The Book of Habakkuk

 

Lesley Lowe[1]

Vanderbilt University

 

 

Part I, Life Context

 

Introduction: Identifying the life context in which the Biblical book is interpreted

This paper will employ the “reading with” strategy as exemplified by Gerald West (Global Bible Commentary, 92-104),   Therefore there are two contexts which need to be identified and discussed: my own personal context and the life contexts of those who will be the readers.

My context:    

I am white, female, upper middle class American.  I was raised in a conservative Christian, two-parent home in small-town Alabama.  Most of my life experiences, although at times very difficult, have been far from catastrophic, crippling, or life-threatening.  My family has directly worked through issues of addiction and patterns of verbal abuse; we have confronted pointed discrimination from the community as we accepted into our home a child of a different racial background.  Having dealt with these issues has undoubtedly given me a stronger sense of compassion for those who suffer in the world.  None of these issues, however, can compare with the persecution, devastation, and whole scale murder experienced by refugees and displaced peoples throughout the world.  I recognize that I cannot claim to understand the experience of such people; I cannot truly comprehend the level of their suffering. 

            The events that brought me close enough to gain a glimpse and to be deeply and intensely disturbed by the suffering in the world today began when I met, through Catholic Charities’ refugee youth program, individuals—teenagers and countless others—who grew up in volatile conditions and who were driven from their countries because of it.  They do not often discuss their experiences, but the few tibits I have heard have been unforgettable.

            I then saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, an intensely powerful and disturbing portrayal of events during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.  As I watched the representation of these horrific events, in which humans did unimaginable things to one another, I couldn’t help factoring in the refugees I know personally, adding their faces to the story; then I recognized that these whom I know are the lucky ones who escaped but whose friends and community members may have experienced the very horrors that I was watching.  This led me to a crisis.  I returned home with anger and a multitude of questions for God: Why did You let this happen? If You are good, how could You let this happen? Did You cause this evil? By not preventing evil, were You contributing to it? And in that case, what happened to the good, compassionate, loving God who I knew?

            These questions led me to the book of Habakkuk, which tells a story that is beautifully and frighteningly similar to modern day events of persecution and destruction.

 

My readers’ context:  

Most of the youth are from various countries in Africa (Sudan, Burundi, Somalia), each of which are nations that have faced, at best, discrimination and war caused by ethnic or religious conflict, and at worst, genocide.  These youth, however, may have been largely protected from the worst of the violence in their countries, as they all left with their families at or before the start of the conflicts.  They have all been out of their countries for no less than two years, some as long as 11 years.  Some lived in refugee camps, a life which rarely provides any real refuge from the poverty and destruction of war.  Their families moved to the various countries of Egypt, Turkey, and Ethiopia before coming to the United States.  If the story ended here, these youth would have an entirely different context from what they now have.  Yet upon arriving in America, they were thrown into a new, very different world, a part of my world.  Here the youth must face a culture that is prosperous and materialistic; for the most part they have or can get anything they want.  These youth came from cultures and tribes in Africa with a well-developed system of community and cultural norms and mores; in America they are dropped into what is for them a far more immoral culture, obsessed with individual rights and loose boundaries that allow levels of sexual promiscuity, drug use, and many other temptations which these teens are not accustomed to.  And as young people going through their formative teen years in a brand new environment, they are struggling for acceptance by their peers, without the network of social support which they are used to.

            The interplay of such disparate contexts will certainly lead to the development of a unique worldview by these youth and most likely to a fascinating interpretation of Habakkuk.

 

Theological Issues in Habakkuk and the Life Context

The most important theological issue in this study seems to be one of theodicy; in this case, reconciling a God of goodness and justice with the pervasive and often horrific evil and injustice in the world, evident both in the time of Habakkuk and in our own time.  We will examine this issue through a two-way analysis of the text of Habakkuk and the context of the interpreters.

Analysis of present-day context in terms of the text

Is there blatant and pervasive injustice in the world today?

