Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 1

The burden - On the word “burden” see the note at (Nahum 1:1).

Which Habakkuk the prophet did see - The prophet’s name signifies “strong embrace.” The word in its intensive form is used both of God’s enfolding the soul within His tender supporting love, and of man clinging and holding fast to divine wisdom (Proverbs 4:8). It fits in with the subject of his prophecy: faith, cleaving fast to God amid the perplexities of things seen.

Dionysius states: “He who is spiritually Habakkuk, cleaving fast to God with the arms of love, or enfolding Him after the manner of one holily wrestling, until he is blessed, enlightened, and heard by Him, is the seer here.”

Dionysius continues: “Let him who would in such a way fervidly embrace God and plead with Him as a friend, praying earnestly for the deliverance and consolation of himself and others, but who does not yet see that his prayer is heard, make the same holy lament, and appeal to the clemency of the Creator.”

(Jerome. Abarbanel makes a similar point: “He strengthens himself in pleading his cause with God concerning the prosperity of Nebuchadnezzar, as if he were joined with God for the cause of his people” Preface to Ezekiel).

He is called ‘embrace’ either because of his love for the Lord, or because he engages in a contest and strife and (so to speak) wrestling with God. For no one with words so bold ventured to challenge God to a discussion of His justice and to say to Him, “Why, in human affairs and the government of this world is there such great injustice?”

The prophet - The title, “the prophet,” is added only to the names of Habakkuk, Haggai, and Zechariah. Habakkuk may have added it to his name because he prominently expostulates with God, like the Psalmists, and does not speak in the name of God to the people. The title asserts that he exercised the pastoral office of the prophets, although not directly in this prophecy.

Did see - Cyril states: “God multiplied visions, as is written (Hosea 12:10), and He Himself spoke to the prophets, disclosing to them beforehand what was to be, and almost exhibiting them to sight, as if already present. But that they determined not to speak from their own minds, but rather transmit to us the words from God, he persuades us at the outset, naming himself a prophet, and showing himself full of the grace belonging to it.”

O Lord, how long shall I cry - Literally, “how long have I cried so intensely to You?” Because it is always the cry of the creature to the One who alone can hear or help—its God. Of this cry the Prophet expresses that it had already lasted long. In that long past he had cried out to God, but no change had come. There is an undefined past, and this still continues.

How long - as Asaph cries, “how long have You been,” and, it is implied, will You be “wroth against the prayer of Your people?” As we should say, “how long shall Your wrath continue?” The words which the prophet uses relate to domestic strife and wrong between man and man: violence, iniquity, strife, contention (Habakkuk 1:3). Nor are any of them used only of the oppression of a foreign enemy.

Also, Habakkuk complains of injustice too strong for the law, and the perversion of justice (Habakkuk 1:4). And upon this, the sentence is pronounced. The enemy is to be sent for judgment and correction (Habakkuk 1:12).

They are then the sins of Judah which the prophet rehearses before God, in fellow-suffering with the oppressed. God answers that they shall be removed, but by the punishment of the sinners.

Punishment does not come without sin, nor does sin endure without punishment. It is one object of the Old Testament to exhibit the connection between sin and punishment. Other prophets, as commissioned by God, first denounced the sins and then foretold the punishment of the impenitent. Habakkuk appeals to God’s justice, as requiring its infliction. On this ground too, this opening of the prophecy cannot be a complaint against the Chaldeans, because their wrongdoing would be no basis for the punishment which the prophet denounced. Instead, their actions are the punishment itself, requiting human wrong through human wrong.

Cyril: “The prophet considers the person of the oppressed, enduring the intolerable insolence and contempt of those accustomed to do wrong. Very skillfully he attests to the unutterable lovingkindness of God. For he exhibits Him as very forbearing, though accustomed to hate wickedness. However, that He does not immediately bring judgment upon the offenders, he showed clearly, saying that His silence and long-suffering are so great that a strong cry is needed. This is because some practice intolerable covetousness against others and use unbridled insolence against the weak. Indeed, his very complaints about God’s endurance of evil attest to the immeasurable lovingkindness of God.”

Cyril: “You may judge from this the hatred of evil among the saints. For they speak of the woes of others as their own. So says the most wise Paul: Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? (2 Corinthians 11:29). He also commanded us to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), showing that sympathy and mutual love are especially fitting for the saints.”

