Habakkuk
Chapter 1
The End of Injustice: Impatience and Announcement
This is the message and the vision of Habakkuk, the prophet.
The end of Injustice: Impatience and Proclamation (Is 21:1-10) 2How long, O Lord, will I cry for help while you pay no attention to me? I denounce the oppression, and you do not save.
Why do you make me witness injustice? Are you pleased to watch tyranny? All I see is outrage, violence, and quarrels.
That is why the law has been ignored, and only decrees are no longer issued. The wicked overpower the righteous, and they receive unfair sentences.
Look, traitors, and pay attention; be amazed, because I will do in your own days something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you.
I am going to call the Chaldeans, that terrifying and violent people who raid to the ends of the earth to seize others’ lands.
I call a terrible and dangerous nation that obeys no law but its own will.
Their horses are faster than leopards, fiercer than wolves in the plain; their riders gallop on, coming from afar; they swoop like eagles descending on prey.
When they charge, driven by the desert wind, they gather prisoners like sand.
These people mock kings and laugh at princes; they dismiss fortified cities by building up an embankment and seizing them.
Thus, they come and go like the wind! Their strength is their god!
Plea and Description 12But you, are you not the Lord from old ages? You, my holy God, cannot die. You have set these people to serve your justice, and you have made them as firm as a rock, to carry out your punishment.
The Lord, your eyes are too pure to tolerate wickedness, and you cannot look on oppression. Why, then, do you look on treacherous people and watch in silence while the evildoer swallows up one better than himself?
You treat human beings like fish in the sea, like reptiles who are nobody’s concern.
This nation catches everyone on its hook, pulls them out with its net, and heaps them up in its dragnet.
Pleased and delighted with their catch, they offer sacrifices to their net and burn incense to their dragnets, since these have supplied them with plenty of fish and abundant food.
Will they then continue, endlessly emptying their nets, slaughtering nations without mercy?
Commentaries
Title of the Book.
This book shows a dialogue between the prophet and God. The prophet questions the Lord about the injustice in the kingdom of Judah and the suffering the people endure due to the cruelty of the Babylonians.
The end of Injustice: Impatience and Proclamation.
As expressed in Psalm 94:3, the prophet cries out to God in the face of the profound injustice and corruption that the righteous must endure, probably during the reign of Jehoiakim (609-598 B.C.). Habakkuk complains about God’s seeming passivity in the face of evil (cf. Job 19:7). In response, God announces judgment for Judah, allowing it to be purified through the invasion of a fierce and ruthless people: the Chaldeans, also known as the Babylonians.
Plea and Description.
In response to God’s reply, the prophet persists in voicing his complaint, highlighting that the Babylonians are unfaithful and unjust (13), idolatrous (16), and cruel (17b). From his perspective, the punishment divinely announced seems excessive and unfair, intensifying the suffering of the righteous. Like Job, Habakkuk seeks to understand God’s actions throughout history. His prayer is persistent, bold, and even daring, yet always filled with confidence and hope (cf. Job 19:25-27).