[Watch the Nations]
Look among the nations, wonder and stare,
A work moves forward no rumor could bear.
Even when spoken, the heart would refuse
To believe such an answer was coming in view.
[Verse I]
The Chaldeans rise, bitter and fast,
Marching through breadths they do not possess.
Terrible, dreadful, their judgment self-made,
Their honor comes only from power and blade.
[Pre-Chorus]
Horses run swifter than leopards at dusk,
Fiercer than wolves when the daylight is hushed.
[Chorus]
I raise up the Chaldeans,
A storm from the edge of the sky.
They fly like an eagle that hastens to eat,
And nations are sand in their eyes.
I raise up the Chaldeans,
But strength is the god they adore.
The instrument lifted against Judah
Will answer for worshiping war.
[Verse II]
They gather for violence, faces set east,
Captives like sand are collected with ease.
Kings become mockery, princes a game,
They laugh at the fortress and heap dust to gain.
[Rhythmic Break]
Wind across the wall,
Dust across the field,
Cities bow to speed,
Iron does not yield.
[Bridge]
Then the army passes beyond every bound,
Its own might praised as the source of its crown.
The answer is darker than Habakkuk had known:
A violent nation with power as throne.
[Final Chorus]
I raise up the Chaldeans,
A storm from the edge of the sky.
They fly like an eagle that hastens to eat,
And nations are sand in their eyes.
I raise up the Chaldeans,
Yet pride writes a debt in the sword.
The hand used to judge another people
Still stands underneath the LORD.
[Outro]
The answer came,
And the question grew deeper.
Named in this songHabakkuk
About the passage
Habakkuk 1: The answer makes the question harder
Habakkuk 1 begins with a legal and moral contradiction: the law is present, yet judgment is distorted and violence keeps winning. Habakkuk brings that contradiction directly to God, expecting the God who hears and saves to answer it. The answer is not relief in a simple form. God is raising the Chaldeans, whose speed, appetite, and contempt for restraint make them terrifying, and whose conquest is itself described as violence. Habakkuk therefore presses the question from inside his conviction that God is everlasting and holy. The chapter ends with a fishing image in which peoples become a profitable catch and the conqueror honors the net that feeds him. The first answer has arrived, but it has made the prophet’s original problem harder rather than easier.
Study Habakkuk 1 in depth →