The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 9: The Second Woe - Material

Popular culture is rife with stories of humans conversing with animals.  In 1950 a film was released about just such a phenomenon.  It starred James Stewart as a whimsical man with an invisible six foot tall rabbit named Harvey for a best friend.  Although in the film “Harvey” never speaks he is the subject of much conversation and hilarity due to the comedic nature of the movie.  More famous is the fictional tale of Dr. Dolittle.  First seeing print in 1920 the original story “The Story of Doctor Dolittle”, spawned a series of children’s books as well as repeated film adaptations over the decades since.  In this imaginative account Dr. John Dolittle is a physician living in Victorian England who, due to his penchant for harboring animals ends up losing his medical practice but in turn learns to speak to the animals who cost him his living.  As a result he becomes a veterinarian and has many adventures with his non-human companions.  Stories such as these fire our imaginations and open us to the prospect of the extraordinary.  But even so, they seem to almost still be in the realm of possibility.  Those who own pets can attest that often our furry companions have a tendency to exhibit traces of human characteristics.  Whether it’s a sideways glance, an arrogant saunter across the kitchen, a fear filled cower when thunder crashes overhead, or a sheepish glance after being caught in some nefarious misdeed animals can have an extraordinary capacity to act like us.  So when we read a story like “Doctor Dolittle” or watch a film like “Harvey” it doesn’t seem so far-fetched.  But to my knowledge there has never, or at least very rarely, been a story about a rock that talks or a piece of wood that answers.  Such a concept seems rather ludicrous and would probably make for a very boring movie because it seems so far removed from reality as to make it nonsense.  But that is precisely the angle that God plays in His second woe against the Babylonians in Habakkuk 2:9-11.

We have already seen the first divine woe, or proverb, enjoined against this pagan nation.  And as stated previously, although there is some overlap from one woe to the next there is also an amazing spectrum of application across a broad view of the reality that is God’s creation.  In the case of this second taunt against Babylon we find Him condemning evil material gain as being contrary to the fundamental laws of nature He has devised.  Consider the text of verse 9:

                        “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house

                        To put his nest on high,

                        To be delivered from the hand of calamity!

                       

The crime on display is immediately obvious.  God specifies that it is evil gain that is of concern.  Much like in the previous woe where He is not blanket condemning all forms of debt, this woe is not aimed at anyone who acquires possessions or dwelling places.  Rather it is those who do so through evil means and unscrupulous agendas.  There is a clear element of pragmatic thinking that we can observe in the actions of the sinner.  Pragmatism dictates that the end justifies the means.  A modern example would be embryonic stem cell research.  Advocates might argue that the medical benefits to society which can be obtained through harvesting the stem cells of aborted fetuses are worth the cost in slain unborn children.  Actually, they would probably advance the notion that the fetuses being harvested are not really children at all, but we won’t even consider that possibility.  So these crusaders for the greater good of humanity would say that in this case the end justifies the means.  The “end” of a great advance in medical understanding is worth the “means” of the slaughtering of the unborn.  We can even see this type of thinking in the biblical record of history.  In Genesis chapter 27 the familiar account of Jacob and Rebekah’s deception can be found.  Isaac, being old and well advanced in years, desired to bless his firstborn son, Esau.  But his mother Rebekah, favoring her younger son Jacob, conspired with him to deceive Isaac into blessing Jacob instead.  Jacob happily went along with the plan.  His only hesitation was fear of being caught and calling down a curse on his head rather than a blessing.  In the minds of these two schemers the means they had to utilize to achieve the end they desired was irrelevant.  It did not matter that what they were doing was dishonest, hurtful, and selfish.  All that mattered was the objective, the end if you will.

In a similar way the scene being described in Habakkuk 2:9 by God seems to be focused on the ends desired.  The sinner’s focus is upon obtaining safety and security.  Although it remains unstated, this is probably in the interest of protecting one’s family.  On the surface it seems like a noble pursuit.  We certainly ought to endeavor to provide shelter for our loved ones if at all possible.  In fact, in certain circumstances we are even commanded to do so.  1 Timothy 5:4 gives the following instruction: but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.  So obviously this is a priority in the sight of God.  But as He reveals to Habakkuk in our passage, woe to those that resort to evil for the purpose of accomplishing this goal. 

