter of when. This takes us back to the first question in verse 2 where Habakkuk cried, “How long?” God will deal with the sins of Babylon, but only after He has dealt with the sins of His people, Judah. How can Babylon’s wickedness bring about God’s justice? This is Habakkuk’s main concern.

Chapter 2, verse 1. The prophet concludes his response to the Lord’s revelation by declaring, “I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the lookout tower. I will watch to see what He will say to me and what I should reply about my complaint.” This passage is autobiographical in nature (Andersen, Habakkuk, 191). Habakkuk resolves to wait for an answer from the Lord. It’s as if he sits back with folded arms awaiting God’s answer. He exudes a certain confidence that the Lord will answer him. Exactly what kind of answer the prophet is expecting is not clear. He has to wait on the Lord because he cannot produce a response from the Lord on his own. Waiting on the Lord requires faith in the Lord and the Word of His promise.

The location of Habakkuk’s waiting on the Lord’s reply is the “lookout tower.” This is an instructive location because it is the place where guards are posted to keep watch for security purposes. It appears that the prophet Habakkuk, like Ezekiel, may have been a literal or figurative watchman (Ezek 3; 33). It is both symbolic and significant that the prophet is in the watchtower waiting for the Lord to come to him again. The tower was a place of watching and waiting. In Ezekiel 3:17 the Lord says to the prophet Ezekiel, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman over the house of Israel. When you hear a word from My mouth, give them a warning from Me.” So the responsibility of the watchman was to warn God’s people whenever the Lord warned him.

What is Habakkuk expecting to receive from the Lord when He replies? What does he think God is going to say? So far the Lord’s word has been anything but predictable for the prophet. “The silence of God vexed and grieved him, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Or rather, all he could do was keep on praying, keep on waiting, keep on watching” (Andersen, Habakkuk, 196). This is something of a wisdom problem for Habakkuk. Surely God had a greater purpose in all these events, but Habakkuk has not yet ascertained it. It will take divine wisdom to understand divine action. Habakkuk is struggling for lack of wisdom and insight into the ways of God. What is God doing? Only God can reveal it to the prophet.

This scenario also raises the question, What are we to think when God does something beyond comprehension? The wisdom of Proverbs 3:5-6 is instructive in such cases: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.” Faith precedes understanding, not the reverse. We must trust the Lord even when we do not understand everything. The Lord is testing Habakkuk’s trust in Him. The Lord did in fact answer him, as we will see in the next verses.

How long Habakkuk had to wait for the Lord’s reply is not clear (Roberts, Nahum, 108). Whatever the length of time, it was probably agonizing for the prophet, especially since he had determined to put everything else on hold until he heard from the Lord in reply to his complaint. God’s response is not based on our terms but on His terms. He does not respond according to human timetables but rather His own sovereign timetable. In our day we are accustomed to instant everything: instant news, instant food, instant solutions. But this is not the way our Creator often works. He requires faith and patience in walking with Him. There are very few instant solutions to the challenging realities of life. Things often do not go the way we plan, and things often do not happen as fast as we want. Like the prophet Habakkuk, we must learn to exercise patient trust in waiting for the Lord to give an answer to whatever we need. Many impatient Christians’ faith fizzles before the finish line. We give up on God’s answer to our problems because of our impatience. Let us not grow weary because we will reap the blessings of patience if we do not quit (Gal 6:9). God’s answer is always worth the wait. Isaiah 30:18 says, “The Lord is a just God. All who wait patiently for Him are happy.”

Verses 2-3. The Lord finally answers the prophet, but not the way he might have expected. His answer begins with instructions to write down the vision and make it legible. In Isaiah 30:8 a similar command is given to the prophet Isaiah, whose oracle condemned Judah’s trust in Egyptian protection rather than in the Lord’s protection. Habakkuk is instructed to make his writing easy to read so that it may be accessible to the most people. He is commanded to write the vision the Lord is about to give him in preparation for its use at a future time. The vision was to be written so that it could be preserved. The importance of the written record of God’s word cannot be overstated. In addition to its use at an undetermined future date, the written vision itself also pertains to the “end” times.

