Habakkuk 1:5-11

JEHOVAH'S ANSWER. Habakkuk 1:5-11

RV. 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. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, that march through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwellingplaces that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; their judgement and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen press proudly on: yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour. They come all of them for violence; the set of their faces is forwards; and they gather captives as the sand. Yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him; he derideth every stronghold; for he heapeth up dust, and taketh it. Then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over, and be guilty, even he whose might is his god.
LXX. Behold, ye despisers, and look, and wonder marvellously, and vanish: for I work a work in your days, which ye will in no wise believe, though a man declare it to you. Wherefore, behold, I stir up the Chaldeans, the bitter and hasty nation, that walks upon the breadth of the earth, to inherit tabernacles not his own. He is terrible and famous; his judgement shall proceed of himself, and his dignity shall come out of himself. And his horses shall bound more swiftly than leopards, and they are fiercer than the wolves of Atabia: and his horsemen shall ride forth, and shall rush from far; and they shall fly as an eagle hasting to eat. Destruction shall come upon ungodly men, resisting with their adverse front, and he shall gather the captivity as the sand. And he shall be at his ease with kings, and princes are his toys, and he shall mock at every strong-hold, and shall cast a mound, and take possession of it. Then shall he change his spirit, and he shall pass through, and make an atonement, saying. This strength belongs to my god.

COMMENTS

... LO, I RAISE UP THE CHALDEANS. Habakkuk 1:5

Jehovah's answer is not what the prophet expected. The answer to such prayers seldom is! Rather than magically producing Utopia for the nation by miraculously wiping out all the sin and injustice, God challenges Habakkuk to take a good look at the world situation. to consider the nations that lay beyond the border of Judah. The answer to the prophet's question lies beyond his narrow horizons. Just as the question is larger than one man or a single nation so is the answer.

It is easy to overlook a very basic principle which is apparent again and again in Scripture. The principle is simply that God is the God of the whole world. He is not an absentee creator who has gone away and left us after having set certain forces and laws in operation. Nor is He the local God of Judah alone. Centuries after Habakkuk, Paul will tell the wisest men of his day, ... He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons (times) and the bond (boundaries) of their habitation. (Acts 17:26)

This Jehovah of Judah is the God of all nations. He is Lord, not just of a single nation, but of all human history. Therefore, the answer to questions that plague all men are to be found in the larger arena of international and world activity, rather than in the confines of local self-concerns. If we believed this, we would have missionaries in every corner of the globe.
So wide in scope and so universal in application is God's answer to injustice and social exploitation, that He tells the prophet, I am working a work in your days, which you will not believe though it be told you For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans.

The Chaldeans were a Semitic tribe from the south of Babylonia. Galling under the yoke of Assyria, they revolted in 625 B.C against seemingly insuperable odds, and freed themselves from Assyrian domination. In alliance with the Medes and Scythians, they demolished the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 B.C. (See Nahum) As rulers of the Neo-Babylonian empire, the Chaldeans soon broke off the alliance with the Medes.

In 609 B.C. the Baylonian army defeated Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo and broke the back of the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance. King Josiah died in this battle in a vain attempt to aid the declining Assyrian empire. (Cf. 2 Kings 23:29-30) Three years later the final defeat of Assyria came at Carchemish when Nebuchadnezzar led the Babylonians in a decisive encounter with Assyria and Egypt. Cf. Jeremiah 46:2)

Having cast her lot with the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance, Judah soon fell prey to Babylonian domination. In 597 B.C Nebuchadnezzar dismembered Judah. He destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C.
It is this that Jehovah foretells in answer to Habakkuk's first question. Significantly, the Chaldean dominated Neo-Babylonian empire virtually began with the subjugation of Judah and ended when Cyrus, the Persian, in 539 B.C overthrew the capital and decreed freedom for the Jews. God had prepared the Chaldeans (whose empire Babylon was) to redress His grievances with His people. This done, God raised up Cyrus to wipe out Babylon. We shall see latter how this came about in answer to Habakkuk's second question.

