Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 1:5

"Behold ye among the nations, and look, and wonder marvellously; for I am working a work in your days, which ye will not believe though it be told you." — Habakkuk 1:5 (ASV)

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.