12 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.
13 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?
14 You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
15 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.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
17 Is he then to keep on emptying his net
and mercilessly killing nations forever?
1 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.
Habakkuk 1:12 - 2:1
Habakkuk calls this a complaint – and I suppose it is one since he is questioning God’s answer to his first complaint. He seems to be trying to work his way through the situation as he imagines it will be, based on God’s earlier answer.
Most of the text is quite easy to understand, but since there are some harder parts, I have included a short summary below. Try comparing it with the full text above to check that they are saying the same thing.
O God, are you not eternal? – you will not kill us all, for you always leave a remnant. You have appointed the Chaldeans to punish Judah, yet you are too pure to look on evil, so why do you remain silent when an evil nation swallows up a nation that is more righteous?
It is as if the Chaldeans are a fisherman and we are all fish to be caught. He even worships his fishing tackle, because it allows him to live in luxury! Will you let him continue this forever?
Now I will stand on my watchtower and wait for God’s answer to my complaint.
Habakkuk’s main complaint is that God is punishing a wicked nation (Judah) through the invasion of a nation that is even worse (Babylon).
He describes the Chaldeans in v14-17 as an utterly sinful nation that enjoys killing.
But was Babylon more wicked than Judah? We cannot judge just how bad an individual or nation is, but in this case God has given us some information which might surprise you.
When God led Israel into the Promised Land, he said that he would expel the existing inhabitants because they were evil.[1] He uses the graphic word picture of a land vomiting out its inhabitants because of their wickedness.[2]
At that time, he warned Israel that they would find themselves in the same situation if they did not obey God’s commands. By the time King Manasseh had finished his unholy reign, God said that Judah was not only as bad as the nations they had replaced in the Promised Land – they were worse. With that knowledge, we have to ask whether Babylon really was worse than Judah?
They had an appearance of serving God, but it wasn’t genuine.
Habakkuk made his complaint and then waited to hear how God would respond. We’ll look at God’s answer soon.
Notes
[1] Leviticus 20:23; Deuteronomy 9:4-5
[2] Leviticus 18:24-28
