Habakkukchapter 1
17 verses · Habakkuk · 609 to 605 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.
It stands in I am raising up the Chaldeans, bitter and hasty, verses 5 to 11.
The chapter
Chapter summary
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?
Context
Prophecy · Habakkuk · Habakkuk overview
The world behind this chapter
Habakkuk 1The history
Josiah's reforms had been the last good thing to happen to Judah, and they died with him at Megiddo in 609 BC. His son Jehoiakim was installed by Egypt, then had to switch loyalty to Babylon, and Jeremiah accuses him of building himself a paneled palace with unpaid labor. Habakkuk's opening complaint about violence, strife, and a paralyzed law matches that reign exactly.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
In 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Egyptian army at Carchemish and the whole corridor changed hands. The Chaldeans, the Babylonian ruling group, went from a rebel province of Assyria to the great power of the world in about twenty years.
God's answer to Habakkuk's first complaint is the shock of the chapter: I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation. The description that follows is a portrait of a professional army, horses swifter than leopards, faces set to advance, gathering captives like sand, scoffing at kings, heaping up earth ramps to take fortified cities. Siege ramps are exactly what Babylon built, and one survives at Lachish from an earlier Assyrian siege.
So Habakkuk asks the harder question. He can accept judgment; what he cannot accept is that God would use a nation more wicked than Judah to do it. "Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?"
This book is unusual for a prophet: it is not addressed to the people at all. It is an argument with God, written down.
What it meant to them
For Judeans, this chapter said out loud what everyone was thinking and nobody was praying. How long? Why don't you save? Why is your answer worse than my problem?
That the complaint made it into Scripture, unedited, told them something about the God they were complaining to. He did not require them to pretend.
Sources cited
- D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626–556 B.C.) in the British Museum
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
Where the chapter sits
Habakkuk 1 falls in Two complaints, two answers (chapters 1–2). Why does God tolerate Judah's wickedness? He will use Babylon. But how can the LORD use a nation more wicked than Judah? The just shall live by his faith; Babylon too will fall.
After it: The prayer-psalm, chapters 3.
The whole shape of Habakkuk→The structure of this chapter
People1
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. How long shall I cry and you will not hear?
1. (vv. 1-2)
Habakkuk 1:1
“The burden - On the word “burden” see the note at Nah 1:1. Which Habakkuk the prophet did see - The prophet’s name signifies “strong embrace.” The word in its intensive form is used both of God’s enfolding the soul within His tender supporting love , and of man clinging and holding fast to divine wisdom Pro 4:8. It fits in with the subject of his prophecy, faith, cleaving fast to God amid the perplexities of things seen.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Habakkuk 1:1
“Onus quod vidit Chabakuk Propheta. The greater part of interpreters refer this burden to the Chaldeans and the monarchy of Babylon; but of this view I do not approve, and a good reason compels me to dissent from their opinion: for as the Prophet addresses the Jews, and without any addition calls his prophecy a burden, there is no doubt but that he refers to them.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Habakkuk 1:2
“O Lord, how long shall I cry - The prophet feels himself strongly excited against the vices which he beheld; and which, it appears from this verse, he had often declaimed against, but in vain; the people continued in their vices, and God in his longsuffering. Habakkuk begins his prophecy under a similar feeling, and nearly in similar words, as Juvenal did his Satires: - Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquamne reponam? Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? Sat. 1:1. “Shall I always be a hearer only? Shall I never reply?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
the prophet did see: The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see sets the whole book as something seen rather than merely heard, a vision the prophet must carry before he can answer it. His first cry breaks the pattern the other eleven prophets open with, no oracle against a foreign nation here, only a man asking the Lord how long violence can go unanswered. Henry and Keil read the posture itself as instructive, faith stationed at its post, complaining to God rather than about him, which is why the book ends in worship rather than despair.