Typically our immediate response would be drawn to those against whom such corruption is being perpetrated.  Our hearts would go out to these victims of the evil of mankind.  We would perhaps decry the advantage being taken of them in order to secure the safety and protection of the wicked.  But that is not where God chose to place the emphasis in verse 10:

                        “You have devised a shameful thing for your house

                        By cutting off many peoples;

                        So you are sinning against yourself.

This statement is extremely counter to human thought processes.  We who are only capable of seeing what is thrust right in front of our faces, and then still sometimes disbelieving, can hardly conceive of such a thing as the oppressor in reality being the victim.  Who of us, upon reading a news story of a rapist, would view the perpetrator of the crime as the one who in reality has been victimized by sin?  No, we would curse the rapist and demand retribution against him from the government.  We would casually toss around misquoted biblical epithets such as “an eye for an eye”.  And we would certainly feel compassion for the one who had been raped; rightly so.  But it is doubtful that it would ever cross our minds to feel any pity for the rapist.  Our perception of reality is so skewed toward self-interest that we would focus exclusively upon the obvious and visible human tragedy.  Yet this idea of the sinner victimizing himself with his own sin can be seen throughout the Bible.  It was Adam who was the most adversely affected by his own sin, considering that it resulted in his physical and spiritual death as well as separation from the intimate relationship he had once enjoyed with God.  Abraham’s lack of faith and attempts to manufacture his own future with Hagar ultimately brought him more trouble than it was worth.  David’s great sin with Bathsheba and Uriah plagued him the most in the end, even though it was Uriah who suffered death in the short term.  To underscore the whole point Solomon has this to say in Proverbs 28:13: He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.

Clearly the biblical record bears out the truth that God is presenting here in this woe against the Babylonians.  But He isn’t finished yet.  Although this revelation of self-inflicted sin definitely gets the point across the Lord wants to drive this truth home in such a way as to cement it in Habakkuk’s mind and ours as well such that we will not soon or easily forget it.  He does so by calling attention to inanimate objects.  As mentioned before we tend to easily associate human traits to animals.  But that would be too easy and simple minded for God’s purposes here.  He instead draws a connection between this sin of evil material gain and the very creation which surrounds us:

                        “Surely the stone will cry out from the wall,

                        And the rafter will answer it from the framework.

The Lord isn’t being literal here.  In verse 6 we clarified that the conquered nations taking up a taunt-song against Babylon was symbolic for God’s own condemnation and ridicule of the pagans.  In the same way here He is not saying that stones will literally yell and be answered by rafters.  He could certainly cause that to happen should He choose to.  But there is a more fundamental and less pedestrian object in mind here.  Namely, that the commission of the sin being described is so alien to the essence of the universe and the laws with which God constructed it that on an elementary and primal level the creation itself will rebel against the perpetration of such sin.

Why is this such a big deal?  I mean, sure, we’re talking about sin here.  We’re discussing the violation of another person’s rights and prerogatives in order to acquire safety and security for oneself.  But is such a thing really such a big deal as to cause even nature to call foul?  To answer this question we need to keep in mind the following truth.  It is not the specific characteristics of the sin on display that is the real issue here.  It is the thought processes and motivations, the world view and philosophies that are driving these actions which are the real target of God’s wrath.

Think about the “why behind the what” in this situation.  What is it that is driving the Babylonians, or any other person throughout history, to follow this pattern of behavior?  Notice again the two elements that make up the sin.  First is the attempt to establish personal security via immorality.  Second is an objective of manufacturing safety against calamity.  Both of these stink of a man centered focus on manipulation, on scheming, on machinations, on an endeavor to force circumstances to bow to one’s will.  It is a godless and heathen approach to life which has no part of God’s intention.  He structured the entire universe to depend solely upon Him for sustenance, longevity, and order.  The sins being depicted are diametrically opposed to such design.  This is the real source of the problem and it is why the Lord paints such a fundamentally graphic image of rocks and wood decrying these perversions.