Habakkuk 1:2-4  Habakkuk decries the injustice and violence before him:  “The law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore, justice comes out perverted.”

Habakkuk 1:6b-7  Habakkuk is disturbed that the Chaldeans obey no laws but their own unjust ones. “That fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs. They are dreaded and feared. Their justice and authority originate with themselves.”

We see throughout the world evidence of governments and authorities that are full of corruption and act for their own benefit, with no regard for the people they are intended to serve.  People who are innocent of any wrongdoing other than being of a certain race or ethnicity are tortured or killed by governments or other groups.  This was the case in Burundi, which neighbors Rwanda and which experienced many of the same horrific incidents as Rwanda in 1994, and continues to be the reality in Sudan, where the African people groups are systematically persecuted by the Arabic peoples who control the government.

 

Is God sovereign, with the power to send or prevent evil?

Habakkuk 1:5b-6a  “I am doing something in your days you would not believe if you were told. Behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans…”

Habakkuk 1:12 “Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Thou, O Lord, has appointed them to judge; and thou, O Rock, hast established them to correct.”

God is in control of all events on earth, and nothing occurs at the macro-level of government, politics, economics or at the micro-level of communities, families and individuals that He has not ordained.  This may be a comfort to the readers who have experienced persecution, that God controls all things.  It can also be a confusion: does God cause evil?

 

Is God’s righteous judgment a sure thing?  Is punishment inevitable for those who violate His just laws?

Habakkuk 1:11b “But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god.”

Habakkuk 3:13 “Thou didst go forth for the salvation of Thy people, for the salvation of Thine anointed. Thou didst strike the head of the house of the evil to lay him open from thigh to neck.”

Does this mean that the governments, ethnic groups, or other perpetrators of violence or ethnic cleansing in Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia will receive their just reward?

 

Is God’s justice really coming?

Habakkuk 2:3 “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay.”

Habakkuk 3:16b “I must wait quietly for the day of distress to come upon the people who will invade us.”

            Assurance that God’s justice is surely coming, we must trust and wait.  But can we have this assurance?

 

Is it safe to put our hope in God no matter the circumstances?

Habakkuk 17-18 “Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines…yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.”

 

Analysis of text in terms of present-day context

Where is God when injustice prevails, when there seems to be no justice in sight?

The book of Habakkuk presents God’s justice as imminent and forthcoming, but do we see this in present reality?   Corruption and the diverting of resources from the poor to benefit wealthy elites continue to be the norm in many African countries and in the global community as a whole.  In Sudan, the government and the Arab militias are even now plundering and burning villages and killing the people of western Sudan with impunity.  The international community is well aware of the crisis but has taken no action that will effectively end the violence and prosecute the perpetrators.  Justice is not prevailing for the people of Sudan, even after the world has seen such persecution many times before and vowed not to let it happen again.  Why is God silent? Is Habakkuk mistaken when he so firmly asserts God’s hastening justice?

 

How can a good God allow such horrific incidents as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the persecution in Sudan, Burundi, Somalia, even for a short time?

Habakkuk concludes with an exultation of praise for God’s salvation and provision.  “I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet and makes me walk on my high places” (Habakkuk 3:18-19).  But for the people who have experienced unimaginable suffering, “hell on earth,” as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called western Sudan, can any amount of future blessing or vindication of wrongs account for the misery that they  endured?  Can a God who longs to see goodness and blessing upon His people stand and watch such intense evil and suffering come upon them?  Does Habakkuk reflect blind trust in a God who is perhaps not so trustworthy?

 

Are we truly to take no action against injustice, to simply wait and let it work its devastation?

Habakkuk counsels us to wait on the Lord, even as we see the invaders approaching, and trust that His justice will come.  Yet this seems to contradict all that modern liberation theory would call for: present action to reverse wrongs and to right injustices and imbalances in the world.  Are we, as Christians, not called to work for the redemption of humankind in all areas of life, spiritual, physical, social, political?

