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Introduction
to Habakkuk
This summary of the book of Habakkuk provides information about
the title, author(s), date of writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a
brief overview, and the chapters of the Book of Habakkuk.
Little is known about Habakkuk except that he was a contemporary
of Jeremiah and a man of vigorous faith rooted deeply in the religious
traditions of Israel. The account of his ministering to the needs of Daniel in
the lions' den in the Apocryphal book Bel
and the Dragon is legendary rather than historical.
The prediction of the coming Babylonian invasion (1:6) indicates that Habakkuk lived in Judah toward the end of
Josiah's reign (640-609 b.c.) or at the beginning of Jehoiakim's (609-598). The
prophecy is generally dated a little before or after the battle of Carchemish
(605), when Egyptian forces, which had earlier gone to the aid of the last
Assyrian king, were routed by the Babylonians under Nabopolassar and
Nebuchadnezzar and were pursued as far as the Egyptian border (Jer
46). Habakkuk, like Jeremiah, probably lived to see the initial
fulfillment of his prophecy when Jerusalem was attacked by the Babylonians in
597.
Among the prophetic writings, Habakkuk is somewhat unique in that
it includes no oracle addressed to Israel. It contains, rather, a dialogue
between the prophet and God (see Outline). (The book of Jonah, while narrative,
presents an account of conflict between the Lord and one of his prophets.) In the
first two chapters, Habakkuk argues with God over his ways that appear to him
unfathomable, if not unjust. Having received replies, he responds with a
beautiful confession of faith (ch. 3).
This account of wrestling with God is, however, not just a
fragment from a private journal that has somehow entered the public domain. It
was composed for Israel. No doubt it represented the voice of the godly in
Judah, struggling to comprehend the ways of God. God's answers therefore spoke
to all who shared Habakkuk's troubled doubts. And Habakkuk's confession became
a public expression -- as indicated by its liturgical notations (see note on 3:1).
Habakkuk was perplexed that wickedness, strife and oppression were
rampant in Judah but God seemingly did nothing. When told that the Lord was
preparing to do something about it through the "ruthless" Babylonians
(1:6), his perplexity only intensified: How could
God, who is "too pure to look on evil" (1:13), appoint such a nation
"to execute judgment" (1:12) on a people "more righteous than
themselves" (1:13)?
God makes it clear, however, that eventually the corrupt destroyer
will itself be destroyed. In the end, Habakkuk learns to rest in God's
sovereign appointments and await his working in a spirit of worship. He learns
to wait patiently in faith (2:3-4) for God's kingdom to be expressed
universally (2:14). See note on 3:18-19.
The author wrote clearly and with great feeling, and he penned
many memorable phrases (2:2,4,14,20; 3:2,17-19). The book was popular during the
intertestamental period; a complete commentary on its first two chapters has
been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see essay, p. 1939).
I.
Title (1:1)
──《New
International Version》
Introduction to Habakkuk
The subject of this prophecy is the
destruction of Judea and Jerusalem for the sins of the people, and the
consolation of the faithful under national calamities.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Habakkuk》
00 Overview
HABAKKUK
INTRODUCTION
I THINK that an argument for the divinity of
Scripture might be found in its silence as well as in its speech. It draws a
veil, thick and impenetrable, over very much which men, left to themselves,
would have been certain to bring forth to the light of open day. How
remarkable, for example, is the reticence of the sacred writers about
themselves! But for their names at the commencement of their books we should
never have known in many instances to whom we owed these Scriptures which are
“beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame.” That is not the manner of men. They
are very prone to obtrude themselves. The workman does not care to lose his own
personality in the work which he performs, or to be remembered only by what he
has done; he likes to carve his name over his achievement in bold and striking letters
which all can read. We are too self-conscious, too proud, too anxious for
praise, to be mere voices crying in the wilderness for God’s glory and the
world’s good. There is no better biography in existence than that which James
Boswell wrote of Dr. Johnson; it makes the very man live before us once more:
but the biographer shows himself at every turn; he must be seen and known and
recognised in the company of his hero, for good or for ill, in wisdom and in
folly; rather than go unnoticed, he will reveal to us his own weaknesses and
foibles. But the methods of the human authors of the Bible are altogether
different. God inspired them; and, if there were any uprisings within their
minds of the egotism and pride which are so natural to us, His Spirit reproved
and suppressed the unworthy thought. To disclose God in His character and will,
they wrote; and therefore they kept themselves sedulously in the background.
