If you have questions you would like to ask God, have you ever wondered how he might answer them?
In the Bible, a few people asked God questions and were given answers by him: Abraham, Rebecca, Job, Moses, Manoah and his wife, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, and, of course, Habakkuk. Sometimes, God’s answers are direct and simple, clearly addressing the question. For example, David asked God if he should attack the Philistines and God said yes and told him how to do so. Other people received answers that did not seem to answer the question directly at all, and the answer that God
gave to Habakkuk was like this.
Remember that Habakkuk had asked why God did not respond to requests for help or listen to complaints about the violence that filled the nation.
This was God’s answer:
5 “Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told.
6 For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
that bitter and hasty nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth,
to seize dwellings not their own.
7 They are dreaded and fearsome;
their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.
8 Their horses are swifter than leopards,
more fierce than the evening wolves;
their horsemen press proudly on.
Their horsemen come from afar;
they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
9 They all come for violence,
all their faces forward.
They gather captives like sand.
10 At kings they scoff,
and at rulers they laugh.
They laugh at every fortress,
for they pile up earth and take it.
11 Then they sweep by like the wind and go on,
guilty men, whose own might is their god!”
Habakkuk 1:5-11
God does mention violence, but that is the only obvious connection with Habakkuk’s question. Instead, the answer is a description of what is about to happen to Habakkuk’s nation.
If we think about the answer for a while, however, we can start to see that it really is an answer – but that Habakkuk would have had to think carefully to unravel the puzzle. This was no simple Yes/No answer.
Habakkuk had complained about violence in Judah, and God describes how he will bring judgement on Judah through the Chaldeans. If Judah wanted violence, they would get it. If they wanted iniquity, they would suffer it. If they loved wrong, they would be outdone in wrong by the Chaldeans.
God says that this was a work in Habakkuk’s time that he wouldn’t have believed if someone had told him about it. But it was going to happen all the same.
Hosea was told that Israel had sown the wind and would reap the whirlwind,[1] and now Judah was to suffer the same fate. They had sown violence and would suffer greater violence. They had sown wrong and would themselves be grievously wronged.
The Chaldeans would be God’s tool for punishing Judah. Terrible and fearsome, they would all come for violence, gathering captives like sand; scoffing at kings and laughing at rulers. To them, impregnable fortresses are a joke. They are, God says, guilty men whose own strength is their god.
God is acknowledging to Habakkuk that Judah is evil. But his solution to the problem is not what Habakkuk had either expected or wanted.
Notes
[1] Hosea 8:7
