Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, 3:17-19
In God's Time

The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
    and you will not listen?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
    and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
    and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous --
    therefore judgment comes forth perverted.



I will stand at my watchpost,
    and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
    and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
    Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
    it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
    it will surely come, it will not delay.
Look at the proud!
    Their spirit is not right in them,
    but the righteous live by their faith.



Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    and makes me tread upon the heights.

New Revised Standard Version

We know little about the prophet Habakkuk, but the brief book of the Bible that bears his testimony tells a compelling story and teaches many key lessons. We know he identifies himself as a prophet, a speaker of the message of God, and that this book recounts a vision, or oracle, he received from God. We believe he lived in desperate times for the people of Judah, probably during the same period of rebelliousness in which Jeremiah lived. His name can be interpreted as meaning "to embrace" or "to wrestle". His testimony shows both as he embraces the goodness and perfection of God and the needs of his people, and how he wrestles with difficult theological questions that had "life or death" relevence for his time.

Uncharacteristically, I am choosing small sections out of all three of the chapters in Habakkuk to draw out one of the lessons from this prophet. That lesson starts in the first chapter, when Habakkuk asks God why there is a delay in response to the situation of the people, both in their oppression by others, and in their own wicked oppression of the faithful Jews in their midst. Surely God sees that the situation is bad, and God would want to intervene to correct the wrongs! What is the delay?

After more dialog, Habakkuk chooses to watch and wait for God to act at the start of the second chapter. However, God's response is different than what the prophet had expected to see. Instead of a liberating force, Habakkuk is given a simple message, intended for all the people, and the message is to wait in faith for God's time to come. In God's instruction is a reminder that it is only in our limited perception that God appears to be delaying. In God's perfect way, everything comes about when it should and how it should. Our calling is to live by faith that God will do what is best at the best time.

The third chapter is a song from Habakkuk, asking for God's response, and rejoicing in the certainty that, at the right time, God will respond. The selected verses show in the prophet's promise that he does understand living in faith, because even while the situation seems desperate, he will rejoice and celebrate the goodness of God and the salvation that will come from God.

There is more to this story that further illustrates the perfect timing of God, a story that spanned far past the lifetime of Habakkuk. As best we can tell, our prophet never saw the promised action of God against the evildoers within the Hebrew people or the foreign oppressors. He would have died around 600 B.C., while the moral decline was worsening, and while the compromises with surrounding kingdoms continued to sap the strength from Judah. However, the apostle Paul in the first century A.D. understood the meaning and the truth behind Habakkuk's oracle, and quotes Habakkuk 2:4 frequently in his teachings of the essential truth of our Christian Walk. Centuries later, Martin Luther would recapture that truth from Habakkuk and Paul and begin the Protestant Reformation.

In God's time, the vision given to Habakkuk would revolutionize the world... twice!