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.
People of the Bible
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.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Habakkuk
- 01
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
