Habakkuk 1:1-4 – Appealing To God Over Injustice

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 30 March 2025
Omitting greyed-out text should bring verbal presentation down to about 40 minutes.

Introduction (v.1)

• Read first five verses
  The judgment-prophecy which Habakkuk the prophet saw: How long, Yahweh? I have hollered, but You have not given heed. I cry out to You, “Violence!” but You do not save! Why do You make me see iniquity and make trouble visible? Indeed, destruction and violence are in front of me. And there is fighting, and litigation is on the rise. Therefore the Torah is deactivated, and justice has not gone forth to any extent, because the wicked corners the righteous, therefore what goes forth is crooked justice.
  “Look among the nations, y’all, and view and be utterly amazed, for I am accomplishing an accomplishment during y’all’s days; y’all will not believe when it is recorded…”

• Habakkuk introduces himself in v.1 as “the prophet” and gives no other information about himself.

• He is the first of the prophets who felt the need to inform us that he was a “prophet.” (Only he and Haggai and Zechariah introduce themselves to us as “prophets.”) Perhaps this was because they ministered at a time when false prophets abounded, along with skepticism that anybody actually had a word from God for the people.

• Because of his love for God’s law, his prayers for his people, his being commanded to in­scribe his vision on “the¹ tablets” (in chapter 2), and his writing a praise psalm to be played “on [his own] instruments” (in chapter 3), it may be that he was a priest.

• There is a Jewish tradition from Yuchasin (which I find plausible) that Habakkuk was the chief scribe in charge of the holy Scriptures and that he inherited that role from Nahum.

• The name “Habakkuk” uses the Hebrew root יבק, meaning “to hug/clasp,” with the last syllable repeated for emphasis or repetition – a “strong hug” or “repeated hug².”

  • There is a Jewish tradition³ that links Habakkuk with Elisha’s blessing on the Shunamite wo­man in 2 Kings 4:16, “At this time next year… you will embrace (khobeqet) a son,” but most scholars agree that it would be about 200 years too early for him to be the Shunamite’s son.

• There are other Jewish traditions, such as the Midrash Avoth⁴ and the apocryphal “Bel and the Dragon,” which place Habakkuk a couple of decades too late, during the Babylonian exile, interestingly enough, delivering a meal to Daniel in the lion’s den!

• Date

• But the Bible is the only reliable source for dating Habakkuk, and Habakkuk is the only book in the Bible that mentions Habakkuk⁵, so all we have to go on is his own message about the wickedness of the people in Jerusalem and coming of the Chaldean army to destroy them (3:16). This timing fits with the declining years of the southern kingdom of Judea before its destruction in the year 586 Before Christ.

• It is plausible, furthermore, that Habakkuk wrote after the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, since he never mentions the threat of the Assyrians (although arguments from silence are not conclusive).

• Several of the commentators I read⁶ suggested that the time was during the reign of Jehoia­kim, after the battle of Carchemish (in 605 BC), when the Babylonian army conquered Egypt and its allies and the Jews began to fear that Babylon would come after them next, because their king, Jehoiakim, had been appointed by the Egyptian administration. Indeed, within a year, the Chaldeans did abduct the noblemen of Jerusalem (including Daniel) and took them into exile. I noticed two lines of reasoning among these commentators who chose 605 as the date. One is bogus, but the other is legitimate:

  • Some of these commentators⁷ were secularists who assumed that there is no such thing as supernatural prophecy, so they were looking for a date late enough that Habakkuk could have predicted the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem simply based on current events. That’s the bogus reason.

  • But there are also faithful commentators⁸ who held to the 605 date for Habakkuk’s prophecy, based on scripture – the fact that God says in verses 5-6, that “in your days” He is “raising up” (in present tense) the Chaldean army.

• The majority of the commentators I consulted thought the timing would fit best one to four decades earlier than 605, during King Josiah’s reign⁹ or late in Manasseh’s reign¹⁰,

  • This still puts the exile within the lifetime of Habakkuk’s listeners¹¹

  • and is closer to “the beginning of Babylon’s westward move for world conquest” before the fall of Nineveh.

  • The sinful conditions of Jerusalem described by Habakkuk fit with the situation during parts of the reigns of Manasseh and of Josiah before they made reforms.