The prophet, through sympathy or fellow-suffering with the sufferers, is as one of them. He cries for help, as himself needing it and being in the misery for which he prays. He says, “How long shall I cry?” standing, as it were, in the place of all, gathering all their cries into one, and presenting them before God. It is the cry, in one, of all that is wronged to the God of Justice, of all suffering to the God of love.

“When shall this scene of sin, confusion, and wrong be at an end, and the harmony of God’s creation be restored? How long shall evil not exist only, but prevail?” It is the cry of the souls under the altar (Revelation 6:10): “How long, O Lord, Holy and True, do You not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

It is the voice of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the Church against the world—weary of hearing the Lord’s Name blasphemed, of seeing wrong set up on high, of holiness trampled underfoot. It is in its highest sense His Voice, who, to sanctify our longings for deliverance, said in the days of His Flesh (Psalms 22:2), “I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear.”

Even cry out - aloud (it is the cry of anguish). Dionysius says: “We cry the louder, the more we cry from the heart, even without words; for not the moving of the lips, but the love of the heart sounds in the ears of God.”

Even cry out unto You. - Whether as an exclamation or a continuance of the question, “How long?” The prophet gathered in one the prolonged cry of past and future. He had cried out; he should cry on, “Violence.” He speaks as if the one word, jerked out, as it were, wrung forth from his inmost soul, was, “Violence,” as if he said this one word to the God of justice and love.

Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold—or rather, “Why do You behold grievance?” God seemed to reverse what He had said by Balaam (Numbers 23:21), He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, and hath not seen grievousness in Israel; and in the Psalms (Psalms 10:14), Thou hast seen, for thou (emphatic) beholdest grievousness and wrong, to put it in Thy hand; that is, You lay it up in Your hand, to cast it back on the head of the evildoer. Now He seemed to behold it and leave it unpunished, which yet Habakkuk says to God below, He could not do (Habakkuk 1:13); Thou canst not look upon iniquity. What then did this mean? What was the solution?

All forms and shapes of sin are multiplied: oppressive “violence,” such as “covered the earth” before the flood and brought it down; which Nineveh had to put away (Jonah 3:8), and it was spared; “iniquity,” that is, what is unequal and contrary to truth, falsehood.

Grievance—literally, burdensome wearisome “toil”; “spoiling,” or open robbery; “strife and contention,” both through perversion of the law and, without it, through endless conflicts of man with man.

Sin recoils on the sinner. Therefore, what he beholds is not “iniquity” only, but (in the same word) “vanity” and “grievance”—which is a burden both to him who suffers and, yet more, to him who inflicts it.

For nothing is so burdensome as sin, nothing so empty as wickedness. And while to the one who suffers, the suffering is temporal, to the one who inflicts it, it is eternal.

And yet the prophet, and whoever prays against ungodliness, “must commiserate him who does wrong yet more, since they hurt what is most precious, their own soul, and that eternally.” All then is full of evil.

Wherever the prophet looks, some fresh violence is before him; it confronts him on every side. “Strife has arisen,” come up, exists where it was not before; “contention lifts itself” on high, bowing down all beside.

Therefore - that is, because God seemed not to awaken to avenge His own cause, people convinced themselves they could continue sinning without punishment. Sin produces sin, and wrong produces wrong; it spreads like an infectious disease, propagating itself, and each to whom it reaches adds to its poison. At last, it reached even those who should be in God’s place to restrain it. The divine law itself is silenced by the power of the wicked, by the sin of the judge, by the hopelessness of all. When all around is evil, even those not yet lost are tempted to think: “Why should I be different from them? What evil befalls them? Why stand alone?”

Even a Psalmist (Psalms 73:15, Psalms 73:12–13) speaks as if tempted to “speak even as they,” saying, These are the ungodly who prosper in the world; they increase in riches; verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. And Solomon (Ecclesiastes 8:11) says, Because 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.

The law is slacked - literally “is chilled” (as we say, “is paralyzed”), through lack of the fire of love. This is what our Lord says (Matthew 24:12): Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

The divine law, the source of all right, being chilled in people’s hearts, “judgment,” that is, the sentence of human justice, as conformed to divine justice, doth never go forth. Human sense of right is powerless when there is not the love of God’s law.

It seems always ready to act, but always falls short, like an arrow from an unstrung bow. A person seems always about to do right; they judge, see, correctly—all but do it—yet, in the end, they always fail. It goes not forth. The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth (Isaiah 37:3).

