Bringing Complaints to God

Habakkuk 1:1 calls this the revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw. The book is shaped as a conversation between a prophet and God. In his first complaint, Habakkuk asks, Yahweh, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? He sees iniquity, destruction, and violence among his own people. Because the wicked surround the righteous, justice comes out perverted.

God's reply is startling: look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not believe. He is raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, feared and dreaded, whose horses are swifter than leopards. They scoff at kings and laugh at every stronghold. Verse 11 sums them up: they are indeed guilty, whose strength is their god.

Habakkuk's second complaint grows from the answer. He affirms what he knows: God is from everlasting, the Holy One, the Rock, with purer eyes than to see evil. Yet he asks why God tolerates the treacherous when they swallow up those more righteous than themselves. He pictures the Chaldeans catching nations like fish in a dragnet and then worshiping the net that made them rich. Habakkuk does not walk away from God with his questions; he brings them to God.