  • There is also the matter of the Shiginoth worship-song in chapter 3 of Habakkuk, which probably would not fit during the parts of the reigns of Manasseh and of Josiah when the temple was shut down. This would limit the time to late in Manasseh’s reign (in the 640’s, 2 Chron. 33:15-16) after he repented, or at the midpoint of Josiah’s reign (in the 620’s) when he reopened the temple.

• Either way, to put it into perspective, Habakkuk’s grandparents and great-grandparents were probably alive when Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea were preaching. As for Habakkuk himself, he probably heard Nahum and Zephaniah preach while he was growing up, and he was a con­temporary of the great prophet Jeremiah, but the prophet Daniel was still a young lad.

• Content

• Habakkuk calls the content of his book a “burden/oracle” - literally: “that which is carried” – this word is also used in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as well as Nahum, Zechariah, and Malachi as a prophecy of coming punishment.

• However, unlike all the other prophets which started their book with “a burden” Habakkuk starts his book by saying it is “the burden.” Perhaps this indicates that he had only one topic he wanted to write on, unlike others who had more than one issue to address, or perhaps it wasn’t intended to imply anything more than the definiteness of Habakkuk as a historical person.

• Habakkuk is quoted in four different books of the New Testament, putting him up there with Isaiah and Malachi as the top three Biblical prophets in terms of quotes per chapter¹². His New Testament quotes are:

  • Acts 13:41 (“behold I am doing something in your day which you would not believe if you were told”),

  • and Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:37-38, where Habakkuk’s quote about “the just living by faith” is reiterated.

• Habakkuk is a very personal book. While it is a prophetic message to the nation of Judah, it is in first person – “I… me.” It is not some dispassionate delivery of pure divine truth through a mechanical mouthpiece. Habakkuk shares with us how he feels as he goes through the process of receiving a prophecy from God, and he is honest about the ways he struggles with suffering and waiting on God.

• Right out of the chute, he shares the very raw information that God has not been answering his prayers and that he wants to know how long he’s going to have to wait.

v. 2 – Is God Going To Answer My Prayer?

• Now, we know that God doesn’t answer the prayers of insincere people who don’t follow Him¹³. God said in Isaiah 1:15 to a group of hardened, unrepentant sinners, “And when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from them; and although you multiply prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.” But that’s not the case with Habakkuk. He’s a faithful believer.

• Throughout the Bible, we are encouraged to call out to God to save us, and we are promised that He will respond. For instance:

  • Psalm 72:12 “...He will deliver the needy when he cries [hollers], The poor also, and him who has no helper.” (NKJV, cf. Ps. 18:5-7, 22:5, 23-24, 30:2-3, 107:13-19, Jonah 2:2)

  • Isaiah 58:9 “Then you will call and Yahweh will answer; you will holler and He will say, ‘Here I am!’…” (NAW)

  • Matthew 7:7-8 “Continue to ask, and it will be given to y'all. Continue to search, and y'all will find. Continue to knock, and it will be opened up to you. For every one who is asking is receiving, and the one who is searching is finding, and to the one who is knocking it is being opened up!” (NAW)

  • John 14:13-14 “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” (NKJV, Rom. 10:13, Jas. 5:15)

  • That’s the way prayer works, right? Just say the right words to God, and out comes your solution, like a mind-controlled slot-machine!

• No, that’s not the way prayer works, says Habakkuk. Simply meditating on cherry-picked verses without taking into account the whole counsel of scripture gives people a lopsided view of how communication with God works. Yes, every verse in Scripture is true, but there are other, less-popular parts of scripture which fill in the rest of the truth about our relationship with God and our communication with him, and Habbakuk is one of those.

  • 1 Corinthians 12:8 is another one, where the Apostle Paul says, “I pleaded with the Lord three times that [the thorn in the flesh] might depart from me.” But apparently God didn’t answer that prayer because he had given that thorn in the flesh to Paul to keep him humble and keep him relying on God’s strength instead of his own.

  • There was another prayer of Paul’s that he apparently prayed for his whole life, yet never saw the answer to: It’s in Romans 10:1 “Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they [the Jewish nation] may be saved.” Certainly he saw some Jews saved by faith in Jesus, but by no means all of them. He says in Romans 11 that’s because widespread national repentance and faith is reserved in God’s providence for a future time. It was a good prayer, but the time wasn’t right yet.

  • But we don’t have the privilege of prophetic and apostolic revelation, so we usually won’t know why God hasn’t answered our prayer.

    • I have prayed alongside some of you for years for God to provide a spouse, and God simply hasn’t provided.