 

Part II, Contextual Comment

Historical Overview of Habakkuk
            The Old Testament book of Habakkuk, the eighth in the line of Minor Prophets, is one of the more mysterious Biblical texts in terms of its placement within history.  Very few external sources have been found that can either confirm or disprove the identity of the prophet and people groups, the time period, or the geographical setting of the events described.  As a result, there is general confusion and disagreement among scholars about many of the elements of the text.  The conclusions that have been drawn about the book and its setting are based primarily upon what can be discerned in the text itself. 

            The only explicit textual description of Habakkuk the individual is as a “prophet” (Habakkuk 1:1 and 3:1).  Habakkuk is, however, a non-traditional prophet; as Strong’s Bible Commentary notes, he speaks to God for the people, wrestling with their issues and posing their questions to the Divine, rather than speaking to the people as a representative for God, as is typical of most other Biblical prophets. 

            Scholars have proposed numerous and often conflicting identities and dates for Habakkuk beyond his prophethood.  There seems to be the greatest consensus, however, on the theory that he was a Levite or other Temple minister, as suggested by his poetic and musical skills. (The third chapter is a psalm, intended to “be sung while being accompanied by stringed instruments,” Hab. 3:19b).

Significant speculation has been made regarding the actual identity of the “Babylonians,” or “Chaldeans,” who are the invaders and oppressors of the story.  If the Hebrew word is read “Kittim,” it would refer to the Cypriot Greeks, thus setting the events in the late 4^th century B.C. during the conquests of Alexander the Great.  Such a reading may be supported by verses such as 1:9, Their huge armies advance like a wind out of the desert.  They gather prisoners like sand…, which could be descriptive of Alexander’s army.  Alternatively, it could be read “Kasdim,” confirming the invaders as the Chaldeans and placing the prophecy in the late seventh century B.C, the time of  the Babylonian exile.
           

Textual Overview of Habakkuk
The book of Habakkuk can be divided into three sections: 
            1) Dialogue between Habakkuk and God (1:1-2:4).  Habakkuk poses a series of questions to God about the injustice that he observes and God’s seeming failure to respond, and God provides an unexpected answer, I’m sending a people who will perpetrate the injustice and destruction.  Habakkuk then poses a second question, how can this be the solution offered byf a just God?   Then God begins His answer; Wait for the fulfillment of My plan.
            2) Series of woe oracles (2:5-20).  God continues His response to Habakkuk in a description of the judgment that will be turned back onto the Babylonians.
            3) A psalm (chapter 3).  Habakkuk affirms his belief in God’s sovereignty, in God’s ability to bring about salvation as shown in the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt, and in God’s justice.

Interpreting Habakkuk

            The Bible translation used in the reading sessions was the New International Reader’s Version, a simplified adaptation of the New International Version.  I chose this because its simplicity and clarity were important for the refugee youth, many of whom are beginning speakers and readers of English.  The youth and I held two sessions of reading Habakkuk together.  In the first session we had five people—three boys (one of them American), one girl, and myself.  We read the entire book, as it is only three chapters, stopping only for clarification of unfamiliar words or phrases and for summary of the events in the text.  Questions I asked during this initial reading focused on ensuring that the youth had a basic understanding of what was going on in the text.  Then we moved into a general discussion of what we had read.  I asked the youth four questions:  1) Tell me the story in your own words.  2) Write down what you think the point of this story is, in one sentence or less.  3) Have you ever been in a situation like Habakkuk or felt the way Habakkuk is feeling?  4) How does this story apply to our lives?  In this initial session the youth tended to be shy and hesitant to speak.  They were entirely cooperative, they answered my questions and generated some revealing responses, but I did not feel overall that they were especially engaged in the story or its meaning.

