Habakkuk 1:12-2:1
PERPLEXING PROBLEMS WITH SOVEREIGNTY
[1 Chronicles 29: 11 & 12]
Habakkuk is a profound book that delves deeply into the mysteries of God. This passage is Habakkuk’s response to the preceding divine revelation concerning God’s future plans to bring about correction. God’s amazing disclosure left Habakkuk even more perplexed and bewildered. After acknowledging God’s ultimate justice the prophet humbly asked in worship the hard issue of how the wicked could be used to punish those less evil than themselves (CIT). He said this apparent moral contradiction needed further clarification from God.
Let’s look at Habakkuk’s bold questions to the Sovereign Lord.
I. Faith in God’s Ultimate Justice, 1:12.
II. Apparent Injustice, 1:13-17.
III. Awaiting Reproof, 2:1.
Verse 12 expresses the prophet’s faith and struggles. Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Thou, O Lord, hast appointed them to judge; and Thou, O Rock, hast established them to correct.
However devastating the divine judgment may sound, the prophet drew consolation and hope from God’s holiness and faithfulness. In a sea of confusion, Habakkuk clung to the life buoy of God’s holy character. In a chaotic storm the prophet grasped the rock and promises of his steadfast Lord.
Therefore the prophet directs his appeal to God addressing Him by names that represent His character. Looking to God and contemplating His character is what any Christian should do when He doesn’t understand, especially when He doesn’t understand God’s workings. The Everlasting Lord (Ps. 90:2) would not allow His people to die. God has a commitment to His people and will not allow them to be wiped out nor their soul to be extinguished. Even if Habakkuk could not understand all that God did, he found comfort in knowing the nature of the God he served.
God’s holiness provides a basis for our trusting Him to help. He is the Holy One who cannot do wrong. The Lord who is in control of history. The Babylonians did not simply rise up on their own. God raised them up to punish or judge Israel for the nation’s injustice. Punish here means correction, a redemptive chastening, to assist Israel to learn what is just or right. Man may determine by his conduct how he will encounter God’s sovereignty, but he cannot escape it.
Habakkuk’s confidence to address God because of the distressing revelation comes from His personal relationship with God. He calls Him my God and my Holy One. His Rock would not change but would remain his foundation, his fortress and his changeless stability.
II. APPARENT INJUSTICE, 13-17.
Yet a burning problem remained in Habakkuk’s heart. How could the everlasting Holy One utilize so wicked a people to administer discipline? Habakkuk begins to analyze this seeming contradiction.
Verse 13 is a classic statement of why evil appears to flourish unchecked by a just and holy God? Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, And Thou cannot not look on wickedness with favor. Why dost Thou look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why art Thou silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they?
Habakkuk asks the Lord to realize that He can’t use the Babylonians to judge Judah. They are worse than we are! Here the prophet’s focus seems to shift from targeting or permitting of a sin, and a questioning God’s justice, to a questioning of God’s sovereignty, or God doing what He deems right to do.
In light of God’s pure and holy character how can He tolerate the treacherous? Why would God allow such a wicked people to devour those more civilized than they? It seems like a perversion of justice. Sinful Judah’s wickedness was dwarfed by the atrocities committed by the Babylonians. How could God display His sovereignty in such a way? (Job 19:7).
Wrestling with challenges to our personal belief is a way God grows our faith. Christians should not avoid tough questions, but honestly face them and work through them.
In verse 14 Habakkuk begins to more fully voice his objects through the use of fishing metaphors. Why have Thou made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them?
As in verse 13 the existence of calamity and evil in the world is related without hesitation as permitted by the Sovereign Lord who is in control of human destiny (Isa. 45:7; Lam. 3:37-38; Amos 3:6; Rom. 9-11). The comparison of men to fish implies a treatment that is subhuman and vulnerable. Helpless as fish Judah is easy prey for the powerful invader. Sea creatures are equally helpless and lack the organization or leadership that exists in human society. The people are pictured as so helpless that they won’t even organize themself for their own self-preservation. God had left them on their own without a leader to guide them out of their helpless state. Judah could never survive an attack from the savage Babylonians, unless God gave them a leader to show the way out.
God did recognize His people’s need for proper leadership. He sent us the Good Shepherd to lead us in the everlasting way and care for us in the journey. He sent us the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Verse 15 lists three abuses of these fishermen. The Chaldeans bring all of them up with a hook, drag them away with their net, and gather them together in their fishing net. Therefore, they rejoice and are glad. (15)
To the Babylonians, life was cheap, and prisoners of war were expendable. With vivid imagery the prophet depicts how the Chaldeans callously take captives as a fisherman plies his trade. The hook, the net and dragging represent the armies and weapons with which the Chaldeans carried out their military campaigns.