The Lord affirms the trustworthiness of the written vision—that it will reveal the truth and not lie. It will not lie because God cannot lie (Heb 6:18). The fulfillment of the vision may require waiting, but it will come to pass at the right time (Hab 3:3b).

Dan 4). James 4:6 says, “God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” The Babylonians had a reputation for arrogance and pride. They were swollen with pride. Those who are arrogant lack integrity. There was no uprightness about them. They were crooked in their character.

Verse 4b says, “But the righteous one will live by his faith.” This is a complete contrast to the character of the Babylonians. The unrighteous will die by their arrogance, but the righteous will live by faith. Isaiah 26:2, which is a song celebrating the salvation of Judah, contains similar language: “Open the gates so a righteous nation can come in—one that remains faithful.” Isaiah equates righteousness with the nation that remains faithful to the Lord. In other words, those who are righteous keep the faith. This is the meaning of Habakkuk’s declaration here in verse 4b. Habakkuk 2:4b is also referenced in the New Testament in Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; and Hebrews 10:38.

In Romans 1:17 the apostle Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4b in his exposition of the saving power of the Christian gospel. Romans 1:16-17 is the theme statement for his letter to the Christians at Rome:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

Paul appropriates Habakkuk 2:4b as the biblical foundation for the gospel. The foundation for righteousness is genuine faith. The righteous are those who trust God’s righteousness and not their own righteousness. The connection of Romans 1:17 with the original context of Habakkuk 2:4b is that genuinely righteous faith perseveres in trusting the vision from God that the prophet was commanded to write down. That vision is synonymous with the word of God. Genuine faith trusts the word of God through and through. This is how the righteous would live by faith, in contrast to the Babylonians who trusted only in themselves.

In Galatians 3:11 Paul is making the argument that those who do not continuously live in perfect conformity with the law of Moses cannot be counted as righteous.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written: Everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them. (Gal 3:10-12)

In other words, there is no salvation in the law. There is salvation only by faith. In connection with the original context of Habakkuk, the righteous persevere in their faith in God, in contrast to the Babylonians who only trusted in themselves. In Paul’s day the righteous would live by faith, in contrast to those who trust in their own self-righteousness in the law.

In the Hebrews 10:37-38 passage the writer incorporates elements from Isaiah 26:21 and Habakkuk 2:3-4. The immediate context of Hebrews 10:37-38 is closer to the original context of Habakkuk 2:3-4 in that the writer of Hebrews is addressing the theme of patient endurance through suffering. The major difference between Habakkuk 2:3-4 and Hebrews 10:37-38 is that in Habakkuk God’s people were going to suffer because of their unfaithfulness to the Lord, whereas in Hebrews God’s people were suffering because of their faithfulness to the Lord. J. J. M. Roberts has commented,

Hebrews 10:38, in particular, remains very close to the original intent of the Habakkuk passage when the author of Hebrews cites Habakkuk in order to encourage despairing Christians, to reassure them that God’s promised intervention will surely come at its appropriate time. (Nahum, 111)

Verse 5. The Babylonians have become intoxicated with their own pride, presumption, imperial ambitions, and insatiable appetite for more power. “Wine,” in addition to the inflated ego mentioned in verse 4, has betrayed the Babylonian leader into thinking Babylon is invincible. The more he takes, the more he wants. His appetite is never satisfied. Babylon is compared to “Sheol.” Proverbs 30:15b-16 says, “Three things are never satisfied; four never say, ‘Enough!’: Sheol; a childless womb; earth, which is never satisfied with water; and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’”Sheol is an Old Testament term for the grave and is synonymous with death. The Babylonians have no self-control, and neither does their leader Nebuchadnezzar II. They will never stop devouring everything in their path. They will devour Judah because of its sins, but God will stop them at His appointed time.