Thoughts like these can scarcely fail to be awakened within us in connection
with this prophecy of Habakkuk. Short as it is, it is one of the sublimest
books in the Old Testament. It speaks a great and lofty language. It throbs
with an intense and ardent feeling. Yet how exceedingly little we know of its
author! He is a mere name to us, and not a very pleasant or melodious name, as
we imagine, although we may find some cause to modify that opinion by and by.
So much were the old Jewish rabbis impressed by this doubt and uncertainty that
enveloped the prophet--so unwilling were they to rest content with the
obscurity in which Habakkuk himself was perfectly satisfied to remain--that
they framed all manner of legends about him. They declared that his mother was
the Shunammite woman who built a little chamber in the wall of her house for
Elisha, the man of God; that thus he was himself the lad to whom death came so
suddenly in the harvest-field as he played among the reapers, but whom Elisha
restored to life and gave back to his mother; that, in after years, when the
Holy Land was overrun and conquered by the Chaldeans, he fled to a place of
hiding in Arabia, and returned again when the foreigner had gone, to live for a
long period in peace and to die at last in his own home. It is all a tissue of
fables, originating in man’s unwillingness to be contented with the silence of
Scripture. One or two facts, however, about the prophet it is possible for us
to gather. So let us think first of the man, and then of the book which he has
bequeathed to us.
I. His
name is full of meaning. To all of us, I suppose, it is a name which sounds
harsh and untuneful in the extreme; and others beside ourselves have had the
same feeling. About the rough and uncouth title one good expositor of our own
writes, “We apprehend that this name has been a great disparagement to our prophet,
and has operated in no faint degree in causing many readers to hold the book in
less regard than they might otherwise have done.” But such readers have been
very superficial, and have not looked below the surface of things. For this
ragged name has a beautiful significance. It is like some costly stone,
unlovely and apparently worthless at first sight, but needing only to be
examined and polished to brighten into the lustre of the diamond or to deepen
into the glow of the ruby. Habakkuk means one who “strongly enfolds,” or one
who “firmly and closely and tenderly embraces.” Luther puts a delightfully
simple interpretation upon the word. The prophet, he says, embraces his people
and takes them to his arms; that is, he comforts them and lifts them up as one
embraces a weeping child, to quiet it with the assurance that, if God will, all
shall be right ere long.” But while it is true that Habakkuk had a very deep
and fond love for his people, being patriot no less than prophet, I prefer to
regard the name as descriptive of his attitude towards God. He embraces the
Almighty; he clings with fast and faithful hold to the Lord of heaven and
earth; “in God’s breast, his own abode, he lays his spirit down. That is no
fanciful meaning to extract from the Hebrew word. It indicates the real
character of the man. In the fellowship of the Old Testament seers Habakkuk
stands out pre-eminent as the prophet of faith. More than most, he believed
God. His was not always a victorious and jubilant faith, an unclouded assurance.
Sometimes it had a sore battle to wage with doubt. Frequently he was cast down.
It was an enigma to him, as it has been to many, that the Judge of all the
earth should act as He did. “Thou that art of purer eves than to behold evil.”