            After the first session I was somewhat disappointed that the text had not raised any questions in the minds of the youth, such as the questions that Habakkuk himself raises concerning good and evil, justice and injustice in the world and God’s connection with this; in short, questions of theodicy.  Looking back, I realize that I had entered with questions arising from my individual reading of Habakkuk, and I was hoping that the youth would have some of the same questions and generate unique answers to them.  The experience in this first session reminded me to be cautious in assuming that others will read a text and come away with the same questions and impressions that I do.  Furthermore, the very absence of doubt and questioning may be illuminative of the nature of the youth’s belief in God.  Perhaps the tragedy and severity of the events in their lives has necessitated a faith that precludes questions, that is unwavering in its acceptance of the sovereignty of God and God’s final goodness and justice.  Several youth made statements such as:  If you don’t listen to God, he can destroy you; or God can do whatever he wants; or You shouldn’t question a lot of stuff because everything happens for a reason.  Throughout each of these comments runs a common thread of God as absolutely sovereign and as justified in sending or allowing evil as God pleases. 

            In preparing for the second session, I wondered whether I should introduce the questions myself.  I wanted to move away from the largely uninvolved and abstract nature of the first session.  It was less important to me that the youth ask the same questions I had, than that they simply ask questions and become engaged with the text.  Yet I worried that a strategy of my introducing questions such as “How can a good God allow evil?” would cloud the spontaneous interpretation of the youth. 

            When we returned for the second session, we again had five people, but the girl did not attend and another boy took her place.  We read brief passages that I had chosen ahead of time to be indicative of the general events in the story.  In this second session, whether because of the greater simplicity of what they were reading or because of their increased familiarity with the story, the youth appeared better able to understand and engage with the text.   I attempted to push the youth for answers in this session, pressing them to examine why they said a certain thing or felt a certain way.  They soon opened up and entered into a lively discussion that continued largely without my effort.  The discussion was more contextual and spontaneous and less dictated by myself.  The welcome difference in the second session was that the youth in fact did address the questions I had been hoping they would, and most importantly, that they raised the questions themselves.  The contextual commentary will therefore be based primarily upon this second, more dynamic session.

 

Questions asked by the youth included: 

If the Ten Commandments aren’t directly obeyed, are you going to be sent to hell? 

Why does this imply that God is evil? 

God, if he created you, he can know what your future is…and he created Satan so he can be our enemy.  So if he knows that, why’s he gonna create Satan? 

Did he make Satan just to make himself popular? 

If God is a God of mercy like they say, how come he’s gonna kill everybody? 

 

Contextual Commentary
Habakkuk 1:1-2:3

            These verses, in which Habakkuk decries the gross injustices experienced by the people of God and God warns of the even greater persecution that is to come via the Babylonians, are also a disturbingly accurate reflection of the situations in Burundi, Somalia, and Sudan, the countries from which these refugee youth and their families fled.  Chapter 1, verses 8 and 9 are especially piercing and disquieting, as they almost exactly resemble the Sudanese militia known as the janjaweed, who are described as riding into Darfurian villages on horseback to attack and destroy innocent villagers:  Their horses are faster than leopards. They are meaner than wolves in the dark. Their horsemen charge straight into battle. They ride in from far away. They come down like an eagle diving for its food.
Habakkuk 2:4-20

            The next verses contain God’s assurance that the evil caused by the Babylonians will not go unpunished.  The situation will be reversed and they will be afflicted with the injustices which they once forced on other peoples.  Surely this may be seen, in the youths’ context, as an assurance of God’s desire and action for justice in the world.  Judgment will come: these corrupt and malicious governments, militias, tribal chiefs will not be able to prosper on the tainted wealth and power that they have built up; their demise among the nations of the world will come.  Does this mean, in the case of Sudan, that the oil revenues pouring into the government will somehow fail?  That the international community will halt its investment in Sudanese oil?