It would be fantastic if the Bible offered a counterpoint to what God is condemning here.  Fortunately for us it does.  Over against this model of the shameful decrepitude of human nature stands the shining example of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It behooves us to consider how He lived His earthly life in contrast to what is being described here in Habakkuk.  And in so doing we will state emphatically; Christ had no concern for personal security and safety.  His only concern was for accomplishing the will of His Father.  Repeatedly He thrust Himself into dangerous situations where His life was in danger from the Jewish authorities.  In fact, Jesus both opened and closed His ministry by stepping into close proximity with threats.  In Matthew chapter 4 we read the account of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness.  Setting aside for a moment the mental and spiritual assault waged by Satan, consider the ramifications of going 40 days and nights with no food.

Recent medical history contains examples of people actually dying after shorter fasts than what Jesus endured.  In 1978 a man died of pneumonia after fasting for 29 days.  His body didn’t have the energy to fight off his infection due to lack of nutrition.  More recently, in 2010, a woman died of heart failure after 21 days of fasting.  In her case, the body’s stores of minerals necessary for cardiac function were depleted to the point that her heart could no longer function.  These examples should not be taken to indicate that no one fasts for long periods of time safely.  Many people do.  But it must be understood that long fasts such as Jesus’s are not without very real physical risks.  This was how the Son of God chose to begin His work in service to His Father.

On the other end of Christ’s ministry the danger He courted is much more obvious; namely, the cross.  He knowingly and willingly subjected His comfort to discomfort, His pride to shame, His body to pain, and ultimately His life to death all according to the direction of God.  The body Jesus inhabited was of little consequence to Him because He trusted that the Father would provide Him a new one.  The life that He lived was of low priority because He had His sights set on the heavenly rather than the earthly realm.

In between the temptation and the cross is recorded for us multiple incidents in which Jesus threw safety to the wind.  In Matthew 8:23-27 that we looked at two chapters ago the Lord allowed His physical safety to be placed in jeopardy during a storm on the Sea of Galilee.  In chapter 12 of the same book He challenged the Pharisaic notion of what was lawful on the Sabbath.  Verse 14 gives their reaction: But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.  The next chapter records a visit to His hometown of Nazareth where He was ridiculed because of His teaching.  The parallel account in Luke 4:29 even tells us that the crowds were so enraged by Jesus’s claims that: they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.  Again in Luke 6:10 the Son of Man challenged the establishment and risked His continued safety by healing a man on the Sabbath.  Verse 11 offers insight into the minds of the religious leaders: But they themselves were filled with rage, and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.  Never one to back down from a confrontation over truth Jesus continued to show the Jews’ sinful hearts to them.  In Luke 11:40 He called the Pharisees foolish ones.  From verse 42 to 47 He pronounced five woes against first the Pharisees and then the lawyers.  And we have already seen how dire of an invocation it was for a Hebrew to call down a woe upon someone else.  So needless to say, after being insulted so grievously by this man Jesus, verses 53 and 54 say: the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question Him closely on many subjects, plotting against Him to catch Him in something He might say.  It was a powder keg of enmity that Christ created for Himself by speaking the truth yet He never backed away from it.  In fact, we can state very emphatically that the Lord continually pushed the envelope of safety in order to accomplish the work He had been sent to do.  In John chapter 7 the Feast of Booths is approaching.  Jesus has already made a reputation for Himself as a troublemaker for the religious authorities.  He was a marked man in Judea, in the vicinity of Jerusalem.  As the feast drew nearer He was ministering in Galilee, to the north.  He could have easily remained there to allow the political situation to settle down a little.  But instead, in verse 10 we read: But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as if, in secret.   And in verse 14: But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and began to teach.  The wound He had inflicted upon this sinful generation of Jews was open and bleeding.  And now Jesus really began to pour salt on it.  The episode in Jerusalem continued to escalate, culminating in chapter 8 with two incredibly provocative statements.  First, in verse 44 He accused the Jews of being born of Satan: You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.  Then in verse 58 He cast the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back by saying: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.”  He was literally calling Himself Yahweh.  This the Jews could not take without inflicting retribution.  They got their wish a short time later with His crucifixion.