he exclaimed “wherefore lookest Thou upon them that deal treacherously, and
boldest Thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous
than he?” But it was the very simplicity of his dependence, the very
thoroughness of his confidence, which led him to speak in these expostulating
tones. He could not satisfy himself, as we do, with empty phrases, telling his
heart that no doubt the mystery would be solved in good time, and that all was
for the best. Just because he had an absolute faith in God’s rectitude and
mercy--just because he leaned on Him entirely and had an unquestioning trust in
His character and ways, it was puzzling to him to see the unrighteous
prosperous and the good downtrodden. And when the gloom and the perplexity have
passed, Habakkuk’s eyes are still directed heavenward; his affections are
above. Through the calm and the storm; in the daytime of peace and the
night-season of sorrow; when the fields wave with the yellow grain, and when
the fig-tree does not blossom and there is no fruit in the vines--he keeps the
even tenor of his way; his heart is fixed; he rests in the Lord and waits
patiently for Him. We learn from his prophecy, too, what his calling and
occupation were. The closing chapter of his book contains a magnificent ode or
hymn in praise of God--a hymn to which he has appended the words, “For the
chief musician, on my stringed instruments,” meaning thereby, no doubt, “Let
this ode be sung in the Temple service to the sound of the harps, viols,
psalteries, which I am myself accustomed to employ when I minister in God’s
sanctuary.” And so it has been reasonably inferred that Habakkuk was an
accomplished musician as well as a poet of the highest order--that he belonged
to those bands of Levites who were set apart to sing and play before the
Lord--that perhaps he was even a choir-master in the holy house on Zion, one
whose duty and privilege it was to arrange appropriate harmonies for the psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs which were sung there, and to see that they were
rendered well and fitly, with grave sweet melody. We may think of him going out
and in, like Samuel, in the sacred courts; praising the Lord with heart and
voice; delighting to join in the glad and solemn and thrilling music of the
hallowed place. He tells us--does he not?--that we should worship God by our
songs as well as invoke His mercy and succour by our prayers. God looks for
this glad and open tribute, and we disappoint Him when we withhold it or when
we render it only in a formal way. Let Habakkuk teach us to praise the Lord,
for He is good and His mercy endureth for ever. One other question about the
man we can decide, in part at least--the question of the age in Jewish history
at which he lived and prophesied. There has, indeed, been a difference of view
regarding the matter. Habakkuk has received an earlier date from some,
who have placed him in the closing years of Manasseh--the years when the
king, as quaint Thomas Fuller says, “being carried into a strange land, came
home to himself”; a later date from some others, who assign his preaching and
activity to the days of Jehoiakim when Judea was tottering to its fall, so
making him one of the prophets of the Captivity. But we may follow those who
steer a middle course, and who fix upon t-he reign of Josiah as the most
probable period of Habakkuk’s life and work. His prophecies were spoken, we
know, before the Babylonian invasion, for he predicts it in graphic and
powerful words. But that invasion took place very soon afar good King Josiah
had fallen in battle with Egypt, and after all Jerusalem and Judah had mourned
for him who seemed to be taken away from the evil to come. What more
likely, then, than that this seer and singer lived and wrote and sang in the
short epoch of prosperity which preceded the catastrophe? In those days there
was stern work to be done by the preacher of righteousness and judgment; for
though it was a time of revival, wickedness still dwelt in the land, and God’s
punishment was not far away.
II. Let
us turn to look at the book which he has left to us. It divides itself into two
parts, the one containing the first and second chapters, the other the sublime
poem of the third. But the opening division breaks itself up, again, into two
lesser sections, in the earlier of which God’s judgment on Judah is described;
in the later, God’s judgment on the Chaldeans who had led Judah captive and
wasted and destroyed it. Habakkuk, the prophet of faith, shows us, first of
all, faith struggling and perplexed at the sight of the sufferings measured out
to the Lord’s chosen people; and then faith filled with a stern joy when it
beholds the utter overthrow of the conqueror and tyrant. And in the end he
sings a song which has faith for its theme--how it takes comfort amid the fears
and glooms of the present from the deliverances of the past; how it bates not a
jot of heart or hope; how it rejoices in the Lord and exults for joy in the God
of salvation.
1. Habakkuk speaks of the doom that is about to fall on his own country and
people. It is a daily grief to him, he says, to see the violence and oppression
and strife and plunder which prevail around him, the powerlessness of the law,
the crookedness of justice, the entrapping of the righteous by the wicked. He
finds it hard to understand why God does not interpose to take vengeance on the
evil and to diadem the right. “How long shall I cry,” he complains, “and Thou
wilt not hear?” But, even while he wonders and questions, God answers that a
day of terrible retribution is fast approaching; that He is about to raise up the
Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, against His erring children; that a sore
and fearful experience, a furnace heated seven times, lies before them in the
near future. It is a vivid picture which the prophet draws of these Chaldeans,
the instruments of God’s anger. What ruin they bring with them, what misery,
what helplessness and despair! The desire of Habakkuk for the punishment of
those who were evildoers in his nation was more than satisfied now. It seemed
to him, indeed, that this penalty was too severe, this chastisement too
sweeping and terrible. It fell on all alike, the good as well as the bad. It
overwhelmed land and people in utter destruction. Once again, therefore, he
ventured to plead with God. Was it just and fitting to go so far? Was it right
to give free rein to so godless a power--one which sacrificed to its own net,
and lifted itself in pride to the very heavens? Thus the doom of Judah, the
burden which the seer beheld with reference to his native land, is brought to a
close. Here let us pause for a moment, that we may learn something for
ourselves from the attitude of the prophet. He is a pattern to us. Ought we
not, like him, to desire that evil may be wholly rooted out from among God’s
redeemed and renewed people; that, at whatever cost and with whatever trying
discipline, they may be made entirely pure? And ought we not to pray, too, that
the chastisement be not too sharp and grievous, and that God may stay His rough
wind in the day of His east wind? The entreaties of Habakkuk were heard. He
waited for a while, tarrying in patience like a sentinel on his watchtower; and
then again the Lord spoke to him. It was the doom of the arrogant Chaldeans
which was disclosed now. The mighty were ultimately to be cast down from their
seats; the proud were to be abased. Over and over again the prophet reiterates
this assurance of his Lord; he glories in it; it is hard for him to let it go.
