Image: "Old and Tired", 2020, Sunflower Farm Scene, Manchester, Md
Habakkuk 1:3–4 Why do You show me iniquity, And cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; There is strife, and contention arises. 4 Therefore the law is powerless, And justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.
Habakkuk 1:6–7 For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, A bitter and hasty nation Which marches through the breadth of the earth, To possess dwelling places that are not theirs. 7 They are terrible and dreadful; Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.
Habakkuk 1:13 You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he?
Habakkuk 2:1 I will stand my watch And set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected.
Habakkuk 2:3–4 (NKJV) For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry. 4 “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.
Habakkuk 2:14 For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 2:20 “But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
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Habakkuk is simply a wonderful book, at so many levels. At the "lowest" level it is superbly crafted. Across the millennia separating us we can yet know and understand Habakkuk himself. His unsettled heart and anguished emotional pain are plain to us. We know how it feels to see wickedness and lawlessness and horrible perversions apparently prosper (e.g. human trafficking, child slavery). We begin to self-doubt: "Am I just a fool for thinking that good is supposed to triumph over evil?" Habakkuk was, in many ways, a man after our own heart and his beautiful, impassioned poetry clearly communicates with us.
At the "next" level we have to face the awful sovereignty of God. "Awful" is deliberately chosen. Habakkuk recoils in horror at the judgment that God is bringing on his own people. He wanted the horror to cease in Judah. He wanted the wicked to be punished. But he was confronted with the wholesale terror that would accompany this judgment. Men, women, and children would be slaughtered or stripped of all dignity and terror would grip the hearts of all. Any person who is deeply disturbed by the wickedness so evidently multiplying in our world cannot help but want something done about it. But what if the method that is used to punish the current wickedness is through an instrument of even greater wickedness (1:13). We yet cringe at the terrible atrocities committed by the victorious Japanese during their conquest of the Far East in WWII. To this day South Koreans still remember the tales of their ancestors who lived under Japanese occupation. Americans died in the thousands due to the fanatical resistance of dug-in Japanese soldiers fighting an obviously lost cause. We know all this and yet still, when we see the video of a mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima, something inside us cringes. We wonder if this was justified. (I think it is but that's not the point)
Habakkuk was in a quandary. He longed for righteous judgment but he quailed before the revelation of it. Any person who truly reflects on the judgment stored up on all wickedness by the angry God who will bring it should feel the same.
Habakkuk cries out to God for an explanation: "How can a righteous God justify using these Chaldeans to punish His own people?" In essence, he is asking "Are You really just?" I love Habakkuk's story here. He knows that God does not owe any man an answer for what He does. He knows that God could very well, as He did with Job, curtly bring Habakkuk to task, and even angrily denounce his impertinence. Habakkuk knows all this but his very human soul was so inflamed by what he saw that he could not let it go. Habakkuk asks his question and then he retires to his watchtower to see if he would survive God's answer.
God's tenderness to Habakkuk is heartwarming in the extreme. He knew that Habakkuk was a "tender reed", that his question had been asked in true humility and submission and so He responds graciously.
God would indeed use the Chaldeans but in doing so He would judge them also. God's plans to deal with wickedness in this world are far more encompassing than just that of His chosen people. We live knowing that we, like the Chaldeans, do not deserve God's mercy. But, unlike the Chaldeans, we, along with the believing Jews, will see victory through judgment. God's purging of sin in this world would not mean that every sinner would perish. God's angel of death would pass over all those who sincerely clung to Him in faith. "The just shall live in his faith". (2:4) Though indeed his sins may be as scarlet, yet God would wash him white as snow. All of those for whom the Messiah would suffer would not eternally perish but inherit eternal life. God would prove Himself just... in every instance. All sin will be punished and receive its due wages, either in our own person or in the Person of our substitute.
God tenderly revealed to Habakkuk that he could calm his heart. God was indeed just... in every particular and therefore the entire world should keep silent before Him. (2:20)
Jesus, in the Garden prior to His atoning death, faced God's awful judgment on sin even as did Habakkuk but to an infinitely greater extent. "Must it be this way?" He asked, even as He knew that it must be. "Then, not My will, but Thy will be done", He prayed. Habakkuk's response was along the same lines, and so should ours be.
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