Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 1:3

"Why dost thou show me iniquity, and look upon perverseness? for destruction and violence are before me; and there is strife, and contention riseth up." — Habakkuk 1:3 (ASV)

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.