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Habakkuk

Complained to God twice, got an answer worse than the problem, and finished by singing.

Habakkuk does not preach to a nation. The book is a conversation, and it opens with an accusation: how long shall I cry and you will not hear, why do you show me iniquity and hold your tongue when the wicked devours the man more righteous than he. The answer is that God is raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which makes everything worse. So he complains again, and then says he will stand upon his watch and see what will be said to him.

Where he appearsHabakkuk 1 to 3

Habakkuk
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Habakkuk

The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account of Habakkuk

  1. 01

    Habakkuk 1:1-4

    How long shall I cry

    The opening is a complaint about silence and about law that is slacked, judgment that never goes forth, and the wicked compassing about the righteous.

    The prophet's first recorded words are not a message to the people. They are a complaint to God. How long means this has already been going on; the book opens in the middle of an unanswered appeal, not at the first sight of trouble. Violence is named twice before the paragraph ends. Habakkuk is not puzzled by evil as an abstract possibility. He is looking at it.

    The sharpest turn comes in the last verse. Judgment never goes forth, and then wrong judgment proceeds. The courts have not necessarily closed. Something still comes out of them, but it has been bent in transit. The wicked surround the righteous, so the machinery meant to restrain harm becomes another way to deliver it. Habakkuk brings the LORD a complaint about the failure of the very justice associated with his law.

    Verse by verse

    1. 1:1

      The heading identifies Habakkuk as a prophet without giving his ancestry, hometown, or a reigning king. Those details cannot be supplied from this verse.

    2. 1:2

      The repeated cry about violence is an appeal for intervention, not evidence that Habakkuk has stopped addressing God.

    3. 1:4

      Law is torah, divine instruction. The complaint concerns its ineffectiveness within the community, not the claim that no instruction has ever been given.

    Habakkuk 1:1-4

    King James Version · 4 verses

    1:1The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.

    1:2O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!

    1:3Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention.

    1:4Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth.

    Habakkuk 1:1-4: How long shall I cry
  2. 02

    Habakkuk 1:5-11

    I raise up the Chaldeans

    The answer is not comfort. A bitter and hasty nation whose horses are swifter than leopards and whose judgment proceeds from themselves, and God says he is doing it.

    The astonishing work is an invasion. Verse 5 can sound splendid in isolation; verse 6 supplies the noun that removes any easy celebration. The Chaldeans are coming to occupy homes that do not belong to them. Habakkuk complained about violence, and the answer describes a nation that comes all for violence. The difficulty is not being overlooked. It is being sharpened.

    Their judgment proceeds from themselves. That is a frightening answer to a complaint about distorted judgment: the invading power recognizes its own authority as sufficient. Leopards, wolves, and an eagle compress speed and appetite into one advancing force. Kings become objects of ridicule, fortresses heaps to be climbed. Yet the final line calls the conqueror guilty rather than holy. Being raised up for this purpose does not make its self-glorifying worship true. Divine use is not divine approval of everything the instrument does.

    Verse by verse

    1. 1:6

      The Chaldeans here are the conquering Babylonian power, not the later popular use of the term for astrologers. The passage itself supplies no exact year.

    2. 1:7

      Judgment translates mishpat, the same word used twice in 1:4. The answer deliberately returns to the issue raised in the complaint.

    3. 1:10

      Heaping dust describes the overcoming of a stronghold by siege earthworks. The comparison makes defenses that impressed their owners objects of the invader's contempt.

    4. 1:11

      The verse ends with guilt and misplaced attribution of power. It does not acquit the conqueror because God has announced its rise.

    Habakkuk 1:5-11

    King James Version · 7 verses

    1:5Behold 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.

    1:6For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs.

    1:7They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves.

    1:8Their 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.

    1:9They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.

    1:10And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

    1:11Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto his god.

    Habakkuk 1:5-11: I raise up the Chaldeans
  3. 03

    Habakkuk 2:1-4

    I will stand upon my watch

    He goes up on the tower to see what will be said to him and what he shall answer when he is reproved. The reply is to write the vision plainly, and that the just shall live by his faith.