He tells how the Babylonian plunderer, who had increased that which was not
his, and had loaded himself with pledges, should become in turn the booty of
others; how the Babylonian tyrant, who had set his nest on high, was really
flinging away his life and exposing himself to the wrath of the Almighty; how
the Babylonian league-breaker, who had enticed other people into alliances
which were turned to their shame and ruin, should drink of the same cup with
which he had intoxicated them; how the Babylonian idolater, who forsook the
living God for dumb idols, should be left unanswered and unaided in the hour of
his need. These seem pitiless threats to utter even against a sinful race, and
this mood of the prophet looks harsh and intolerant. But when men cry out
against the denunciations and judgments of the Bible, they should remember that
God only puts into exercise that right with which no earthly sovereign would or
could dispense--the right of removing offenders from the earth. And Habakkuk
did well to approve of it. Finally, he breaks out into that glorious song in
honour of the God whom he trusted and loved. It is a song which is to be sung,
he declares, ‘al shigyonoth, that is, in wandering measures, in music of
an impulsive and passionate kind, full of sudden changes and transitions, such
as the words of the ode demand. For it passes rapidly from one theme to another,
from one mood and feeling to another. It is like the slave whom Longfellow
heard singing the Psalms at midnight; its tones “by turns are glad, sweetly
solemn, wildly sad.” Habakkuk sets out with the request that those judgments
which he had foreseen may come quickly, but that mercy may be mingled with them
too. Then, to revive his faith, he recalls the years of the right hand of the
Most High, the mighty deeds done of old by God. He speaks of the Lord’s giving
of the law from Sinai, when “His brightness was as the light, and He had rays
coming forth from His hand, and there was the hiding of His power”; of the
ravages of plague and pestilence in the desert; of the terror of the
inhabitants of Canaan when the hosts of Israel crossed their border; of the memorable
victory gained by Joshua, when “the sun and the moon stood still in their
habitation.” All these had been manifestations of Jehovah’s power, terrible to
His enemies, but most gracious and comforting to such as confided in Him. From
the contemplation of them Habakkuk takes hope and courage. All will be well, he
assures himself, with him who has God on his side. And so he closes his hymn
with those confident and victorious lines, whose beauty and music are not
surpassed in any literature. In his song the prophet shows us the secret of
real tranquillity in the midst of outward alarms and distresses. It lies in the
possession of a personal trust in the Lord. “The just shall live by his faith,”
and are told in another part of this book--live in calm through trouble and
danger and temptation, if he believe God and cling to Him. No evil will befall
him, and no plague come nigh him. God, he feels, has wrought wondrously in the
past, and He can save him still. (Original Secession Magazine.)
