Mining the Minors: Habakkuk (3)

So far, Habakkuk’s prophecy has taken the form of a Q&A session with God. The prophet has bemoaned God’s apparent lack of interest in the perversion of justice and corruption within his nation. God has replied that it’s actually going to get worse before it gets better: he is in the process of raising up the Chaldeans and using them to discipline his arrogant and erring people.

Naturally, that revelation provokes further questions.

Habakkuk 1:12-13 — Halfway There

“Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

Bible translators are not unanimous about the interpretation of this second sentence. The majority say something to the effect of “We shall not die”, but a significant minority (including the NIV) opt for some version of “You shall not die” instead. If we scan the Hebrew it’s easy to see how this might happen: the pronoun is implicit, so the meaning is somewhat ambiguous. Neither possible reading seems completely satisfactory. “You shall not die” is redundant given the statement “Are you not from everlasting?” It seems highly unlikely Habakkuk is merely affirming one of God’s fundamental attributes. Of course God will never die! But then the words “We shall not die” do not seem like a conclusion that follows logically from the premise that God is “from everlasting”. If the prophet had said, “Are you not a keeper of your covenants, O Lord?” or “Are you not a gracious God, O Lord?”, what follows might seem a more understandable thought flow.

That said, we have what we have. Habakkuk’s faith is on display here, however he may have come to his conclusion. And he’s right: God was not done with Judah at that point in its history. He is not done with Israel today. If the Chaldeans are going to sweep away Habakkuk’s people, the prophet reasons, then God is doing it for their ultimate good. He intends it for their correction, not their annihilation. God’s eternal nature gives him that confidence.

Still, though he accepts the future as God reveals it to him, Habakkuk is uncomfortable with the instrument God is using against Judah. The Chaldeans are “evil”, “wrong”, “traitors” and “wicked”. Even the oppressive and corrupt Judeans are surely not worse than this crew! The prophet appeals to God’s holiness: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,” he calls him. He pictures God as idle and silent in the face of these inexplicable events.

The prophet is halfway to thinking correctly about the situation. He justifies God even as he remains perplexed by the choices God is making.

Habakkuk 1:14-17 — The Fisher King

“You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?”

The last years of the kingdom of Judah were chaotic and terribly corrupt, as Habakkuk has described in chapter 1. Moreover, we see hints throughout the book that the prophet was well aware of the geopolitical realities outside Judah, as Babylon increased its power and influence in the world, incorporating nation after nation into its empire by force, taking their peoples into exile and stripping all their assets and treasures. For Judah, it was not really a question of whether Babylon would eventually overwhelm them, it was simply a matter of when it would happen. It must have been a very unsettling time.

Verses 14-17 describe the king of Babylon (the “he” of verse 14) in the imagery of an idolatrous fisherman. Habakkuk pictures the nations of the world scrambling around madly with no effective leadership or direction like fish trying to escape a dragnet. One after another, they are scooped up to become food or merchandise for the fisherman. But the fisherman is an idolater. The king of Babylon knows no fear of God, and he does not attribute his success to providence, but rather to his own tools of the trade. We are treated to the absurdity of a man making sacrifices and offerings to his fishing gear, which presumably symbolize his armies. The king imagines he has done great things in his own power and might, rather than recognizing that the heavens rule. As God has already said in verse 11, “Their own might is their god.” As usual, they were worshiping the wrong thing. This was a lesson God would teach Nebuchadnezzar in future years, as we find in the book of Daniel.

Habakkuk is concerned that this state of affairs will never end. He asks, “Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?” God will shortly provide an answer to that question.

Habakkuk 2:1 — All Along the Watchtower

“I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.”

The watchtower here is obviously figurative. Habakkuk is resolving to be spiritually attentive and to wait patiently for God to provide an answer to the questions that perplex him. He is using language similar to (and possibly derived from) Isaiah, who also spoke about Babylon perhaps as much as forty years earlier. In Isaiah 21, the Lord tells the prophet to set a watchman on the watchtower to look for riders coming in pairs with news of the fall of Babylon. The riders come and announce the message, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon.” Habakkuk would get an answer to his complaint, though neither he nor Isaiah would live long enough to see the fulfillment of the promises God made to and through them. The fall of literal Babylon foreseen by Habakkuk and Isaiah prefigures the fall of spiritual Babylon described by John in Revelation. Once again, we see that the prophecies of scripture often have multiple fulfillments.

We can learn much from the patience of the godly remnant in Judah as we wait on the Lord to answer our own prayers for the coming of his kingdom.