    • We’ve prayed for years for the salvation and restoration to fellowship of parishioners who left the faith and left our church, and honestly, it’s getting hard to keep praying for them, because it seems like it has done almost nothing.

    • I don’t think it was wrong to pray for these things, and I don’t think we’re praying with wrong attitudes, so we have to conclude that God has His reasons for not doing what we’ve ask for yet, and there’s really nothing we can do but wait on Him. But it’s hard to wait!

• Habakkuk asks, “Why am I not getting a response to my prayers – my hollering/cries/calls – for help?”

  • He’s praying to the right God – Yahweh/Jehovah/the LORD,

  • And God always “hears/listens” to us when we call out to Him:

    • The Hebrew word for “hear” includes responding to what is heard, and it’s the responsive part of hearing that Habakkuk is complaining to God about. Habakkuk says that God hasn’t “given heed” and responded to those prayers the way Habakkuk expected, but that is not the same as God not hearing.

    • Don’t let Satan deceive you into thinking that just because you haven’t seen God respond the way you think He should that He didn’t hear you in the first place. He heard. Your prayer never goes unheard.

  • Also, we know that Habakkuk wasn’t praying frivolous prayers. He wasn’t asking God for a sack full of candy that he didn’t need. There was honest-to-goodness “violence” happening in front of him, and he was asking God to save him and his people from clear and present danger, but apparently, God hadn’t intervened, and so some of Habakkuk’s friends were murdered.

• How do you handle that? You pray for healing and blessing, but the person dies or gets hurt instead. Habakkuk points the way for us. We have to go to God about it.

  • If we believe God created the world and has the power to preserve it;

  • if we believe God has a plan for world history that He is carrying out,

  • and if we believe God is personal and conducts personal relationships with us, then there is nowhere else we can take this problem but to God.

  • Habakkuk says, “How long, Yahweh? I hollered for help, but You have not given heed.” What’s up?

• And Habakkuk isn’t the only example of a godly person in the Bible who talked with God about their prayers not being answered:

  • Job was so righteous that God bragged on him in front of Satan, then Job gets hit with the death of all his children and the loss of all his possessions, and then, as he slowly dies of an incurable disease he says in Job 21:7 “Why do the wicked live and become old, Yes, become mighty in power?” (NKJV)

  • Jeremiah 12:1 “...let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? ... 14:9 Why should You be like a man... who cannot save? Yet You, O LORD, are in our midst, And we are called by Your name; Do not leave us!” (NKJV) But He did leave them.

  • David cried out in Psalm 22:1-2 “My God, My God why did You forsake me? My groaning words come from being far away from my salvation. My God, I call out daily – yet you do not answer, and nightly – yet there is no rest for me.” (NAW)

• Habakkuk’s first question “How Long? ‎ עַד־אָנָה” indicates that he realizes it it not a matter of God not hearing his prayers, but rather a matter of timing. The problem has more to do with the fact that he is tired of waiting for the Lord. He questions whether God’s timing is good. He’s flirting with not trusting God. And if we’re honest, we all have the same problem.

  • Psalm 13:1-2 “How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me indefinitely? How long will You hide your face from me? How long will I have to put advice into my soul, will there be sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy rise above me?” (NAW)

  • Jeremiah 47:6-7 "O you sword of the LORD, How long until you are quiet? ..." (NKJV)

  • Asaph’s Psalms¹⁴:

    • Psalm 74:10-11 “O God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever? Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them." (NKJV)

    • Psalm 79:5 “How long, LORD? Will You be angry forever?…” (NKJV)

    • Psalm 80:4 “O LORD God of hosts, How¹⁵ long will You be angry Against the prayer of Your people?” (NKJV)

    • Psalm 82:2 How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked?” (NKJV)

  • Isaiah 6:11 “Then I said, ‘How long, Lord?’ And He said, ‘Until whenever cities crash to ruin without inhabitant, and houses are without a human and the ground is ruined – a desolation.’” (NAW)

  • Zechariah 1:12 "...O LORD of hosts, how long will You not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which You were angry these seventy years?" (NKJV)

  • Revelation 6:10 "...How¹⁶ long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (NKJV)

• But long before God’s people ever thought to ask the question, God was asking the question of His own people!