2. (vv. 3-4)
Habakkuk 1:3
“Why dost Thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold - , or rather, “Why beholdest Thou grievance?” God seemed to reverse what He had said by Balaam Num 23:21, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, and hath not seen grievousness in Israel”; and in the Psalms Psa 10:14, “Thou hast seen, for thou (emphatic) beholdest grievousness and wrong, to put it in Thy hand,” i. e., Thou layest it up in Thy hand, to cast it back on the head of the evildoer.”
Habakkuk 1:4
“Therefore--because Thou dost suffer such crimes to go unpunished. law is slacked--is chilled. It has no authority and secures no respect. judgment--justice. wrong judgment proceedeth--Decisions are given contrary to right.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
4 more voices on this verse
Habakkuk 1:4
“Therefore - Because the wicked go on with impunity. The law - The whole law, moral, ceremonial, and judicial. Is slacked - Is slighted, and not observed.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Habakkuk 1:4
“The law is slacked - They pay no attention to it; it has lost all its vigor, its restraining and correcting power, it is not executed; right judgment is never pronounced; and the poor righteous man complains in vain that he is grievously oppressed by the wicked, and by those in power and authority. That the utmost depravity prevailed in the land of Judah is evident from these verses; and can we wonder, then, that God poured out such signal judgments upon them?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Habakkuk 1:4
“Therefore the law is slacked,....”
Habakkuk 1:4
“7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. 8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
cause me to behold grievance?: The prophet names what he sees plainly, iniquity, grievance, spoiling, violence, strife and contention crowding his sight, and the law itself slacked so that judgment never goes forth. Gill and Clarke read this as Judah's own corruption under a wicked king, most likely Jehoiakim, the courts captured so that the wicked compass about the righteous and wrong judgment proceeds unchecked. The complaint is domestic before it is international, God's own people, not yet the Chaldeans, are Habakkuk's first grief.
B. I am raising up the Chaldeans, bitter and hasty
1. (vv. 5-6)
Habakkuk 1:5
“Behold ye among the heathen - The whole tone of the words suddenly changes. The Jews flattered themselves that, being the people of God, He would not fulfill His threats upon them. They had become like the pagan in wickedness; God bids them look out among them for the instrument of His displeasure. It was an aggravation of their punishment, that God, who had once chosen them, would now choose these whom He had not chosen, to chasten them.”
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:5
“The Israelite unbelievers would not credit the prophecy as to the fearfulness of the destruction to be wrought by the Chaldeans, nor afterwards the deliverance promised from that nation. So analogously, in Paul's day, the Jews would not credit the judgment coming on them by the Romans, nor the salvation proclaimed through Jesus.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Habakkuk 1:5
- Quoted inActs 13:41‘Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you.’”
'Behold, ye despisers, and wonder' (warning, 'that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets')
Habakkuk 1:6
“I raise up--not referring to God's having brought the Chaldeans from their original seats to Babylonia (see on Isa 23:13), for they had already been upwards of twenty years (since Nabopolassar's era) in political power there; but to His being about now to raise them up as the instruments of God's "work" of judgment on the Jews (2Ch 36:6).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
I will work a work in your days: Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously answers the complaint with a work no one will believe when told, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation. The answer is worse than the question, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown and Keil observe, since the remedy for Judah's injustice is a nation more violent still, marching to possess dwellingplaces that are not theirs. The same words are taken up by Paul at Acts 13:41 of the unbelief that meets the gospel, the verse's own historical referent kept intact, Babylon rising under the Chaldean kings in the seventh century before Christ.
2. (vv. 7-8)
Habakkuk 1:7
“They are terrible - איום 'âyôm occurs here only and Son 6:4, Son 6:10, compared with the “bannered host,” but the root is common in אימה 'ēymâh. And dreadful - He describes them, first in themselves, then in act. They are terrible, and strike fear through their very being, their known character, before they put it forth in act.”
