Section I Habakkuk's Complaint
Habakkuk 1:1-4
Although Habakkuk is clearly called a prophet (nabi), he is not a prophet in the traditional sense. Ordinarily it was the prophet's function to speak to men for God, to proclaim the divine will which was received in a special revelation. In the case of this man, we see just the reverse: the prophet speaks to God for men. He is carrying on a discourse with God and that in such a manner as to classify him as almost a skeptic rather than a prophet. “This is the beginning of speculation in Israel.”1
It is possible that what we really have here is an insight into the inner life of a prophet, the hidden struggles prior to proclamation. In a different sort of way we have the same thing in the case of Hosea, whose marital problems prepared his heart for the message he was to preach. With Habakkuk it may be the hammering out on the anvil of life of a theological foundation for his public preaching. This would accord with the contention of Davidson, who maintains that the real subject of the book is the destruction of the Chaldean, found in c. 2.2
Burden is usually translated “oracle” and implies revelation. It refers many times to future events and is also often used in connection with the pronouncement of doom (cf. Obad. 1).
B. THE PROPHET'S PROBLEM, 1:2-4
It is at the point of identifying the occasion of this complaint that the greatest diversity of interpretation arises. There are at least five clearly different opinions, each with an elaborate defense of its position. The view that requires the most juggling of the text is the one that identifies the wicked (4) with the Chaldeans themselves. But the establishment of the veracity of the reading in v. 6 as future reasonably eliminates this identification. A more likely candidate, yet still with little probability, is Egypt. If the writing is placed during the early reign of Jehoiakim, there is a good case to be made for Egypt's being the object of Habakkuk's complaint. Jehoiakim was a vassal of Egypt under Pharaohnecho, who had only recently killed King Josiah and established a foothold in Asia east of Palestine.
Another more probable answer, and one which receives considerable support, is the identification of the wicked with Assyria, which had occupied the attention of Nahum. This terror of the nations was oppressing Judah and exercising great influence in her internal affairs. Likewise it was the Chaldeans who put an end to this great and fearful nation.
One argument in favor of the view that the complaint is directed at alien interference is that there is no exhortation to repentance. It is supposed that such an exhortation would certainly follow if it were directed toward “native misdoing.”3 To follow this line of reasoning would lead to the conclusion that the prophecy was written during Josiah's days when idolatry was banned, and that the prophet was speaking a lament for his people over their undeserved oppression by the foreigners.
However, it seems most probable that this complaint is occasioned by evil within the prophet's own nation of Judah. This is the traditional interpretation and makes the most sense out of the total picture, as the nature of the second complaint reveals.
How long? (2) The prophet has cried out but it seems that God does not hear his cry. Therefore he questions God. Why is it that God does nothing? Here is the classic problem of “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.” The excruciating situation arises out of the vast discrepancy between faith and fact. If God is just and sovereign, why do the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper? Here is a question raised by multitudes of people in every age. In Habakkuk it is the same problem at a national level that the Book of Job deals with in the personal sphere. It is more easily dealt with however on the personal level and therefore the test to Habakkuk's faith is really the more severe.
Only those who have faith in a good God have any problem with regard to the government of the world. If one believes in polytheism, or in an indifferent or wicked deity, he has no problem with the apparent injustices in the world. It is monotheistic faith that must wrestle for its very life in the face of facts that challenge it.
Many have supposed it to be audacious to question the working of Providence. This position is shown to be false by the inclusion of Job's and Habakkuk's complaints in the Bible. If further evidence is needed, one may remind himself of the cry from Calvary, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34) It is probably more wrong to stifle one's sincere doubts than to give vent to them in an earnest effort to find a clue to the meaning of life. G. A. Smith was right when he observed in one of his incisive comments, “It is not the coarsest but the finest temperaments which are exposed to skepticism.”
There are two words translated cry in v. 2. The first is used especially as a cry for help; the second means to cry out as one does in sudden alarm. Both words are also used in Job 19:7.
Civil wrongs abound (3), a situation which likewise prevailed in the eighth century, in the days of Amos and Hosea, who also cried out with vehemence against such perversions. There are three pairs of nouns used to point up the situation: iniquity and grievance (perverseness), spoiling and violence, and strife and contention (cf. Isa. 58:4). Living Letters renders the verse: “Must I forever see this sin and sadness all around me? Wherever I look there is oppression and bribery and men who love to argue and to fight.”
The law (4) is the Torah, the Jewish term for the law of Moses. Judgment (mishpat) refers to an established practice or custom.4 The Torah was the fountainhead of all legal justice, but here the people were deprived of its benefits chiefly because the wicked … compass about the righteous. The word slacked means “numbed” or “paralyzed” (cf. Gen. 45:26, where it is translated “fainted”). Such a situation evidently prevailed under Manasseh, with a godless ruling party in power. True liberty and justice are firmly based on godliness and righteousness; where these are absent, justice is perverted. Habakkuk infers that even where a semblance of justice is maintained, wrong judgment proceedeth—it “goes forth perverted” (Smith-Goodspeed). The wicked are able to twist a “right” judgment to their own ends.