His name sounds kinda like: Have-a-book 📕or Have-a-Coke. 🥤 But the Hebrew is most accurately pronounced like: Cob-a-kook.
😐 Cob-a-kook? Are you serious? That sounds like a roasted corn stand 🌽 at a circus 🎪 .
Ok. That’s enough. Let’s try to be more scholarly.
🤓 Yeah, knucklehead. Scholars act professional. They don’t laugh at funny-sounding Bible names.
Some scholars think that his name is related to the Hebrew word chabaq, (kha-bok, to embrace), or the Akkadian word hambakuku which was some kind of plant. 🪴
😯 Hambakuku? 🤭
🤓 Oh that IS fun to say. Hambakuku. Haaam-ba-KUKU! 🥸🤪
😂🤣
Ho boy…
The prophecy of Habakkuk is a conversation between him and Yahweh, yet he says in the opening that he received it visually.
“The pronouncement which Habakkuk the prophet saw:”
Habakkuk 1:1 NASB2020
“The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.”
Habakkuk 1:1 ESV/LEB
“The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.”
Habakkuk 1:1 KJV
It seems to suggest that the LORD appeared to him in response to his prayer of complaint. Here is a quick outline of the book:
- Chapter 1 – Habakkuk’s conversation with God about Him using the wicked Babylonians to punish Judah
- Habakkuk speaks v2-4
- Yahweh replies v5-11
- Habakkuk responds 1:12-2:1
- Chapter 2 – Yahweh’s 2nd response which “describes the end.”
- Chapter 3 – Habakkuk’s psalm of praise
Habakkuk’s initial complaint is one we might recognize. “God, I’m praying for my messed-up country! Are you listening?”
The Lord’s first reply sounds a bit like- “You think it’s bad now? Just wait…”
No wonder Habakuk replies in verse 12, “O Lord! Surely you don’t plan to wipe us out?!”
Here is the crux of Habakkuk’s struggle, and I think it is something we might also identify with:
“O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal— surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O Lord, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins. But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery? Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?”
Habakkuk 1:12-13 NLT
The prophet is asking 2 things:
- Is this the end?
- How can a holy God stand by and allow a more wicked people to punish a less wicked people?
Judah has been bad, sure. But there are at least a few among them who are still faithful to Yahweh. Babylon (Chaldea) can make no such claim. They are completely pagan.
Habakkuk knows he has been very bold to question Almighty God. I like how the NASB renders his anticipation of getting chewed out by God:
“I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the watchtower; And I will keep watch to see what He will say to me, And how I may reply when I am reprimanded.”
Habakkuk 2:1 NASB2020
But Yahweh doesn’t really reprimand Habakkuk. In verses 2-3 He gives the prophet instruction on what to do with the prophecy. And He also answers the first question. Sort of.
Q: Is this the end?
A: (Hab. 2:3) Hurry up and wait for it.
😐 I don’t find that very helpful.
It’s not that different from trying to figure out if we are currently at the end now. The LORD is directing the course of events toward His chosen outcome. All of human history is hurtling toward it. It is inevitable. But it will happen when it happens. We can neither delay it nor hasten it.
🤓 Kinda like a family road trip when I was a kid. All of my asking “Are we there yet?,” didn’t make us get there any faster or slower. Dad would always say, “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Exactly.
Then, the LORD begins to address the 2nd question about evil people being used as a means of punishing less evil people. He makes a declaration that won’t be fully understood and unpacked until the New Testament:
“Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.”
Habakkuk 2:4 NLT
Or, as the KJV famously puts it, “the just shall live by faith.”
Remember how I said back when we started reading the prophets that if we want to better understand the prophets, it helps to mentally zoom out and try to see things from God’s outside-of-time perspective?
🤔 Yeah.
What does the text above say is the future of the righteous?
😌 They will live.
Exactly.
This isn’t the end. Even if they die at the hands of the Babylonians, the just shall LIVE.
That was why God could allow evil people to punish His rebellious children. Some of those rebel children will repent and return to Yahweh and be faithful (loyal) to Him as their only God. The ones already faithful to Yahweh will be tested and proven. And they will all LIVE again.
Paul was unpacking some of this concept to the Corinthians:
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 ESV
Everything in this physical world is temporary. It’s eternity that matters.
And the wicked? Their future isn’t so good. They’re aren’t getting away with anything. It may look at the time like the Babylonians are getting away with murder. They aren’t. Zoom out. Look at the eternal picture.
The LORD gives Habakkuk a series of “Woes” for these wicked ones. I find the NLT rendering helpful, “What sorrow awaits!”
Here is a list of the ones which have great sorrow awaiting them:
- Thieves (v5-8), the ones who get rich by extortion and coercion (think the Mafia and gangs and organized crime). Verses 6-7 also suggests people like loan sharks, payday lenders, and even crooked pawn brokers who take advantage of people’s desperate situations to enrich themselves.
- Greedy (v9-11), the ones who gain wealth through corruption (think insider trading, bribery, blackmail, money-laundering, influence peddling), then they use that ill-gotten gain to secure their family against economic turmoil while not caring about the lives they destroyed to get that wealth.
- Corrupt Politicians (v12-14), they will even hire hit men to knock off anyone trying to hold them accountable, (cough cough, the Clin— cough ahem, tons). These kinds of people are like evil characters in a Batman comic. Many cities, states, and nations have them. But it’s all going to go up in flames. All their corruption will be washed away with the FLOOD of God’s glory.
- Manipulators (v15-17), these are the ones who use other people for their own selfish ends; the gaslighters, the narcissists, the money-grabbers who don’t give a rip about the destroyed lives and creation left in the wake of their ambition.
- Idolaters (v18-20), These people pray to blocks of wood and stone. You can’t fix that level of stupid. Yahweh is not an idol. He is REAL. And He sits on HIS real throne in HIS holy temple reigning over all the earth.
Habakkuk gets the message. Babylon (the wicked) may win the battle but they lose the war. They are destined for destruction. God wins. His glory will fill the earth and everyone will know it.
The only proper response to that Good News is a psalm of praise and faith. And that’s what Habakkuk writes in chapter 3. It looks like our friend Habakkuk was a musician.
Verse 1 includes a musical direction, “according to shigionoth.” I asked Professor Google what that meant.
😯 So… Habakkuk was… Pentecostal?
Well, let’s just say he was way more enthusiastic than your average church-goer.
Keep in mind that Habakkuk is “havin’ church” while facing a future that is very insecure according to the flesh: Invading armies. Judgement Day. Food scarcity. He is singing about the literal Apocalypse and praising in faith; dancing all over the top of worry. Sometimes we gotta do that.
If you wanna read Habakkuk 3 like it was meant to be felt, you best put on some shoutin’ music and bust out the tambourine.
To The Reader 