Habakkuk 1:5 - Meaning and Application

Here is God’s answer to the prophet’s complaint. He assures Habakkuk that, though God is patient, he will not keep bearing with this stubborn people forever. The day of judgment is already in God’s heart, and the warning is meant to lead them to repentance and changed lives.

The warning begins with a solemn call: “Look and see, you nations” (Habakkuk 1:5). Since they would not turn back through God’s patience, he would take another course with them. Nothing is more severe than patience that has been abused for too long. God would bring a punishment that would be public, striking, and impossible to miss, so the surrounding nations would notice it and be amazed (Deuteronomy 29:24-25). Israel would become a warning to the world.

This punishment would also be astonishing, far beyond what people expected. It would be so unusual, and so far outside the normal way God’s providence works, that even those who heard about it beforehand would struggle to believe it. It would seem incredible that so many judgments could come together at once, and that such a strong nation could be brought so low. It would be even more shocking because this was a people God had taken into covenant with himself, and for whom he had done so much. The punishment of God’s professing people would leave all around them stunned.

It would also come quickly. God says, “I will do something in your days,” meaning the judgment would fall in their own time, before that generation passed away. The sins of earlier days would be counted against them then, because their guilt had now reached its full measure (Matthew 23:36). And this would clearly be God’s own work. Everyone would have to say, “This is the Lord’s doing,” and those who face him in judgment will find it terrible to fall into his hands.

This judgment also pointed ahead to the destruction that would come on those who despise Christ and his gospel. That is how these words are applied in Acts 13:41, “Look, you despisers, wonder and perish.” Jerusalem’s ruin by the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, for idolatry was a picture of its later ruin by the Romans for rejecting Christ and his gospel. It is a remarkable thing, and almost beyond belief, when God brings such judgment on those who refuse his mercy.

The sentence itself is then stated plainly: “I am raising up the Chaldeans” (Habakkuk 1:6). They had already raised up strife and trouble among themselves, which was their sin. Now God would raise up the Chaldeans against them, and they would become the means of Israel’s punishment. When God’s professing people quarrel, attack one another, and tear each other apart, it is just for him to bring a common enemy against them. That enemy may force peace only by bringing widespread ruin.

The Chaldeans, also called the Babylonians, are described as a bitter and hasty nation, cruel and fierce. They act with violence and anger. They are quick in planning, fierce in feeling, and determined in carrying out what they want. They show no mercy and spare no effort. It is a miserable thing to be handed over to such cruel people.

They are also strong, and therefore terrifying. No one can stand before them, and no one can easily escape from them (Habakkuk 1:7). They are known for the strength of their armies, especially their horsemen (Habakkuk 1:8). Their horses are swifter than leopards when they charge and pursue, and more fierce than evening wolves, which are especially hungry after waiting all day (Psalm 104:20). Their cavalry will be so many that they spread widely through the land. They come from far away, and they scatter through the country they invade to plunder it and enrich themselves with its spoil. In their rush to seize loot, they move like an eagle swooping down on its prey.

Their own will becomes their law. In the heat of their violence, they are ruled by appetite and passion, not by fairness, mercy, or honor. “Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves” (Habakkuk 1:7), meaning they decide things only by what pleases them. Their rule is, “My will is my law.” What kindness could anyone expect from such an enemy? Those who have been unjust and unmerciful themselves, and where law and justice are weak, will be paid back in the same coin. They will fall into the hands of people who deal just as harshly with them.

The prophecy then describes the awful work this nation will do. They will march through the breadth of the earth, or, more likely here, through the breadth of the land of Israel. In a short time, the Babylonian forces would subdue the nations around them, so that they seemed to have conquered the world. They would overrun Asia and part of Africa. In Israel, they would leave the land desolate.

They will take whatever they can lay their hands on and claim it as their own, even though it belongs to others. They have no rightful claim to it, only the claim of the sword. They will also push the war forward with full force. They come “for violence” (Habakkuk 1:9), not to settle any real dispute, but simply to enrich themselves by plunder. Their faces are so fierce that their very look is enough to terrify others, and they swallow up all before them, like the east wind that blights and destroys buds and flowers.

Their faces will look toward the east, as some understand it. That is, they will still keep an eye on their own country, which lay east of Judea, and they will send all the plunder they seize back there.

They will also take a huge number of prisoners and carry them off to Babylon. They will gather captives like sand, so many that they will never think they have enough as long as more can be found.

They will also make nothing of the resistance that is offered to them, as in Habakkuk 1:10. Are the distressed Jews depending on their great men to stand firm, and on their wisdom and courage to slow the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, in battle? Sadly, those leaders will amount to nothing. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, will mock the kings and commanders who try to oppose him, because he will be swollen with success. The princes will be nothing to him, so far above them will he seem to be.

Do they depend on their fortresses and walled cities? He will laugh at every stronghold, because to him it will seem weak. He will heap up dirt and take it, since a small earthwork will be enough to give him the advantage he wants. He will treat their defenses as a joke and take them as if it were play.

By all this, he will grow unbearably proud, and that pride will bring about his ruin, as in Habakkuk 1:11. Then his spirit will become even more arrogant. People who are not satisfied with their own rights will not be satisfied even when they seize the rights of others, but will only grow more lifted up as their power grows. This victorious king will go beyond all bounds of reason, justice, and modesty, and break every restraint. In doing so, he will offend God and make God his enemy. He will seal his own ruin by crediting his strength to his god, when he really received it from the God of Israel.

Bel and Nebo were the gods of the Babylonians, and they gave them the credit for their victories. The Babylonians were hardened in idolatry, and they blasphemously claimed that because they had conquered Israel, their gods must be stronger than the God of Israel. This is a serious offense, and it is the common offense of proud people, to give to ourselves, or to gods we have made up, the glory that belongs only to the living and true God.

These closing words also offer a small comfort to God’s afflicted people. We may hope they will change their minds, grow better, and become ready for deliverance, and in fact they did. Their enemies, however, will change for the worse and ripen for destruction, which will surely come in God’s time. A proud spirit, lifted up against God, always goes before a fall.