Habakkuk 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Habakkuk the prophet brings a complaint to the LORD: he cries out about violence and gets no answer, and the law has been made powerless while justice comes out twisted. The LORD replies that he is raising up the Chaldeans, a fierce and swift nation that seizes lands not its own, mocks kings, and credits its power to its own god. Habakkuk answers with a second question: how can a God whose eyes are too pure to look on evil stay silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than themselves? The chapter ends with the picture of a fisherman who hauls in whole nations with his net, worships the net, and keeps on killing.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • There is a burden.
   • Habakkuk saw this burden in a vision.
   • Habakkuk is a prophet.
2. 1:2
   • The prophet asks the LORD how long he must cry out.
   • The prophet says the LORD does not hear.
   • The prophet cries out to the LORD about violence.
   • The prophet says the LORD does not save.
3. 1:3
   • The prophet asks why the LORD makes him see iniquity.
   • The prophet asks why the LORD makes him look upon trouble.
   • Destruction and violence are before the prophet.
   • There is strife.
   • Contention arises.
4. 1:4
   • Because of this, the law is slack and ineffective.
   • Justice never goes forth.
   • The wicked surround the righteous.
   • Therefore judgment goes forth perverted.
5. 1:5
   • The hearers are told to look among the nations.
   • The hearers are told to observe.
   • The hearers are told to be utterly astonished.
   • God is working a work in their days.
   • The hearers would not believe that work if it were told to them.
6. 1:6
   • God is raising up the Chaldeans.
   • The Chaldeans are a bitter nation.
   • The Chaldeans are an impetuous nation.
   • The Chaldeans march through the breadth of the earth.
   • The Chaldeans march in order to seize dwellings that are not theirs.
7. 1:7
   • The Chaldeans are terrifying.
   • The Chaldeans are dreadful.
   • Their justice proceeds from themselves.
   • Their dignity proceeds from themselves.
8. 1:8
   • Their horses are swifter than leopards.
   • Their horses are fiercer than evening wolves.
   • Their horsemen charge forward.
   • Their horsemen come from far away.
   • They fly like an eagle hastening to devour.
9. 1:9
   • All of them come for violence.
   • Their faces are set forward, toward the east.
   • They gather captives like sand.
10. 1:10
    • They scoff at kings.
    • Rulers are an object of derision to them.
    • They laugh at every fortress.
    • They heap up dust and capture the fortress.
11. 1:11
    • Then he sweeps on like the wind and passes over.
    • He becomes guilty.
    • He makes his own strength his god.
12. 1:12
    • The prophet asks whether the LORD is not from everlasting.
    • The prophet calls the LORD his God.
    • The prophet calls the LORD his Holy One.
    • We shall not die.
    • The LORD has appointed them for judgment.
    • The LORD, the Rock, has established them for correction.
13. 1:13
    • The LORD's eyes are too pure to look on evil.
    • The LORD cannot look upon wrongdoing.
    • The prophet asks why the LORD looks upon those who deal treacherously.
    • The prophet asks why the LORD stays silent when the wicked swallows up one more righteous than himself.
14. 1:14
    • The LORD makes men like the fish of the sea.
    • The LORD makes men like creeping things that have no ruler over them.
15. 1:15
    • He brings all of them up with a hook.
    • He drags them away in his net.
    • He gathers them in his dragnet.
    • Therefore he rejoices.
    • Therefore he is glad.
16. 1:16
    • Therefore he sacrifices to his net.
    • He burns incense to his dragnet.
    • By these his portion is rich.
    • By these his food is plentiful.
17. 1:17
    • The question is asked whether he shall therefore keep emptying his net.
    • The question is asked whether he shall continually slay nations without sparing.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"Burden" translates a Hebrew word (massa) that means both a load somebody has to carry and a formal announcement delivered by a prophet. Prophetic "burdens" were nearly always announcements of coming disaster. The verb attached to it is "see": the message came to Habakkuk as something he witnessed, not simply words he heard.

1:2

Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, written with four consonants usually transcribed YHWH. Jewish readers did not pronounce it aloud, saying "my Lord" instead, and English translations follow that custom with the capitalised form. "How long?" is the standard opening of a formal complaint addressed to God, the same phrase that begins several psalms of protest.