So it is exceedingly evident that from the beginning to the end of Christ’s ministry and all points between He courted danger because of the dividing nature of the truth He spoke.  As opposed to the evil depiction of the Babylonians using wickedness to set up places of safety and security for themselves, Jesus thought only of His Father’s business.  He trusted the Lord to accomplish His divine will through Him.  If that meant He had to die, then of what consequence was death compared with the promise of eternal glory which awaited Him?  What Jesus evidenced in His life on earth was nothing less than a complete divorcing of His motivations and desires from any human passions and considerations.  Instead of a man centered scheming to force circumstances to bow to His will He preferred to simply be carried along by God and poured out as a drink offering for His glory.

All of this begs the question.  How do we respond to this example of Christ’s?  Should we proceed at once to pull up our tent stakes and move to the heart of the inner city of a major American city so as to go into the crack houses and the gang headquarters preaching the gospel?  I believe the answer to a proposition such as that one is “not necessarily.”  Make no mistake, if God calls us to such a ministry then we had better be willing and ready to go.  But even in the examples given of the personal danger Jesus placed Himself in we find evidence of His efforts to protect Himself from harm.  When He was in Nazareth and the crowds, incited by their anger, were preparing to cast Him off the cliff, Luke 4:30 tells us: But passing through their midst, He went His way.  Later, at the aforementioned Feast of Booths in Jerusalem, after intentionally infuriating the Jews to a fever pitch, John 8:59 gives this insight: Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.

So there is an element of wisdom to be applied in the service of the Lord.  But notice where the wisdom came from with Jesus.  Earlier in the same chapter of John, in verse 20, we read the following: These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.  What this verse means is that the time for Christ’s arrest, trial, condemnation, and execution in fulfillment of scripture had not yet arrived.  It was not appropriate for Jesus to be stopped from speaking at this point because it was not God’s pleasure for Him to be stopped yet.  So even in the application of wisdom to see to His personal safety Jesus still was not exhibiting a man centered frame of mind.  Even here He was committed to operating on His Father’s time table.  And this is the key for us to determine how we should live our lives in emulation of Christ’s life.  We must be committed to God’s game plan, not our own.

There is a classic old saying: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”  I believe God is not calling for us to throw all sense and responsibility out the window in an effort to serve Him.  But on the flip side He is also not calling us to comfort and ease and peace of mind.  There is no compatibility between a fallen sinful world and the message of the gospel.  In John 15:18-19 Jesus said: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”  This means that if we publicly declare our allegiance to Christ via our actions we can expect to be placed into some uncomfortable or even dangerous circumstances with people who are hostile to us because they are hostile to our Lord and Master, Jesus. 

Further, we are called to go to the dregs of society; people we most likely are not at ease around.  Jesus repeatedly associated with tax collectors, prostitutes, and Samaritans (in the Jewish mind as bad as hanging out with a homosexual in most of our sanctimonious Bible belt minds).  The Lord’s entire strategy of ministry to the strays of human society is summarized in Luke 15:2-7: Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”  So He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’  I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.  Woe to us if we act like the Pharisees in this example. 

Why do we shy away from these types of encounters?  Odds are good that it’s because we are too committed to our own comfort.  In most cases our failure to take the gospel to the lost has nothing to do with fear for personal safety, especially here in the United States where we have the great benefit of a system of laws designed to protect us and enable to voice our opinions.  Rather, I believe that usually we fail in this area simply because it’s too far of a stretch outside of our personal comfort zones.  Just like the Babylonians our goal is to “put our nests on high to be delivered from the hand of calamity”.  And although the measures we take to ensure this security may not be overtly evil as it was with the Chaldeans, if the root of our motivations is the same, that is to manufacture our own comfort through inaction where theirs was through action, then the same condemnation is applicable to us as well.  If this is the case then, in the words of God from 600 B.C., woe to us.