While the prophet Habakkuk has been given bad news of impending judgment on Judah for the many sins about which the prophet complained in 1:2-4, there will be judgment for the Babylonians as well. These judgments are written in the form of five woe oracles in verses 6-20. “The set of five ‘woe oracles’ constitutes the speech to be delivered by ‘the reciter’ from the vision written on the tablets” (Andersen, Habakkuk, 225). The five oracles share the common theme of divine judgment on Babylon for all its deeds. Habakkuk can be assured that God will hold the Babylonians accountable for all their sins as a nation. In the first woe oracle (vv. 6-8) Babylon will be plundered by those it had plundered; in the second woe oracle (vv. 9-11) their security will become unsecured; in the third woe oracle (vv. 12-14) their civilization will be replaced with devastation; in the fourth woe oracle (vv. 15-17) their glory will be turned to shame; and in the fifth woe oracle (vv. 18-20) their idols are exposed as worthless in light of the Lord who is the one true God.

The plunderer will be plundered (vv. 6-8). Verse 6a transitions into a rhetorical question that is intended to set up the woe in this oracle. The rhetorical question contains three words that prepare the reader for the content of all five oracles. All the nations who had been confiscated by Babylon’s imperial ambitions will have their say against the nation. They will “taunt” Babylon with “mockery and riddles.” The word taunt is used in Micah 2:4 to refer to the ridicule spoken against the recipients of divine judgment. In Psalm 44:14 Israel complains to God that its calamity has become a taunt or a joke among the nations. Mockery is related to the verb “to scorn” (Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English, 539). Riddles refers to enigmatic or perplexing sayings and together with taunts and mockery forms the idea of Babylon becoming the joke or byword of the nations it once terrorized (ibid., 295). O. Palmer Robertson has commented,

Israel itself had been warned that if it did not keep the commandments of God, it would become the object of taunts among all the nations of the earth (Deut. 28:37; 1 K. 9:7). Now the Lord declares that the day shall come when all those nations whom the Chaldeans have bullied shall mock their conqueror. (Nahum, 185)

Verses 6b-8 contain the first oracle of woe against Babylon. The Babylonians have ruthlessly taken wealth not rightly belonging to them. As a result, the day will come when nations that remain will come to collect what was rightly theirs. Like creditors who come to collect their goods, they will plunder the Babylonian plunderers. What the Neo-Babylonian Empire has done to the nations it conquered will be done to it.

God does not forget the evil that men do. Neither individuals nor nations get away with wrongdoing. He will exact the appropriate punishment at the appointed time (v. 3). These Babylonian practices are eerily similar to many practices used in modern societies where lenders use excessive interest payments and exploitative lending practices to cripple and take advantage of those who are financially vulnerable. In our society there is no shortage of lending institutions that use deceptive marketing practices to lure unwitting customers for the purpose of making as much money as possible and to take as much as they can get away with from honest, hardworking people. Proverbs 14:31 says, “The one who oppresses the poor person insults his Maker, but one who is kind to the needy honors Him.”

The secure will become unsecured (vv. 9-11). The second woe oracle charges Babylon with using ill-gotten wealth to build security against the threat of disaster. The theme of ill-gotten wealth in this second oracle builds on the first oracle, which dealt with Babylon having taken what did not rightfully belong to it (6b). The Babylonians not only employed force but also fraud to enrich themselves. They practiced the exploitative imposition of crippling tribute on conquered nations (Andersen, Habakkuk, 240). The success and security they intend to achieve will not happen. All their security will become unsecured when what they have done to other nations is done to them. Disaster will surely reach them. Whoever lives on ill-gotten gain will be put to shame. Verse 10 is similar to Proverbs 1:18-19: “But they set an ambush to kill themselves; they attack their own lives. Such are the paths of all who make profit dishonestly; it takes the lives of those who receive it.” The Babylonians have sinned against themselves in that dishonest gain is self-defeating.