THEY ARE TERRIBLE AND DREADFUL. Habakkuk 1:7

Here begins Jehovah's description to Habakkuk of the empire He is raising up to punish Judah. We need to read these verses not so much for the details, although they are vividly accurate, but for the overall impression the description made upon Habakkuk. Keeping the prophet's question in mind, we must agree with Jehovah's statement that He is working a work Habakkuk will not believe. (Habakkuk 1:5) Modern man also refuses to believe a just God of love will do such things!

The Chaldeans are described as irresistible in power and military methods. Wherever they went there was havoc. They were famous for swift cavalry. Their bent for conquest would become the scourge of the earth. Kings and castles, to whom others looked for defense, were to them a laughing stock. They captured cities as easily as throwing up a mound of earth and advancing over it. Ominously, one of their chief characteristics was the taking of numberless slaves.
The Neo-Babylonians were essentially a commercial people, and one of their chief commodities was human chattel. Prices ranged from $20 to $65 for a woman and from $5 to $100 for a man, and the traffic was strictly controlled by law.
Babylonian slavery is of particular interest to us, for it was into this that Nebuchadnezzar led Judah. Female slaves belonged to their masters completely and most of them bore many children for their masters.
All of a slave's belongings were his master'S. He could himself be sold at any moment or pledged for a debt. He could be put to death if it seemed good business to his owner. A reward for his capture was set by law, should he try to escape. He was subject to military conscription and for forced labor on roads. Most of the exquisite cities, especially Babylon herself, were erected by slave labor.
A slave might marry a free woman, and their children's freedom was guaranteed by law. He might be set up in business by his master, as indeed many of the Jews did, and liberated as a reward for faithful service.
The religion of Babylon has already been described in the introductory chapter on Baal worship. This despicable idolatry which earned for Babylon the name Mother of Harlots, finds its roots in the earliest history of the land of Nimrod. It flourished in the age of Babylon's great lawyer, Hammurabi (2123-2081 B.C.) and spread like a cancer round the fertile crescent, to Asia Minor, Greece and finally Rome. It seeped into northern Europe, and after the fall of Rome, when the Roman Catholic religio-political monolith ruled over the European dark ages. the saints and idols and even the lord to whom Europe prayed was not the covenant God of the Bible or His Son, but the reincarnation of Babylonian deities. As Will Durant so clearly states in his Story of Civilization, Ishtar (the mother of Babylon's gods) interests us not only as analogue of the Egyptian Isis and protoype of the Grecian Aphrodite and the Roman Venus, but as formal beneficiary of one of the strongest Babylonian customs. and though her worshippers repeatedly addressed her as The Virgin, The Holy Virgin and -The Virgin Mother, this merely meant that her amours were free from all taint of wedlock. Note with what fervor the Babylonians could lift up to her throne litanies of laudation only less splendid than those which a tender piety once raised to the Mother of God. (Italics mine)

Such was the religion and such were its worshippers whom God raised up to punish His people for their failure to keep His covenant and for the social immorality which existed among them because they because they turned to the same gods.

Habakkuk's first question is answered! Jehovah will not long tolerate the evils that repel the prophet. He will raise up one of the most wicked nations in history to punish them.

Chapter XVIQuestions

How Can God Allow Injustice to Go Unpunished?

1.

Habakkuk's opening words are calculated to established what?

2.

What is the significance of Habakkuk's use of the name Jehovah?

3.

What caused Habakkuk to ask the first of his two questions?

4.

What is God's answer? Summarize.

5.

Who were the Chaldeans?

6.

Why were the Chaldeans named here when it was Babylon who would chastise Judah?

7.

What king of Judah died in the vain attempt to preserve Assyria against Babylon?

8.

How does Jehovah describe the Chaldeans? (Habakkuk 1:7-11)

9.

What do you know of the religion of the Babylonian empire of Habakkuk's concern?