The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 8: The First Woe - Economic

Imagine the cry of a mother who has just lost a child in a sudden and unexpected way.  Her voice fissures open into a gaping maw of grief as the very soul seems to be torn out of her body.  A wail pierces the air with a scream that seems almost inhuman due to the incredulity of such a sound echoing from a person’s throat.  We imagine the poor woman’s vocal cords shredding inside her neck as her voice fragments and shatters into a million pieces that crash against our eardrums like an avalanche.  The howling stretches on for what seems to be an eternity before guttering out like a spent candle as the breath in her lungs is finally exhausted.  She continues to mourn silently with her mouth wide open, body unable to produce any further aural indicators of torment.  But the eyes tell a tale of anguish that summits the highest peak of human misery.  Many of us have read descriptions of this type of heart-breaking occurrence.  Perhaps we have seen and heard these horrors on live television.  In some cases our life experiences may have brought us into direct contact with such a disaster.  Or, if we have been personally visited by death, our own history may be called to remembrance by this description.

The Bible is no stranger to depictions of grief and human suffering.  The book of Lamentations echoes across history as one man’s encounter with sorrow.  The prophet Jeremiah lived through both the two and a half year siege as well as the complete destruction of the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the conquering Babylonian army.  He recorded his experiences to serve as a record of what it means to drink the cup of God’s fury to the dregs.  Lamentations 4:4 says “the tongue of the infant cleaves to the roof of its mouth because of thirst” and verse 10 reveals “the hands of compassionate women boiled their own children; they became food for them”.  Isaiah prophesied of this event in 51:17 of his book: Arise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the Lord’s hand the cup of His anger; the chalice of reeling you have drained to the dregs.  Jeremiah goes on in chapter 5 of Lamentations to describe the fullness of the experiences of the Jews who endured this punishment:

Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;
Look, and see our reproach!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
Our houses to aliens.
We have become orphans without a father,
Our mothers are like widows.
We have to pay for our drinking water,
Our wood comes to us at a price.
Our pursuers are at our necks;
We are worn out, there is no rest for us.
We have submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.
Our fathers sinned, and are no more;
It is we who have borne their iniquities.
Slaves rule over us;
There is no one to deliver us from their hand.
We get our bread at the risk of our lives
Because of the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin has become as hot as an oven,
Because of the burning heat of famine.
They ravished the women in Zion,
The virgins in the cities of Judah.
Princes were hung by their hands;
Elders were not respected.
Young men worked at the grinding mill,
And youths stumbled under loads of wood.
Elders are gone from the gate,
Young men from their music.
The joy of our hearts has ceased;
Our dancing has been turned into mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head;
Woe to us, for we have sinned!

At the end of his lament the prophet utters the phrase “Woe to us”.  This was an expression of deep anguish.  The Hebrew for woe is ‘owy.  It literally means “a passionate cry of grief or despair” and the pronunciation, o’-ee, even sounds like a wail or lament.  The view here is of the mother mentioned previously, who has lost her child, and whose senses are overwhelmed with sadness.

‘Owy has an alternate form, howy.  It is pronounced very similarly to its cousin.  But where ‘owy is typically directed internally at deep emotion experienced by oneself, howy is often sent in the direction of another.  An example of this can be found in 1 Kings 13:30.  An unnamed prophet from Judah has come north to prophesy against Jeroboam king of Israel.  God commanded him to “eat no bread, nor drink water there; do not return by going the way which you came.”  But the prophet disobeyed the Lord’s instructions and stayed with a fellow prophet and ate with him.  As punishment God caused a lion to attack and kill him on the way back to Judah.  And when his brother Israelite prophet discovered the body he uttered this epithet: “Alas, my brother!”  This is the sense of the Hebrew howy.  And this is the choice of words, translated in most English versions as “woe”, which God points in the direction of the Babylonians as He reveals to Habakkuk the future doom that will befall them.