Habakkuk 1:8
“Their horses also are swifter than the leopards - The Chaldean cavalry are proverbial for swiftness, courage, etc. In Jeremiah, Jer 4:13, it is said, speaking of Nebuchadnezzar, “His chariots are as a whirlwind; his horses are swifter than eagles.” Oppian, speaking of the horses bred about the Euphrates, says, “They are by nature warhorses, and so intrepid that neither the sight nor the roaring of the lion appals them; and, besides, they are astonishingly fleet.” The leopard, of all quadrupeds, is allowed to be the swiftest. The evening wolves - The wolf is remarkable for his quick sight.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:8
“Their horses also are swifter than the leopards,.... Creatures remarkable for their swiftness: these are creatures born of the mating of a he panther and a lioness, and not of a lion and a she panther, as some have affirmed; and which adultery is highly resented by the lion; nor will he suffer it to go unrevenged, as Pliny (u) and Philostratus (w) observe: those thus begotten differ from common lions in this, that they have no manes: the panthers are the creatures here meant, which are very swift, as Bochart (x) from various authors has observed.”
terrible and dreadful: Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves describes an empire answerable to no law above its own will, self-authorized because it recognizes no higher throne. The catalogue of predators that follows, horses swifter than the leopards, fiercer than the evening wolves, horsemen flying as the eagle that hasteth to eat, paints an invasion as pure appetite rather than mere strategy. Keil and Pusey read the imagery as deliberately drawn from nature's most efficient killers, the description answering Habakkuk's fear before he can voice it again, the cure looking worse than the disease.
3. (vv. 9-11)
Habakkuk 1:9
“They shall come all for violence - “Violence” had been the sin of Judah Hab 1:3-4, and now violence shall be her punishment. It had been ever before the prophet; all were full of it. Now should violence be the very end, one by one, of all the savage horde poured out upon them; they all, each one of them come for violence.”
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:9
“HENDERSON, with SYMMACHUS and Syriac, translates, "the aspect." as the east wind--the simoon, which spreads devastation wherever it passes (Isa 27:8). GESENIUS translates, "(is) forwards." The rendering proposed, eastward, as if it referred to the Chaldeans' return home eastward from Judea, laden with spoils, is improbable.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Habakkuk 1:11
“Sacrilegious arrogance, in ascribing to his idol Bel the glory that belongs to God [CALVIN]. GROTIUS explains, "(saying that) his power is his own as one who is a god to himself" (compare Hab 1:16, and Da 3:1-30). So MAURER, "He shall offend as one to whom his power is his god" (Job 12:6; see on Mic 2:1).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
gather the captivity as the sand: They shall come all for violence... they shall gather the captivity as the sand describes an invasion that takes kings, princes, and strongholds as sport, deriding fortifications it does not need to respect. Verse 11 turns from description to indictment, then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto his god, the Chaldean crediting his own idol for a victory the true Lord had granted him. Henry and Gill read this line as the turning hinge of the whole book, the instrument of judgment becoming guilty in the moment it forgets whose hand raised it up.
C. Why do you look on treachery and hold your peace?
1. (vv. 12-13)
Habakkuk 1:12
“Art thou not frown everlasting - The idols change, and their worshippers change and fail: but thou, Jehovah, art eternal; thou canst not change, and they who trust in thee are safe. Thou art infinite in thy mercy; therefore, “we shall not die,” shall not be totally exterminated. Thou hast ordained them for judgment - Thou hast raised up the Chaldeans to correct and punish us; but thou hast not given them a commission to destroy us totally.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:12
“But not that they may deify their own power (Hab 1:11, for their power is from Thee, and but for a time); nor that they may destroy utterly Thy people. The Hebrew for "mighty God" is Rock (De 32:4). However the world is shaken, or man's faith wavers, God remains unshaken as the Rock of Ages (Isa 26:4, Margin).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Habakkuk 1:13
“Instead of speaking evil against God, he goes to God Himself for the remedy for his perplexity (Ps 73:11-17). devoureth the man that is more righteous--The Chaldean oppresses the Jew, who with all his faults, is better than his oppressor (compare Eze 16:51, 52).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Art thou not from everlasting: Habakkuk answers the vision with worship rather than collapse, invoking the Lord as from everlasting, mine Holy One, we shall not die, holding to the eternity and holiness of God even while naming the Chaldean as the Lord's own chosen rod for correction. The second half turns the complaint back on God himself, thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, asking how a holy God can watch a wicked nation devour one more righteous than itself. Calvin and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown read the question as reverent argument, the same faith that calls God eternal now pressing him for consistency with his own character.