    Habakkuk takes his place on a watchtower to listen. The image turns the lookout's task inside out: the crucial arrival is a word, not an army. He has argued his case in 1:12-17, but he also leaves room to be answered and reproved. This is not the pose of a man who considers the conversation finished because he has spoken forcefully.

    The answer goes onto tablets. It must survive the interval between promise and event, when delay could make a spoken assurance seem to evaporate. Though it tarry and it will not tarry distinguish the experience of waiting from the certainty of the appointed end. Then the contrast narrows to two lives: one swollen with its own importance, the other sustained by faith. In this setting, faith is not a clever explanation of the invader. It is steadfast trust while the explanation remains costly.

    Verse by verse

    1. 2:1

      The watchtower may describe a prophetic posture rather than identify a building that can be located. The text gives no address.

    2. 2:2

      Tables means writing tablets. Whether the runner is a reader carrying the message or a passerby able to read it readily is disputed; legibility is clear.

    3. 2:4

      The Hebrew emunah includes firmness and faithfulness; the same noun describes Moses' steady hands in Exodus 17:12. Here the KJV's faith belongs to a contrast between proud self-reliance and enduring trust.

    Habakkuk 2:1-4

    King James Version · 4 verses

    2:1I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.

    2:2And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

    2:3For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

    2:4Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

    Habakkuk 2:1-4: I will stand upon my watch
  4. 04

    Habakkuk 3:17-19

    Though the fig tree shall not blossom

    Every crop and every animal is listed as failing, one after another, and the sentence turns on the word yet. He will joy in the God of his salvation, and walk on high places.

    Nothing grows back before the song ends. Fig, vine, olive, field, flock, and herd make a six-part inventory of threatened loss, and the declaration of joy does not quietly restock any of them. The passage keeps the emptiness in view. Its although describes the prospect Habakkuk is prepared to face, not a report that every item has already failed.

    The preceding verse has his belly trembling, his lips quivering, and his bones giving way. That physical fear matters beside the hinds' feet: strength is received by the man who has described his own inability to stand steady. The final image is sure footing on difficult heights, not an announcement that the heights have become flat. And then comes a musical direction. The prophet's argument has become something other voices can sing, without requiring them to pretend the stalls are full.

    Verse by verse

    1. 3:17

      Meat means food here, not specifically animal flesh. The inventory includes both cultivation and livestock.

    2. 3:18

      The stated object of joy is the LORD, called the God of salvation. The verse does not call famine itself delightful.

    3. 3:19

      The hinds' feet and high places closely echo Psalm 18:33. The image concerns secure movement and God-given strength, not literal transformation into an animal.

    4. 3:19

      The stringed-instrument direction is part of the verse in the KJV. It should not be discarded as though it were a modern editor's heading.

    Habakkuk 3:17-19

    King James Version · 3 verses

    3:17Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:

    3:18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

    3:19The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

    Habakkuk 3:17-19: Though the fig tree shall not blossom

Why it matters

The answer he is given is five words that changed church history: the just shall live by his faith, quoted three times in the New Testament and the verse that turned Luther. But the book is more interesting than the proof text. It ends with a psalm on the losing side of every practical question: though the fig tree shall not blossom and there be no fruit in the vines, though the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice.

7 songs

The music

Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.

  1. Habakkuk 1:1-3:19

    Habakkuk (Yet I Will Rejoice)

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  2. Habakkuk 1:1-3:19

    Habakkuk, Definitive Edition

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  3. Habakkuk 1:1-4

    How Long Shall I Cry?

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  4. Habakkuk 1:5-11

    I Raise Up the Chaldeans

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  5. Habakkuk 1:12-2:1

    Thou Art of Purer Eyes

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  6. Habakkuk 2:2-20

    The Just Shall Live by His Faith

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  7. Habakkuk 3:1-19

    Though the Fig Tree Shall Not Blossom

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