I was a freshman in college when I first paid much attention to the little book of the prophet Habakkuk. It was “interterm” at Westmont College and the faculty offered short 2-week courses, often on material that was not their regular discipline. I ended up in a study of Habakkuk with, I think, a chemistry professor. I could not really grasp his fascination with and love for the message of this relatively obscure bit of Scripture.
I did appreciate the fact that Habakkuk asked philosophical questions of God, in particular questions which raise the problem of evil, particularly in relation to human behavior. He begins the book by asking God, “How long…?” How long would God allow “evil deeds,” “destruction and violence,” and the perversion of justice in the courts? All those evils have a contemporary ring to them and I am still inclined to ask such things today about injustices and abuses of power occurring in our country and around the world.
God’s answer to Habakkuk is not very comforting. He intends to punish all that evil and injustice by bringing down upon Judah “a cruel and violent people,” the Babylonians. These agents of God’s vengeance on injustice sweep across the land and devastate everything and everyone in their path.
Then Habakkuk asks how such divine justice can itself be just. The people of Judah may be bad, but the Babylonians are worse. “Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?” Then the prophet said he climbed up to his “watchtower… There I will wait to what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint.” God’s answer is that the power and wealth of the Babylonians will not protect them in turn from divine judgment and that they too will one day “get what you deserve.”
The last bit of God’s answer to Habakkuk does as other prophets have done and compares the Lord to lifeless idols. They are silent but God speaks. In the end, then, “the Lord is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.”
Having raised questions about God’s justice in a very Job-like manner, Habakkuk also finally meets God and we find his attitude, like Job’s changed in the end. The final chapter, our text for this week, is a prayer that describes a vision of God coming in power and glory, wreaking devastation on the Babylonians and all those who do evil. None of which, also like God’s response to Job, answers our very human questions about why all that pain and suffering is necessary.
From the perspective of age I understand, or at least appreciate more now my college professor’s affinity for Habakkuk’s questions and, perhaps to some, unsatisfying conclusion. For I find myself deeply moved, in a way I was not at age 19, by Habakkuk’s final affirmation of faith, that he will simply “wait quietly” for the day God will deal with the invaders. In the meantime he says,
Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet will I rejoice in the Lord!
The Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a dear,
able to tread upon the heights.
The concluding words of the book are actually a musical notation to accompany the song just shared with stringed instruments. Such a sung prayer, a psalm, answers almost none of my questions “Why?” but it fills me with a sorrowful joy. It acknowledges all that is lost in human wickedness and lets me grieve over it, but at the same time affirms a God of grace who will come to restore and renew someday. In the meantime, one can walk surefooted through perilous times by trusting in that God.