HABAKKUK
INTRODUCTION
I THINK that an argument for the divinity of
Scripture might be found in its silence as well as in its speech. It draws a
veil, thick and impenetrable, over very much which men, left to themselves,
would have been certain to bring forth to the light of open day. How
remarkable, for example, is the reticence of the sacred writers about
themselves! But for their names at the commencement of their books we should
never have known in many instances to whom we owed these Scriptures which are
“beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame.” That is not the manner of men. They
are very prone to obtrude themselves. The workman does not care to lose his own
personality in the work which he performs, or to be remembered only by what he
has done; he likes to carve his name over his achievement in bold and striking
letters which all can read. We are too self-conscious, too proud, too anxious
for praise, to be mere voices crying in the wilderness for God’s glory and the
world’s good. There is no better biography in existence than that which James
Boswell wrote of Dr. Johnson; it makes the very man live before us once more:
but the biographer shows himself at every turn; he must be seen and known and
recognised in the company of his hero, for good or for ill, in wisdom and in
folly; rather than go unnoticed, he will reveal to us his own weaknesses and
foibles. But the methods of the human authors of the Bible are altogether
different. God inspired them; and, if there were any uprisings within their
minds of the egotism and pride which are so natural to us, His Spirit reproved
and suppressed the unworthy thought. To disclose God in His character and will,
they wrote; and therefore they kept themselves sedulously in the background.
Thoughts like these can scarcely fail to be awakened within us in connection
with this prophecy of Habakkuk. Short as it is, it is one of the sublimest
books in the Old Testament. It speaks a great and lofty language. It throbs
with an intense and ardent feeling. Yet how exceedingly little we know of its
author! He is a mere name to us, and not a very pleasant or melodious name, as
we imagine, although we may find some cause to modify that opinion by and by.
So much were the old Jewish rabbis impressed by this doubt and uncertainty that
enveloped the prophet--so unwilling were they to rest content with the
obscurity in which Habakkuk himself was perfectly satisfied to remain--that
they framed all manner of legends about him. They declared that his mother was
the Shunammite woman who built a little chamber in the wall of her house for
Elisha, the man of God; that thus he was himself the lad to whom death came so
suddenly in the harvest-field as he played among the reapers, but whom Elisha
restored to life and gave back to his mother; that, in after years, when the
Holy Land was overrun and conquered by the Chaldeans, he fled to a place of
hiding in Arabia, and returned again when the foreigner had gone, to live for a
long period in peace and to die at last in his own home. It is all a tissue of
fables, originating in man’s unwillingness to be contented with the silence of
Scripture. One or two facts, however, about the prophet it is possible for us
to gather. So let us think first of the man, and then of the book which he has
bequeathed to us.
I. His
name is full of meaning. To all of us, I suppose, it is a name which sounds
harsh and untuneful in the extreme; and others beside ourselves have had the
same feeling. About the rough and uncouth title one good expositor of our own
writes, “We apprehend that this name has been a great disparagement to our
prophet, and has operated in no faint degree in causing many readers to hold
the book in less regard than they might otherwise have done.” But such readers
have been very superficial, and have not looked below the surface of things.
For this ragged name has a beautiful significance. It is like some costly
stone, unlovely and apparently worthless at first sight, but needing only to be
examined and polished to brighten into the lustre of the diamond or to deepen into
the glow of the ruby. Habakkuk means one who “strongly enfolds,” or one who
“firmly and closely and tenderly embraces.” Luther puts a delightfully simple
interpretation upon the word. The prophet, he says, embraces his people and
takes them to his arms; that is, he comforts them and lifts them up as one
embraces a weeping child, to quiet it with the assurance that, if God will, all
shall be right ere long.” But while it is true that Habakkuk had a very deep
and fond love for his people, being patriot no less than prophet, I prefer to
regard the name as descriptive of his attitude towards God. He embraces the
Almighty; he clings with fast and faithful hold to the Lord of heaven and
earth; “in God’s breast, his own abode, he lays his spirit down. That is no
fanciful meaning to extract from the Hebrew word. It indicates the real
character of the man. In the fellowship of the Old Testament seers Habakkuk
stands out pre-eminent as the prophet of faith. More than most, he believed
God. His was not always a victorious and jubilant faith, an unclouded
assurance. Sometimes it had a sore battle to wage with doubt. Frequently he was
