Scripture Daily

Context No. 3307 of 4322 · Habakkuk

Context · Reflection

Habakkuk 1:12-17: in context

12Aren’t you from everlasting, LORD my God, my Holy One? We will not die. LORD, you have appointed them for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish. 13You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he, 14and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them? 15He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad. 16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good. 17Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?

Habakkuk dares to argue with God. He affirms who God is, everlasting, holy, of purer eyes than to look on evil, and then presses the very thing that troubles him: why then do you tolerate the treacherous, and stay silent while the wicked swallows up the one more righteous than himself? He pictures the conqueror hauling up whole nations like fish in a net, then worshiping the net itself, glorying in his own power.

This is honest wrestling, not unbelief. Habakkuk does not walk away from God; he brings his hardest questions straight to him and waits for an answer. His faith holds real perplexity: he cannot square the world's injustice with the God he knows to be holy, and he says so plainly. Then, as the next chapter shows, he takes his stand on the watchtower to see how God will reply. Faith is not the absence of hard questions; it is the refusal to take those questions anywhere but to God, and the patience to wait for his word.

When I cannot square the world's injustice with God's goodness, do I bring my honest questions to him and wait for his answer, rather than turning away?

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