  • Ex. 16:28 “How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?” (NKJV)

  • Numbers 14:11 “...How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them?” (NKJV)

  • Joshua 18:3 “...How long will you neglect to go and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers has given you?” (NKJV)

  • Exodus 10:3 “...How¹⁷ long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?…” (NKJV)

  • Numbers 14:27 “...How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against Me?” (NKJV)

  • 1 Kings 18:21 “...How long will you falter between two opinions?…” (NKJV)

  • Jeremiah 4:14 “...How long will you harbor wicked thoughts?” (NIV)

  • Jeremiah 31:22 “How long will you wander, unfaithful Daughter…?” (NIV)

  • Hosea 8:5 “...How long will they be incapable of purity?” (NIV)

• It’s not that God can’t hear or can’t save; it’s that our sin offends Him and we are impatient and don’t trust Him.

v. 3 – Why Won’t God Get Rid Of Evil?

• “Here I am,” says Habakkuk, in v.3, “a godly man, asking You to put an end to the violence, iniquity, wickedness, destruction, and strife around me, and instead You are rubbing my face in it! It’s the opposite of what I asked You to do, LORD! I asked to be delivered out of this cesspool of sin. The frustration I am feeling from seeing injustices pile up continues to build up in me. The grief I feel when I see the consequences of my neighbors doing evil gets heavier and heavier.

• “And, yes, as the NIV and ESV point out¹⁸, this does reflect on whether or not You are a right­eous and just God, if You have the power to punish evil, but let it continue to run rampant. I need a little help here, God!”

• Habakkuk mentions 6 vices that surround him in v.3: “injustice/iniquity... trouble... grief/wicked­ness… destruction... violence... fighting/strife, and litigation/contention/conflict.”

• When we look at the descriptions of life in Jerusalem during Habakkuk’s time, it is indeed sordid:

  • In chapter 2, Habakkuk mentions pride, drunkenness, greed, bloodshed, violence, corruption, adultery, idolatry, and terrorism.

  • Jeremiah, his contemporary wrote: 6:7 “As a fountain wells up with water, So [Jerusalem] wells up with her wickedness [רעה]. Violence and plundering are heard in her. Before Me continually are grief [חלי] and wounds... 9:2 ...they are all adulterers, An assembly of treacherous men... 20:18 Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, That my days should be consumed with shame?" (NKJV)

  • Isaiah, his predecessor wrote that “...they decree unrighteous decrees, and... write perverse­ness; to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of judgment, that widows may be their spoil, and prey upon the fatherless!” (Isa. 10:1-2) … “No one calls in righteousness; no one is judged in truth: trusting in emptiness and to speak worthlessness, to conceive toil and to give birth to iniquity.” and in chapter 59 “...your iniquities have become causes for separation between yourselves and your God, and your sins have caused [His] face to hide from you - away from hearing you. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken falsehood; your tongue mutters wrong. No one calls in righteousness; no one is judged in truth: trusting in emptiness and to speak worthless­ness, to conceive toil and to give birth to iniquity... Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood... The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ruts. Their paths they have made crooked [עקשׁו] for themselves; all who tread in it have not known peace. Therefore justice has been far from us, and righteousness does not reach us... For our rebellions have become many before you, and our sins have testified against us; for our rebellions are with us, and, as for our iniquities, we know them: rebellion and being untrue with Yahweh, and turning back from following our God, speaking injury and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood...” (Isa. 59:1-13, NAW)

  • Matthew Henry picked up on the particular grief of “strife” and “conflict,” which Habakkuk mentions at the end of verse 3. These are terms used to describe litigation, but it can be interpreted more broadly as any interpersonal conflict. “[T]he kingdom was broken into parties and factions that were continually biting and devouring one another. This is a lamentation to all the sons of peace: There are that raise up strife and contention (v.3), that foment divisions, widen breaches, incense men against one another, and sow discord among brethren, by doing the work of him that is the accuser of the brethren. Strifes and contentions that have been laid asleep, and begun to be forgotten, they awake, and industriously raise up again, and blow up the sparks that were hidden under the embers. And, if blessed are the peace-makers, cursed are such peace-breakers, that make parties, and so make mischief that spreads further, and lasts longer, than they can imagine.”