1:3

The King James "spoiling" means plundering, property stripped from people by force; "grievance" means misery or trouble. "Strife and contention" are courtroom words as much as street words: quarrels that should have been settled by law and never were.

1:4

"The law" is Hebrew torah, which covers more than legislation: it is the whole body of instruction (legal, ritual and moral) that Israel understood as given to it through Moses. "Justice never goes forth" pictures a verdict that never gets issued; legal cases were heard in public at the town gate, so a ruling that never "comes out" is one the community never sees delivered.

1:5

The King James "heathen" translates goyim, which means simply "the nations", foreign peoples, everyone who is not Israel. In 1611 English the word carried no suggestion of savagery or irreligion, though it does now.

1:6

The Chaldeans were the people who ruled Babylon in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. Under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar they destroyed the Assyrian empire late in the seventh century BC and became the dominant military power of the region; within a generation of this prophecy they besieged Jerusalem and deported much of its population. "Bitter and hasty" means ruthless and headlong, acting fast and without restraint, not merely traveling quickly.

1:7

The point is that this nation acknowledges no law or authority above its own. Ancient kings normally claimed their right to rule came from a god; these people are described as taking it from nobody but themselves.

1:8

"Evening wolves" are wolves at dusk, at their hungriest after a day without food, a stock image for ravenous attack. The bird in the last line is Hebrew nesher, which covers both the eagle and the griffon vulture; the picture is of a large bird dropping out of the sky onto a carcass, so "vulture" and "eagle" are both defensible translations.

1:9

The east wind is the sirocco, a scorching wind off the desert that dries up vegetation in a day or two, the standard image for something that arrives suddenly and leaves nothing alive. The middle phrase of this verse is obscure in Hebrew (literally something like "the eagerness of their faces is forward"), and translations differ over whether it describes the direction of their advance or the sheer mass of the horde.

1:10

Piling up earth was the ordinary way to take a walled city in this period: attackers built a long ramp of packed soil and rubble against the wall so that troops and battering rams could be brought up over the defenses. Assyrian and Babylonian armies were expert at it, and Habakkuk's audience would have understood the image as the point at which a fortified town's fall becomes only a matter of time.

1:11

This verse is one of the hardest in the book, and the Hebrew is damaged or at least very compressed; ancient and modern translations diverge sharply. It can be read as "then he sweeps past like a wind and moves on" or as "then his mind changes", the same consonants can yield either. What the versions agree on is the last clause: the conqueror treats his own strength as the god responsible for his success.

1:12

"Mighty God" here renders Hebrew tsur, "Rock", a standing title for God as an immovable place of safety. "We shall not die" carries an old note in the Jewish scribal tradition: the scribes recorded that the line originally read "you do not die," addressed to God, and that they altered it out of reverence, since even the phrase "you do not die" seemed to raise the possibility. Both readings have been transmitted.

1:13

Those who "deal treacherously" are faith-breakers: people who violate an agreement, an oath or an obligation to someone who trusted them. "Swallow up" is the ordinary Hebrew image for destroying someone completely, as an animal or a pit swallows what falls into it.

1:14

"Creeping things" translates a word for swarming creatures that move in shoals or masses, here the small sea life that has no leader and no defense. A creature with "no ruler" is one nobody is responsible for and nobody protects.

1:15

Three distinct pieces of fishing equipment are named: a hook and line for taking one fish at a time, a casting net thrown over a small area, and a dragnet or seine hauled through the water to sweep up everything in its path. The escalation is the point, individuals, then groups, then whole populations.

1:16

The image is of a fisherman offering worship to his own tackle, since his gear is what actually feeds him. Ancient armies did honor their weapons and military standards with offerings, so the picture is not far-fetched; here it stands for a conqueror crediting his success to the instruments of his violence. Incense, aromatic resin burned so the smoke rises, was a normal part of offering worship to a god.

1:17

Emptying the net means dumping out the catch so the net can be thrown again immediately. The question is whether the cycle ever stops.