Habakkuk1chapter 1

Not a sermon but a dialogue, the prophet questions God twice. First complaint: 'O Jehovah, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?' Judah is full of violence, and 'the law is slacked, and justice doth never go forth.' God's answer is worse than the silence: 'I am working a work in your days, which ye will not believe though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation', swifter than leopards, fiercer than evening wolves, guilty men 'whose might is his god.' Paul quotes that warning at Antioch (Acts 13:41). Hence the second question: thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, why use a worse man to punish a better?

Drawn from Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory, Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary, John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and John Calvin, Commentaries.