            The central response of the youth as they read and interpreted these verses was to affirm that God is in absolute control of all that happens in life, the good and the bad, and that we must accept both from God’s hand.  There was also an appreciation of the fact that they were each now experiencing the “good” times and a sense of wonder that the change was so quick and so seemingly arbitrary.  “I was in the middle of the war…and I’m sitting here now.”  Life is “bad one moment and good the next.”  And they made a final assertion of hope, that “the evil will fall and the good will prosper” and that we are to “hold on” until the second coming of Christ.

            These attitudes are rooted in their experiences in Africa and their ensuing flight as refugees.  In the face of such clear evil, over which they and their people had no control, the single comfort is to hold unswervingly to a belief in a sovereign God who ordains all events in life, is forever watchful and powerful, and will in the end reward the good and destroy the evil.

Habakkuk 3

            The last chapter, a psalm extolling the glorious power and wrath of God as he rescued the Israelites from their slavery and destroyed their oppressors, the Egyptians, and exhibiting a firm hope that God will repeat this magnificent act of salvation, can be a call to hope for refugees today.  
            Interestingly, it was at this point in Habakkuk, upon reading the description of God’s sending plagues and sickness, that the youth began to ask the searching questions.  The boy who had been in the United States for the longest time (6 years) was the first and boldest in asking questions, both of the text and of the others’ statements.  I suspect that this says something about the influence of American culture.  He was quicker to question and raise these issues after residing in a culture that emphasizes individual thought and liberty, often relativism, and where it is normal to hear public displays of dissent and doubt.  The other boys having come more recently from nations with significantly more repressive governments as well as stronger community norms and boundaries, are probably far less accustomed to facing and to voicing direct opposition or relativistic questioning. Yet one of these other boys soon joined in raising questions.

 

Responding to  the Questions

          The first question asked by the youth was, If God sends evil (disease, war, etc.), does that mean that God is evil?  The initial response to this was a reference to the story of Job, as evidence that “God wants to tempt his people even in bad so they can still love him, as they do in good”.  And God ordained pain for everyone “somewhere along the way of life”.  Then another question arose: Did God create Satan just to make himself popular? Is God “like the captain of the football team [who] will actually try to cause you pain so he can look good?”

            They continued to discuss this issue and suggest questions, but when I asked them directly whether God is good or bad, the youth responded without hesitation, “God’s good.”  This may be an attitude deeply ingrained in them as a result of war and tragedy.  It seems almost a universal response to cling to belief in absolute good in spite of, or perhaps because of, the demonstrated evil in the world.  For these youth and others who experience persecution, the only way to continue in the face of evil may be to believe that there is a good God and that goodness will prevail in the end.

            Another question raised by today’s context, Where is God when injustice prevails, when there seems to be little justice in sight?, was addressed in this conversation. “I know a man who was in one of the wars in Africa, and he came back with us, actually right now he lives close to my house and he was talking about the killing and how much he thinks about it every night when he goes to sleep and closes his eyes.”  “So where is God in all that?”, I queried.  His response: “He’s everywhere.”

            In confronting these difficult issues of theodicy, the youth did not always have an answer.  Just as I wondered how a good God could allow the horrific genocide and persecution such as that seen in the Holocaust, in Rwanda, and in countries today, one youth reflected, “We have war in Africa and God wouldn’t do anything about it.  You get all hard stuff; he can heal you whenever he wants to, but he’s going to leave you like that.”  When asked why God does that, the reply was, “I don’t know.”  Yet it seems that one of the lessons from Habakkuk is the freedom to ask questions which may not have an answer.

            A final moment in our discussion was the following remark.  “Okay but I’m not going to say that all the wars in Africa that have happened, that have traumatically damaged my life, I’m not going to say that God wasn’t doing anything about it, because it is slowing down, people are now starting to agree with each other and they’re now saying that we’ll share power.”  The youth clearly continue to maintain hope in God’s sovereignty, in God’s being everywhere and seeing everything, and find poignant examples of God’s goodness and coming justice in the midst of tragedy. 