• “[T]he Prophet here solicits God to visit these many sins in which the people had hardened themselves... [And] it is probable that all the godly, in so disordered a state of things, mourned alike… Now this passage teaches us, that all who really serve and love God, ought, according to the Prophet’s example, to burn with holy indignation whenever they see wickedness reigning without restraint among men, and especially in the Church of God.” ~J. Calvin, 1559AD

• It’s easy to empathize with with these prophets. We look around and see people taking God’s name in vain (but denying His existence), politicians and bankers defrauding us in broad day­light, corporations selling us food that is destructive to our health, and entertainment that is defiling while spouting lies about how good it is for us, educational establishments which openly teach that Christianity is the problem and that false religions are the solution, and we say, “How long, Lord, can You leave these things unpunished? Please intervene now!”

  • The Apostle Paul prophesied in 2 Timothy 3 “...in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…” (2 Tim. 3:1-4, NKJV)

  • I’ve been praying for 40 years for God to send a spiritual awakening and turn all this around in my country and it hasn’t happened. How much longer can I do this?

• So godly people ask God to bring justice to the situation:

  • Habakkuk models it for us by going to God and opening up dialogue about it with the questions “How” and “Why.” (cf. vs. 2,3,13)

  • David does it in his imprecatory Psalms like Psalm 55:9 “Put them down, my Master! Split up their languages! For I have seen violence and contention in the city!” (NAW)

  • The early church did it in their prayers too, after being imprisoned and interrogated and threatened by the temple priests, “‘Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.’ And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:29-31, NKJV)

  • The common denominator is that, instead of saying, “Well, I tried the God stuff, and obviously that didn’t work!” – instead of turning to human power, and instead of giving up altogether in despair, they talked to God about the problem. That’s what we must do too.

v. 4 – The Justice System Is Too Corrupt To Help

• In verse 4, Habakkuk makes the case before God that the human structures of justice in his country cannot fix these problems, therefore it is necessary for God to intervene¹⁹.

• Notice why there is no justice – why it’s all so “crooked:” It’s “because the Torah/law is paralyzed/ignored/slacked/deactivated.” The Bible is the objective standard God has given us for determining what is just and what is unjust. Governments ignore it to their own peril.

• King David wrote in Psalm 119:126 “It is time for You to act, O LORD, For they have regarded Your law as void.” (NKJV) When civil government looses its bearings on right and wrong and reform is out of reach, we can appeal to God who “establishes all authorities” (as Rom. 13:1 tells us).

• King Solomon commented on how quickly governments become corrupt when they lose accountability: Ecclesiastes 8:11 “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” (NKJV, cf. 3:16, Ezek. 9:9) He should know; he had actual experience in running a country!

• Jesus also commented: Matthew 24:12-13 “[O]n account of the proliferation of the lawlessness, the love of the many will evaporate. But the one who has persevered into the end, this one will be saved.” (NAW) Will you be one of those who perseveres - with faith in Jesus - into the end? Will you keep bringing your concerns to Him in prayer?

Conclusion

• If the sin and injustice around you doesn’t bother you, then you need to take a step back and get right with God first. “We [tend to be] only tender on what concerns us individually, and in the meantime we easily forgive when God is wronged, and His truth despised. But the Prophet shows here that he was not made indignant through a private feeling, but because he could not bear the profanation of God’s worship and the violation of His holy law... Let us hence learn to rouse up ourselves... when the ungodly openly despise and even mock God… For even Paul also shows, in an indirect way, that there is just reason for indignation—‘Be ye angry,’ he says, ‘and sin not,’ (Ephesians 4:26); that is, every one ought to regard his own sins, so as to become an enemy to himself; and he ought also to feel indignant whenever he sees God offended.” ~J. Calvin

• Certainly there are things you can do, within the sphere of authority given to you by God, to take dominion of home and work and community for His glory, using God’s word as the standard of justice, but, when it’s beyond your power and the evil becomes overwhelming, take it to Jesus.

  • “I must tell Jesus, I must tell Jesus. I cannot bear these burdens alone…” ~Elisha Hoffman

  • “It is a great comfort to trust God, even if His providence is unfavorable. Prayer steadies one when he is walking in slippery places, even if things asked for are not given.” ~ President Benjamin Harrison, in a letter, August 8, 1887

  • “We must not think it strange if wickedness be suffered to prevail far and prosper long. God has reasons, and we are sure they are good reasons, both for the reprieves of bad men and the rebukes of good men; and therefore, though we plead with him, and humbly expostulate concerning his judgments, yet we must say, ‘He is wise, and righteous, and good, in all,’ and [we] must believe the day will come, though it may be long deferred, when the cry of sin will be heard against those that do wrong and the cry of prayer for those that suffer it.” ~ M. Henry, 1714 AD