2. (vv. 14-17)
Habakkuk 1:14
“And--that is, And so, by suffering oppressors to go unpunished, "Thou makest men as the fishes . . . that have no ruler"; that is, no defender. All may fish in the sea with impunity; so the Chaldeans with impunity afflict Thy people, as these have no longer the God of the theocracy, their King, to defend them.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:14
“And makest - Not infusing cruel appetites, but permitting them to act according to such appetite which was already in them. As the fishes - Of which the greater greedily devour the smaller. Creeping things - Which in the waters are food for the lesser fry; so the world, like the sea, is wholly oppression.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Habakkuk 1:15
“They take up all of them - (literally “he taketh up all of it”) the whole race as though it were one, With an angle; they catch them - literally, he sweepeth it away In their (his) net - One fisherman is singled out who partly by wiles (as by the bait of “an angle”), partly by violence (the net or drag) sweeps away and gathers as his own the whole kind.”
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:15
“Note, There is a proneness in us to take the glory of our outward prosperity to ourselves, and to say, My might, and the power of my hands, have gotten me this wealth, Deut. viii. This is idolizing ourselves, sacrificing to the dragnet, because it is our own, which is as absurd a piece of idolatry as sacrificing to Neptune or Dagon.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Habakkuk 1:16
“Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag,.... Either to their idols, to fortune and the stars, as Aben Ezra; imagining they gave them success, and prospered them in the arts and methods they used: or to their arms, as the Targum; nor was it unusual with the Heathens to worship their spears, sacrifice to them, and swear by them (g). So Justin says (h), originally the ancients worshipped spears for gods, in memory of whose religion spears are still added to the images of the gods.”
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:16
“They sacrifice unto their net - He had no God; he cared for none; and worshipped only his armor and himself. King Mezentius, one of the worst characters in the Aeneid of Virgil, is represented as invoking his own right hand and his spear in battle. Aen. 10:773. Dextra mihi Deus, et telum quod missile libro, Nunc adsint. “My strong right hand and sword, assert my stroke. Those only gods Mezentius will invoke.” Dryden. And Capaneus, in Statius, gives us a more decisive proof of this self-idolatry. Thebaid, lib. x.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Habakkuk 1:17
“Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations? - The prophet, like Isaiah Isa 18:4-5, stands at the very last point, before the fury and desire of the enemy was fulfilled. People, like fish, were gathered together for a prey; he who had taken them was rejoicing and exulting beforehand in his booty; his portion and meat were the choice of the earth; the prophet leeks on, as it were, and beholds the net full; there is but one step more; “Shall he empty it?”
1 more voice on this verse
Habakkuk 1:17
“Must the numbers and wealth of nations be sacrificed to their net? As if it were a small thing to rob men of their estates, shall they rob God of his glory? Is not God the king of nations, and will he not assert their injured rights?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
as the fishes of the sea: The chapter closes on humanity reduced to catch, men made as the fishes of the sea, hooked, netted, dragged, with no ruler over them to answer for their capture, so that the fisherman rejoices over the very cruelty of the haul. Habakkuk's sharpest charge follows, therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag, the Chaldean's own war machine turned into an object of worship because it delivers a fat portion and plenteous meat. Pusey and Wesley read the image as idolatry of power stated plainly, a nation worshiping the instrument of its own conquest rather than the God who permitted it. The chapter ends on a question left hanging, shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations, and chapter 2 opens with the prophet climbing his watchtower to wait for the answer.
This page carries no textual note on Habakkuk 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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