cast down. It was an enigma to him, as it has been to many, that the Judge of
all the earth should act as He did. “Thou that art of purer eves than to behold
evil.” he exclaimed “wherefore lookest Thou upon them that deal treacherously,
and boldest Thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more
righteous than he?” But it was the very simplicity of his dependence, the very
thoroughness of his confidence, which led him to speak in these expostulating
tones. He could not satisfy himself, as we do, with empty phrases, telling his
heart that no doubt the mystery would be solved in good time, and that all was
for the best. Just because he had an absolute faith in God’s rectitude and
mercy--just because he leaned on Him entirely and had an unquestioning trust in
His character and ways, it was puzzling to him to see the unrighteous
prosperous and the good downtrodden. And when the gloom and the perplexity have
passed, Habakkuk’s eyes are still directed heavenward; his affections are
above. Through the calm and the storm; in the daytime of peace and the
night-season of sorrow; when the fields wave with the yellow grain, and when
the fig-tree does not blossom and there is no fruit in the vines--he keeps the
even tenor of his way; his heart is fixed; he rests in the Lord and waits
patiently for Him. We learn from his prophecy, too, what his calling and
occupation were. The closing chapter of his book contains a magnificent ode or
hymn in praise of God--a hymn to which he has appended the words, “For the
chief musician, on my stringed instruments,” meaning thereby, no doubt, “Let
this ode be sung in the Temple service to the sound of the harps, viols,
psalteries, which I am myself accustomed to employ when I minister in God’s
sanctuary.” And so it has been reasonably inferred that Habakkuk was an
accomplished musician as well as a poet of the highest order--that he belonged
to those bands of Levites who were set apart to sing and play before the
Lord--that perhaps he was even a choir-master in the holy house on Zion, one
whose duty and privilege it was to arrange appropriate harmonies for the psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs which were sung there, and to see that they were
rendered well and fitly, with grave sweet melody. We may think of him going out
and in, like Samuel, in the sacred courts; praising the Lord with heart and
voice; delighting to join in the glad and solemn and thrilling music of the
hallowed place. He tells us--does he not?--that we should worship God by our
songs as well as invoke His mercy and succour by our prayers. God looks for
this glad and open tribute, and we disappoint Him when we withhold it or when
we render it only in a formal way. Let Habakkuk teach us to praise the Lord,
for He is good and His mercy endureth for ever. One other question about the
man we can decide, in part at least--the question of the age in Jewish history
at which he lived and prophesied. There has, indeed, been a difference of view
regarding the matter. Habakkuk has received an earlier date from some,
who have placed him in the closing years of Manasseh--the years when the
king, as quaint Thomas Fuller says, “being carried into a strange land, came
home to himself”; a later date from some others, who assign his preaching and
activity to the days of Jehoiakim when Judea was tottering to its fall, so
making him one of the prophets of the Captivity. But we may follow those who
steer a middle course, and who fix upon t-he reign of Josiah as the most
probable period of Habakkuk’s life and work. His prophecies were spoken, we
know, before the Babylonian invasion, for he predicts it in graphic and
powerful words. But that invasion took place very soon afar good King Josiah
had fallen in battle with Egypt, and after all Jerusalem and Judah had mourned
for him who seemed to be taken away from the evil to come. What more
likely, then, than that this seer and singer lived and wrote and sang in the
short epoch of prosperity which preceded the catastrophe? In those days there
was stern work to be done by the preacher of righteousness and judgment; for
though it was a time of revival, wickedness still dwelt in the land, and God’s
punishment was not far away.
II. Let
us turn to look at the book which he has left to us. It divides itself into two
parts, the one containing the first and second chapters, the other the sublime
poem of the third. But the opening division breaks itself up, again, into two
lesser sections, in the earlier of which God’s judgment on Judah is described;
in the later, God’s judgment on the Chaldeans who had led Judah captive and
wasted and destroyed it. Habakkuk, the prophet of faith, shows us, first of
all, faith struggling and perplexed at the sight of the sufferings measured out
to the Lord’s chosen people; and then faith filled with a stern joy when it
beholds the utter overthrow of the conqueror and tyrant. And in the end he
sings a song which has faith for its theme--how it takes comfort amid the fears
and glooms of the present from the deliverances of the past; how it bates not a
jot of heart or hope; how it rejoices in the Lord and exults for joy in the God
of salvation.