 

Part 3, Comparison

Innocent Himbaza, the commentator on Habakkuk in the Global Bible Commentary, describes a context very similar to those of the refugee youth who interpreted with me.  Himbaza is a native of Rwanda and thus a survivor of the most horrific modern instance of genocide; and this makes him a victim of the same type of violence and persecution that has plagued the nations from which the youth have come.  Both Himbaza’s and the youth’s interpretations, therefore, focus on questions of theodicy, on why God allows war and injustice to seemingly run rampant in their African nations.  Both interpretations also, impressively, exude hope—hope that God is sovereign and entirely just, and hope that God will bring judgment upon injustice—despite the silence that now seems to come from God.

            The central difference among the interpretations is Himbaza’s emphasis on social action and involvement by Christians.  He sees Habakkuk, with his refusal to remain silent about injustice in the world and his demands to God for change, as a model for African Christians who are called to be engaged in the world and to work for change in the political, economic, and social climate plagued by injustice, poverty and oppression.  Too many Christians in Africa, says Himbaza, remove themselves from the world and place their hope in a future heaven, assuming that there is nothing to work for in this world.  In contrast, the youth take a more ambiguous and passive position.  One boy, who is from the Seventh-Day Adventist tradition, frequently spoke of the “Last Days” and the inevitability of God’s punishing injustice in the end, demonstrating a belief that the world is only worsening and focused on an “otherworldly” salvation.  Yet another boy revealed a more temporal mindset, suggesting that some situations in Africa are moving toward positive change and that God is at work in this world.  None of the youth, however, held a truly activist view that compels direct and vocal action to fight injustice.  The source of this fundamental difference may be the young age of the refugees in America, combined with their educational and social status.  In contrast to Himbaza, who is a well-established university professor, pastor, and author, they are inexperienced and new to a culture that is worlds apart from the African cultures in which they were raised; they often still struggle to master the language of the land in which they live; they and their families are laboring to gain acceptance and a basic level of material comfort in this new environment.  It is no wonder that they may feel ill-equipped and at this point even powerless to effect change.  The hope, then, is that they may soon adjust and find a foothold strong enough to enable them to stand up and call for the compassion and action of the United States people for the African nations.

 

Part 4, Conclusions

            The unique strength of the book of Habakkuk lies in its boldness and honesty in coming to God with the most difficult issues in life, regarding the very nature of God, God’s love and God’s justice.  It is this boldness which gives the book such resonating power for the world today: people can turn to this text and find in it freedom to ask the tough questions, as well as a sure faith that God is, in the end, perfect in both love and justice.
            Habakkuk does not have all his questions unequivocally answered and his problems solved by the end.  At the close of the book he is still waiting for the fast-approaching “day of trouble” (3:16).  Yet his confidence in God is unshaken; he is able to question because he knows that somehow God will be justified.  The God that Habakkuk knows has been unconditionally good and just, and somehow this God will prove to be infinitely so.  May this be a lesson to us, as the soul-questions pour forth and demand an answer (as they inevitably will and should), as our finite minds attempt to grasp the nature of an infinite God working in a world that confounds us: God remains as God ever has been, the Lord and King.  And this God who gives strength and fills with joy in the midst of our suffering must also be the God of our certain salvation, both in Africa and America, in this world and the next.

Bibliography

Himbaza, Innocent

2004    “Habakkuk.”    P. 306-309 in Global Bible Commentary, Daniel Patte, gen. ed.        Nashville: Abingdon.  

Nute, A. G.

1979    “Habakkuk.”  P. 943-950 in New International Bible Commentary, F. F.      Bruce, gen. ed.. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Sweeney, Marvin A.    

1992   “Habakkuk, Book of.” P. 1-6 in Anchor Bible Commentary, vol. 3, David Noel Freedman. ed. New York: Doubleday.

West, Gerald

2004    “1 and 2 Samuel.”   P. 92-104 in Global Bible Commentary Daniel Patte, gen. ed. Nashville: Abingdon.