Verse 11 is reminiscent of the phrase “If walls could talk.” “Here the rafter is not responding to the stone; it is joining in, making an antiphon. The wood and stone bear united witness against the tyrant” (Andersen, Habakkuk, 241). The stolen wealth with which Babylon built its empire will cry out against it. Roberts aptly comments,

Two witnesses continue to cry out against the oppression of the Babylonian, even after he has cut off many peoples. The city built on oppression will not be secure, for even if the accusing voice of the oppressed peoples is suppressed, the very stones and beams of which the city is constructed will take up their cry, and the implication is that God will not ignore indefinitely such a continuous cry (cf. Gen 18:20-21). (Roberts, Nahum, 122)

This outcry for justice from the inanimate stones and rafters is reminiscent of Genesis 4:10 where, in the aftermath of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, God said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!” God hears the cry for justice, and He will defend justice by punishing injustice.

Their civilization will be replaced by devastation ( vv. 12-14). Bloodshed and injustice were the foundation of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. When a civilization is built on a foundation of violence and injustice, it has already sowed the seeds for its own eventual destruction. Proverbs 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Tyrants build their kingdoms on violence, oppression, deception, abuse, fear, intimidation, confusion, uncertainty, revenge, cronyism, corruption, and the like. God will cause the forced labor of the oppressed to become the fuel for a fire that will burn down the civilization. All the hard labor spent to build the corrupt civilization will not save it in the day of divine judgment. All the effort and labor will have been wasted.

Habakkuk in verse 14 says, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord’s glory, as the waters cover the sea.” This has been a difficult verse for many scholars to understand in relation to verses 12-13. Perhaps the glory of the Lord will be seen in the judgment that the Lord will bring on the Neo-Babylonian Empire by using Cyrus and the Persian Empire to conquer them. God’s glory will be on display when He brings down the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. “Only when the problem of the wicked is resolved will the glory of God fill the earth. Only when righteous judgment rewards the wicked according to their deservings will true knowledge of God’s holiness shine forth in all its splendor” (Robertson, Nahum, 198).

Their glory will be turned to shame (vv. 15-17). Babylon in its imperial ambitions made the nations drink from the metaphorical cup of its anger. The metaphor of drunkenness is powerful because it illustrates the hideous nature of Babylonian imperial aggression. The oppressor sought to intoxicate and then rape, ravish, and systematically strip away everything of value from the nations it conquered. Babylon’s purpose was to expose all the riches and wealth of the nations so it could take all that away. The Babylonians were a nation of predators always seeking prey; they had an insatiable appetite for plunder (cf. Nah 3:1). Inducing the nations to drunkenness made them weak and vulnerable to attack. The metaphor of nakedness indicates the shame, humiliation, and destitution brought on by the Babylonian onslaught. But God will turn the Babylonians’ glory to shame. What the Babylonians aspire to and expect will be shockingly reversed. They will become drunk and exposed in the same way they have done to others because of the cup of the Lord’s wrath. They will be overwhelmed by the violence with which they overwhelmed other nations. This is a stunning reversal of expectations for Babylon and its king. Babylon will receive what it deserves because God is just. One cannot resist seeing the eschatological implications of divine judgment against Babylon. In the future Babylon will be ultimately judged by the Lord according to the angelic announcement in Revelation 18:2-3:

He cried in a mighty voice:

It has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast. For all the nations have drunk the wine of her sexual immorality, which brings wrath. The kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from her excessive luxury.

In Habakkuk’s time the Neo-Babylonian Empire would be judged by the Lord for its brutal attempt at world domination. The prophet can rest assured knowing that, even though God would employ the Babylonians as a tool of discipline against Judah, it was only for the redemptive purpose of purging the evil from among His people and not ultimately to destroy His people. In the future, however, God will ultimately destroy Babylon.