For the wicked doth compass about the righteous, laying snares for him, as the Jews did for our Lord; evil is too strong for a weak will to do right, and overpowers it. Pilate sought in many ways to deliver Jesus, yet he finally delivered Christ into their hands.

Therefore wrong judgment proceedeth - literally, “judgment proceedeth wrested.” He had said, doth never go forth; never, that is, in its true character; for, when it does go forth, it is distorted.

Dionysius says: “For gifts or favor or fear or hate the guiltless are condemned and the guilty acquitted, as the Psalmist says (Psalms 82:2), How long will ye judge unjustly and accept the persons of the ungodly?”

Theophylact says: “‘Judgment goes forth perverted’ in the seat of human judgment (the soul). This occurs when, bribed by the pleasures of sense, the soul leans to the side of things seen, and the ungodly one—the rebel angel—besets and overpowers the one who has the sense of right. For it is right that things seen should give way to things unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18); for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Why then all this? And how long? Why does God bring it before him—He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, behold grievance, which His holy eyes could not endure?

Neither the unseen presence of God nor the mission of the prophet serves as a check. If the prophet rebukes, no one listened; if he intercedes for sinners, or against sin, God acted as if He would not hear.

God answers that, though to human impatience the time seems long, judgment will come, and that, suddenly and speedily. While the righteous is inquiring, “How long?” and the wicked is saying (Matthew 24:48), My Lord delayeth His coming, He has come, and is seen in their midst.

Behold you among the heathen - The whole tone of the words suddenly changes. The Jews flattered themselves that, being the people of God, He would not carry out His threats against them. They had become like the pagan in wickedness; God bids them look out among them for the instrument of His displeasure. It was an aggravation of their punishment that God, who had once chosen them, would now choose these whom He had not chosen, to chasten them.

So Moses had foretold (Deuteronomy 32:21), They have moved Me to jealousy by that which is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities; and I will move them to jealousy with not-a-people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

There were no signs of the storm that would sweep them away yet on the horizon. No forerunners yet.

And so He bids them gaze among the nations, to see from where it would come. They might have expected it from Egypt. It would come from where they did not expect, with a fierceness and terribleness that they did not imagine.

Regard - look closely, weigh well what it portends.

And wonder marvelously - literally, “be amazed, amazed.” The word is doubled to express how amazement would follow upon amazement; when the first was passing away, a new source of amazement would come.

For I will work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be told you. - So incredible it will be, and so against their wills! He does not say, “you would not believe if it were told to you;” much less “if it were told to you by others;” in which case the chief thought would be left unexpressed. No condition is expressed.

It is simply foretold what was verified by the whole history of their resistance to the Chaldeans until the capture of the city: “You will not believe, when it is told to you.” So it always is. Man never believes that God is in earnest until His judgments come.

So it was before the flood, and with Sodom, and with Lot’s sons-in-law; so it was with Ahab and Jezebel; so with this destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and what is foreshadowed by the Romans.

So Jeremiah complained (Jeremiah 5:12), They have belied the Lord, and said, It is not He; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword nor famine, and (Jeremiah 20:7–8), I am in derision daily; everyone mocketh me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto me, and a derision daily; and Isaiah (Isaiah 53:1), Who hath believed our report? And John the Immerser speaks as though it were desperate (Matthew 3:7): O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? And our Lord tells them (Matthew 23:38; Luke 13:35), Your house is left unto you desolate.

And yet they did not believe, but delivered Him up to be put to death, lest that should be, which did come to pass, because they put Him to death (John 11:48).

If we let Him thus alone, all people will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come, and take away both our place and nation. Therefore, Paul applies these words to the Jews in his day, because the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar was an image of the destruction of the second temple (which by divine appointment, contrary to man’s intention, took place on the same day).

The Chaldeans were images of the Romans, that second Babylon, pagan Rome. Both foreshadowed the worse destruction by a fiercer enemy—the enemy of souls—the spiritual wasting and desolation which came upon the Jew first, and which will come on all who disobey the gospel.

So it will be to the end. Even now, the Jews do not believe, whose work their own dispersion is; His, who by them was crucified, but who has all power in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18).

The Day of Judgment will come like a thief in the night to those who do not believe or obey our Lord’s words.