Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 1:12

"Art not thou from everlasting, O Jehovah my God, my Holy One? we shall not die. O Jehovah, thou hast ordained him for judgment; and thou, O Rock, hast established him for correction." — Habakkuk 1:12 (ASV)

The prophet, having summed up the deeds of the enemy of God in this his end, sets forth his questions anew. He had appealed against the evil of the wicked of his people; he had been told of the vengeance by the Chaldeans . But the vengeance is executed by those who are far worse. How then? The answer is: “Wait to the end, and you will see.” What remains are the triumphs of faith; the second chapter closes with the entire prostration of the whole world before God, and the whole prophecy with joyous trust in God amid the entire failure of all outward signs of hope.

Here, like the Psalmists (Asaph,Psalms 73:0; Ethan, Psalms 76:1–12) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 12:1), he sets down at the very beginning his entire trust in God. And so, in the name of all who at any time will be perplexed about the order of God’s judgments, he asks how it will be. This teaches us that the only safe way of inquiring into God’s ways is by setting out with a living conviction that they (Psalms 25:10) are mercy and truth. And so the address to God is full of awe, confidence, and inward love, for “God places the oil of mercy in the vessel of trustfulness.”

Are You not - (the word always has an emphasis) “You” and not whatever or whoever it may be that is opposed to You (be it Nebuchadnezzar or Satan).

From everlasting - literally, from before? (See the note at Micah 5:2). Go back as far as man can in thought—God was still before; and so, much more before any of His creatures, such as those who rebel against Him.

O Lord - This is the proper name of God (Revelation 1:8), Which is and Which was and Which is to come—I AM, the Unchangeable. My God; that is, whereas his own might is (as he had just said) the pagan’s god, the Lord is his.

My Holy One - One word, denoting that God is his God, is not enough for him, but he adds (what does not elsewhere occur) “my Holy One” in every way, as hallowing him and hallowed by him. Dionysius says: “Who hallows my soul, Holy in Your Essence, and whom as incomparably Holy I worship in holiness.” All-Holy in Himself, He becomes the Holy One of the one to whom He imparts Himself, and so, by His own gift, belongs, as it were, to him.

The one word in Hebrew wonderfully fits with the truth that God becomes one with man by taking him to Himself. It is full of inward trust too, that he says, “my God, my Holy One,” as Paul says, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:9).

This is as Augustine explains it: “O You God Omnipotent, who so care for every one of us, as if You cared for him only; and so for all, as if they were but one.” The title, “my Holy One,” includes his people with him, for God was his God primarily because he was one of the people of God, and his office was for and on behalf of his people.

It involves then that other title which had been the great support of Isaiah, by which he at once comforted his people and impressed upon them the holiness of their God—the holiness which their relation to their God required: the Holy One of Israel.

Therefore, since Habakkuk lived for his people with him, on this relation to God—as my God, my Holy One, and that God, the Unchangeable—it follows, We shall not die. There is no need for any mark of inference, such as “therefore we shall not die.” It is an inference, but it was so inherent in those titles of God—“He Is, My God, My Holy One”—that it was a more loving confidence to say directly, we shall not die.

The one thought involved the other. God, the Unchangeable, had made Himself their God. It was impossible, then, that He should cast them off or that they should perish.

We shall not die is the lightning thought of faith, which flashes on the soul like all inspirations of God, founded on His truth and word, but borne in, as it were, instinctively without inference on the soul. It is expressed with the same confidence as the Psalmist says (Psalms 118:18), The Lord hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto death; and Malachi (Malachi 3:6), I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Jerome writes: “You created us from the beginning; by Your mercy we are in being until now.” And, Your gifts and calling are without repentance (Romans 11:29). He also says, “If we looked to his might, none of us could withstand him. When we look to Your mercy, it is Yours alone that we live, are not slain by him, nor led to deeds of death.”

O Lord—again he repeats the Name of God, by which He had revealed Himself as their God, the Unchangeable. “You, whose mercies fail not, have ordained them for judgment”—not for vengeance or to make a full end, or for his own ends and pleasure, but to correct Your own (Jeremiah 10:24; Jeremiah 30:11) in measure, which he, by exceeding, sinned (Isaiah 47:6; Zechariah 1:15).

And O mighty God - literally, Rock. It is a bold title. “My rock” is a title much used by David, perhaps suggested by the strongholds amid which he passed his hunted life, to express that not in them but in his God was his safety. Habakkuk purposely widens it. He appeals to God, not only as Israel’s might and upholder, but as the sole Source of all strength, the Supporter of all which is upheld, and so, for the time, of the Chaldean too.

Hence, he continues the simple image: “You have founded him”; meaning, “You have made him to stand firm as the foundation of a building,” to reprove or set before those who have sinned against You what they had done. Since then God was the Rock who had founded them, from Him alone they had strength; when He should withdraw it, they must fall.

How then did they still remain, who abused the power given them and counted it their own? And this the more, since ...