Their idols are worthless before the Lord (vv. 18-20). The Babylonians were known for their worship of the god Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon. But Habakkuk exposes the reality of idols and idol worship. Idols, including Marduk, were only a creation of depraved human imagination. Idols represent gods that do not exist. The prophet begins the final woe oracle with a rhetorical question, the answer to which is negative (Roberts, Nahum, 126). What use is an image after the craftsman has finished making it? Absolutely none! The idol cannot speak. It cannot move itself. It has no breath in it. It cannot save. So what’s the point? The one who created the idol trusts in the idol, so it is all in the mind and heart of the worshiper. Humans have been imagining idols to be real since time immemorial. But this does not make idols true. Habakkuk calls the idol “a teacher of lies.” The lies are all in the mind of the idolatrous believer. The prophet Isaiah has one of the most vivid descriptions of the folly of idolatry:

All who make idols are nothing, and what they treasure does not profit. Their witnesses do not see or know anything, so they will be put to shame. Who makes a god or casts a metal image for no profit? Look, all its worshipers will be put to shame, and the craftsmen are humans. They all will assemble and stand; they all will be startled and put to shame.

The ironworker labors over the coals, shapes the idol with hammers, and works it with his strong arm. Also he grows hungry and his strength fails; he doesn’t drink water and is faint. The woodworker stretches out a measuring line, he outlines it with a stylus; he shapes it with chisels and outlines it with a compass. He makes it according to a human likeness, like a beautiful person, to dwell in a temple. He cuts down cedars for his use, or he takes a cypress or an oak. He lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a laurel, and the rain makes it grow. It serves as fuel for man. He takes some of it and warms himself; also he kindles a fire and bakes bread; he even makes it into a god and worships it; he makes an idol from it and bows down to it. He burns half of it in a fire, and he roasts meat on that half. He eats the roast and is satisfied. He warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm, I see the blaze.” He makes a god or his idol with the rest of it. He bows down to it and worships; he prays to it, “Save me, for you are my god.” Such people do not comprehend and cannot understand, for He has shut their eyes so they cannot see, and their minds so they cannot understand. No one reflects, no one has the perception or insight to say, “I burned half of it in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted meat and ate. I will make something detestable with the rest of it, and I will bow down to a block of wood.” He feeds on ashes. His deceived mind has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself, or say, “Isn’t there a lie in my right hand?” (Isa 44:9-20)

Isaiah gives one of the clearest expositions of the folly of idolatry in the Bible. This is why Habakkuk says in verse 19, “Woe to him who says to wood: Wake up! or to mute stone: Come alive!” The idol worshiper cannot even realize that his idol is nothing more than a fantasy. Babylon was blinded by its own idolatry, and in due time it would incur the divine consequences of trusting its false gods.

Verse 20. The prophet contrasts the vanity of idols with the awesome presence of the one true God. “But the Lord is in His holy temple; let everyone on earth be silent in His presence.” What a fitting doxology to the dialogue between the Lord and the prophet! The Lord is not mute, dumb, deaf, and powerless like the idol gods. He is enthroned in His temple. He is reigning over the universe He created. He is sovereign in all things. God is in control even when everything and everyone seems out of control. The whole world should be in silent reverence before His holy presence. The Lord’s presence in His temple means that He has not forsaken His people. His apparent silence should not be mistaken for abandonment of Judah (1:2). He will act to fulfill His purpose at the appointed time (2:3).

Habakkuk began his dialogue with the Lord in the form of a frustrated complaint about the state of affairs in Judah and God’s apparent silence about it. Now the prophet is hushed in reverential awe before the Lord in His temple (Robertson, Nahum, 211). When we find ourselves in the presence of the Lord in worship, it can profoundly transform our perspective on all things in this world. When vexed by the sinfulness of society, Christians must go to the house of the Lord and worship Him in order to gain the strength, wisdom, and insight we need to rightly understand the world we are passing through as sojourners.

These five woe oracles form the vision that Habakkuk was commanded to write as an answer to resolve the questions of his perplexed mind.