The verbs rejoice (sâmah) and be glad (gil) are worship terms which depict them as glorifying their strength and power as what brought them victory. They worship their own military prowess. Their value system was one of self-promotion and self-deification.
What makes you rejoice and become glad? Is there something that gives you greater joy and satisfaction than the Lord God? Be careful that you do are not expressing worship to it in God’s eyes.
The idea of worshiping their military prowess is even clearer in verse 16. Therefore, they offer a sacrifice to their net. And burn incense to their fishing net; because through these things their catch is large, and their food is plentiful.
The undertones of worship in verse 15 become explicit in verse 16. The two verses are linked by the repeating of the word therefore. The verb sacrifice denotes the slaughter of living creatures, usually in the context of worship and service offered to deity. The form of the verb offer (zibbeah) normally denotes false or idolatrous worship (2 Chron. 28:4; 33:22; Ps. 106:38; Hosea 4:13-14; 11:2) as does burn incense (gitter).
The fisherman’s net was a symbol of Babylonian’s military might. They worshiped the tools that were the means of their wealth, taken from other people and places. The instruments of war brought plentiful food and spoils to the Babylonians. Their conquest gave them luxuries. So those barbaric people paid homage to the weapons that contributed to their prosperity (sword worship was common in the ancient world). The sacrificing to their means of military success is the same as declaring them their gods. They made a god of the source of their standard of living. Habakkuk exposes the worship of their source of power and prosperity.
Idolatry is not limited to those who bring sacrifices or burn incense to inanimate objects. People often pay homage to position, power, or prosperity or to the agency or ability that provided them their coveted status. It can become their god. We as Christians need to examine our allegiances when we begin to draw away from God to more fuller integrate ourselves into an affluent society.
[In every time and every place, cultures centers their life on the most obvious source of their strength and prosperity. Sea going cultures have sea and storm gods. Agricultural cultures have rain and grain gods. Hunting cultures have totems and spirits that control the animals. Technological societies such as ours do not name them gods but elevate, which is the essence of worship, values that lead to greater control over life; wealth, information, and military technology. NIV Application Com. James Bruckner, 221]
The prophet then asks God, in verse 17, if the idolatrous greedy fishermen of Babylonian will ever be stopped. Will they therefore empty their net and continually slay nations without sparing?
This verse reverts to the question posed in verse 13. Can their injustice be tolerated by a God of justice? They are allowed to perpetually empty their nets so they can fill them again, and again and again. When would God put an end to the Babylonians’ greed for conquest. The phrase without sparing indicates the refusal to hold back or refrain from over-kill. The Babylonians’ unrestrained self-will produced in them a hard insensitivity, making them a merciless devourer of nations.
How could God leave such a ruthless people in power when they openly worship that power as their god? It seemed unreasonable that the Lord would allow such spiritually bankrupt people to conquer His people in the land where His own temple stood. Habakkuk was perplexed at God’s sovereign design.
We can all relate when we see others who we deem less worthy getting ahead. We ask how come they got a new house or car or job we ask. Now Lord You know I come to church faithfully. But I haven’t seen them go to church for a while! Why are You blessing them-when You should be blessing me?
Like us, Habakkuk was a questioner-but we are about to see him do something incredible unwise in chapter 2.
III. AWAITING REPROOF, 2:1.
In Chapter 2, verse 1, Habakkuk finishes his argument and waits for God to answer. I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart; And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, and how I may reply when I am reproved.
Habakkuk had lodged his complaint concerning God using an ungodly nation to discipline and correct His own people and now he boldly waits for God’s reply. Like an alert sentinel standing in a watch tower to detect the first signs of an enemies approach, Habakkuk stationed himself on the ramparts ... to see what God would say to him. He had registered his complaint and now he resolved to position himself to obtain the answer. He needed an answer and he was determined to get one. The reply is expected in the form of a rebuke or a correction by which right is restored.
Habakkuk has gone as far in his reasoning as he can and his daring should. Now he needs a further word from the Lord if he is to go on. So he waits for that instruction. It is a wise man who takes his questions about God to God for answers. It is a wiser man who leaves them there and doesn’t continually press the point but awaits God’s replies.
CONCLUSION
We do well to bring our doubts and perplexities to the Lord as did Habakkuk and then leave them with Him for final disposition and solution. He never fails. We understand Habakkuk’s dilemma, and his wanting God to spare the people to whom he ministered instead of using the unrighteous to discipline those more moral. We too should be open and genuine before God with our difficulties and like Habakkuk should wait upon God to hear His word to us. But we should also remember what Paul wrote to the believers in Romans 11:33-36. Read.
The prime question of the book can be paraphrased from verse 17 as, Are You going to keep on tolerating the wicked over those who are better than them? If so, for how long? The answer we will find in chapter 2 will be “Yes,” and for a while. Yahweh is aware of all these issues and will offer a clearer perspective on justice and how it will be accomplished.
