How Long, My Father?
A prophet argues honestly with his Father about why evil goes unpunished—and moves from complaint to one of scripture’s boldest declarations of trust.
1 1The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. 2How long, my Father, must I cry for help and you won't listen? I cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save.
Violence on Every Side
3Why do you make me look at such wickedness, and why do you just watch while wrong is done? Destruction and violence are before me; conflict rises up and fighting spreads on every side. 4So the law is paralyzed, and justice is never done. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice comes out twisted.
Watch What I Am Doing
5"Look among the nations, and watch — be utterly astounded! For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if you were told. 6For look — I am raising up the Babylonians, that bitter and hasty nation, who march across the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. 7They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and their dignity come from no one but themselves. 8Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their horsemen charge ahead; their horsemen come from afar, flying like an eagle swift to devour. 9They all come for violence, every face pressing forward; they gather captives like sand. 10They scoff at kings, and rulers are a laughingstock to them. They laugh at every fortress; they build earthen ramps and take it. 11Then they sweep by like the wind and pass on — guilty men, whose own strength is their god."
Are You Not From Everlasting?
12Are you not from everlasting, my Father, my Holy One? We will not die. My Father, you have appointed them for judgment; my Rock, you have established them for correction. a a v12 The Rock is one of the Old Testament's earliest poetic names for our Father — solid, immovable, faithful in covenant. Habakkuk turns to the Rock for assurance even as judgment falls. 13Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot gaze at wrong. Why then do you look on the treacherous and stay silent when the wicked swallows up the one more righteous than he? 14You have made mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. 15He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet, and so he rejoices and is glad. 16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he grows rich and his food is plentiful. 17Will he then keep emptying his net, slaying nations without mercy forever?