1. Habakkuk speaks of the doom that is about to fall on his own country and
people. It is a daily grief to him, he says, to see the violence and oppression
and strife and plunder which prevail around him, the powerlessness of the law,
the crookedness of justice, the entrapping of the righteous by the wicked. He
finds it hard to understand why God does not interpose to take vengeance on the
evil and to diadem the right. “How long shall I cry,” he complains, “and Thou
wilt not hear?” But, even while he wonders and questions, God answers that a
day of terrible retribution is fast approaching; that He is about to raise up
the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, against His erring children; that a
sore and fearful experience, a furnace heated seven times, lies before them in
the near future. It is a vivid picture which the prophet draws of these
Chaldeans, the instruments of God’s anger. What ruin they bring with them, what
misery, what helplessness and despair! The desire of Habakkuk for the
punishment of those who were evildoers in his nation was more than satisfied
now. It seemed to him, indeed, that this penalty was too severe, this
chastisement too sweeping and terrible. It fell on all alike, the good as well
as the bad. It overwhelmed land and people in utter destruction. Once again,
therefore, he ventured to plead with God. Was it just and fitting to go so far?
Was it right to give free rein to so godless a power--one which sacrificed to
its own net, and lifted itself in pride to the very heavens? Thus the doom of
Judah, the burden which the seer beheld with reference to his native land, is
brought to a close. Here let us pause for a moment, that we may learn something
for ourselves from the attitude of the prophet. He is a pattern to us. Ought we
not, like him, to desire that evil may be wholly rooted out from among God’s
redeemed and renewed people; that, at whatever cost and with whatever trying
discipline, they may be made entirely pure? And ought we not to pray, too, that
the chastisement be not too sharp and grievous, and that God may stay His rough
wind in the day of His east wind? The entreaties of Habakkuk were heard. He
waited for a while, tarrying in patience like a sentinel on his watchtower; and
then again the Lord spoke to him. It was the doom of the arrogant Chaldeans
which was disclosed now. The mighty were ultimately to be cast down from their
seats; the proud were to be abased. Over and over again the prophet reiterates
this assurance of his Lord; he glories in it; it is hard for him to let it go.
He tells how the Babylonian plunderer, who had increased that which was not
his, and had loaded himself with pledges, should become in turn the booty of
others; how the Babylonian tyrant, who had set his nest on high, was really
flinging away his life and exposing himself to the wrath of the Almighty; how
the Babylonian league-breaker, who had enticed other people into alliances
which were turned to their shame and ruin, should drink of the same cup with
which he had intoxicated them; how the Babylonian idolater, who forsook the
living God for dumb idols, should be left unanswered and unaided in the hour of
his need. These seem pitiless threats to utter even against a sinful race, and
this mood of the prophet looks harsh and intolerant. But when men cry out
against the denunciations and judgments of the Bible, they should remember that
God only puts into exercise that right with which no earthly sovereign would or
could dispense--the right of removing offenders from the earth. And Habakkuk
did well to approve of it. Finally, he breaks out into that glorious song in honour
of the God whom he trusted and loved. It is a song which is to be sung, he
declares, ‘al shigyonoth, that is, in wandering measures, in music of an
impulsive and passionate kind, full of sudden changes and transitions, such as
the words of the ode demand. For it passes rapidly from one theme to another,
from one mood and feeling to another. It is like the slave whom Longfellow
heard singing the Psalms at midnight; its tones “by turns are glad, sweetly
solemn, wildly sad.” Habakkuk sets out with the request that those judgments
which he had foreseen may come quickly, but that mercy may be mingled with them
too. Then, to revive his faith, he recalls the years of the right hand of the
Most High, the mighty deeds done of old by God. He speaks of the Lord’s giving
of the law from Sinai, when “His brightness was as the light, and He had rays
coming forth from His hand, and there was the hiding of His power”; of the
ravages of plague and pestilence in the desert; of the terror of the
inhabitants of Canaan when the hosts of Israel crossed their border; of the
memorable victory gained by Joshua, when “the sun and the moon stood still in
their habitation.” All these had been manifestations of Jehovah’s power,
terrible to His enemies, but most gracious and comforting to such as confided
in Him. From the contemplation of them Habakkuk takes hope and courage. All
will be well, he assures himself, with him who has God on his side. And so he
closes his hymn with those confident and victorious lines, whose beauty and music
are not surpassed in any literature. In his song the prophet shows us the
secret of real tranquillity in the midst of outward alarms and distresses. It
lies in the possession of a personal trust in the Lord. “The just shall live by
his faith,” and are told in another part of this book--live in calm through
trouble and danger and temptation, if he believe God and cling to Him. No evil
will befall him, and no plague come nigh him. God, he feels, has wrought
wondrously in the past, and He can save him still. (Original Secession
Magazine.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》