God has already set the stage for His judgment with a prologue in verses 2 through 5 of chapter 2 of the book of Habakkuk.  We have seen how He applies against the Chaldeans a description of a proud and haughty man, distorted and corrupted, an aberration of nature itself.  This man is like a drunk, always seeking hopelessly for his next fix, continually consumed by his addiction, but like death itself never satisfied.  And God identifies the Babylonian conquests as the item at issue here when He says that this drunkard will “gather to himself all nations and collect to himself all peoples”.  It is important to clearly identify Babylon as the target of God’s description.  Without that context in mind the meaning of verse 6a would be unclear:

                        “Will not all of these take up a taunt-song against him,

                        Even mockery and insinuations against him

“Will not all of these” refers to all those people who have been “gathered and collected” by Nebuchadnezzar and his minions.  The Lord says that these victims of the Babylonian conquests will have occasion to rise up against their oppressors.  The idea is that in the due course of time those who have fallen under the dominion of Babylon will have their opportunity to turn the tables.  They will taunt, mock, and ridicule their former masters.  But this is not to be seen as literal.  Rather it is a symbolic word picture of divine discipline, continuing the image the Lord has already begun in verse 5.  In effect, it is God Himself who is taking up a taunt-song against the Chaldeans.

And what a taunt it is.  The language used by God here is repeated in Ezekiel 14.  In this passage a warning is being given to idolatrous Israel.  Verse 6 says they are to “repent and turn away from your idols and turn your faces away from all your abominations”.  Then in verse 7 the Lord targets anyone who, rather than obeying this command, “separates himself from God, sets up idols in his heart, puts before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet to inquire of Me for himself”.  He says of such a person in verse 8: “I will set My face against that man and make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from among My people.”  This cutting off and making a sign and a byword is the same phrasing used in Habakkuk 2:6.

But the full force and impact of God’s condemnation here cannot be seen unless we look more closely at just how He described the future of Israel itself in Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 24.  In the former passage Moses warns the children of Israel against disobedience.  He says in verse 15 that if they do not obey the Lord their God then a series of curses will come up them and overtake them.  These curses run the gamut. They will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.  Their baskets and kneading bowls will be cursed.  Their offspring and their produce will be cursed.  They will be cursed when they come in and cursed when they go out.  In all, from verse 15 to verse 36 Moses lists 31 different cursed examples of the judgment of God upon His people if they should choose to disobey Him.  And then in verse 37 He says: You shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where the Lord drives you.  Far from paying attention to these warnings the successive generations of Israelites grew worse and worse as they delved deeper and deeper into wanton gratification of their sinful godless desires.  Finally, after the northern kingdom of Israel has long since been destroyed and Judah, all that remains of the nation state of Israel, is teetering on the brink of destruction themselves, the Lord utters the following painfully explicit prophecy through His mouthpiece in Jeremiah 24:8-9: ‘But like the bad figs which cannot be eaten due to rottenness – indeed, thus says the Lord – so I will abandon Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and the ones who dwell in the land of Egypt.  I will make them a terror and an evil for all the kingdoms of the earth, as a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse in all places where I will scatter them.’ 

The concept in God’s mind here is that He will so utterly destroy, scatter, exile, and torture Israel that their punishment will transcend the historical time period it occurs in and become legendary.  They will become such an entrenched example of the complete and utter destruction of a people that it will echo across human history and become “a byword”, or a notorious example or embodiment of something.  Judas Iscariot became a byword for traitors and betrayers and Jezebel became a byword for malicious and evil women, to the point that even in the 21^st century their names are a part of the vernacular of the world.  Similarly, God is saying here that the Jews themselves will become a byword for a people who were crushed so utterly that their plight would become synonymous with horror and genocide.  Consider how accurate the Lord’s prediction was.  Ever since the final destruction of their homeland in 586 B.C. the Jews have become a homeless vagabond of a race.  They have flitted from country to country, enduring anti-Semitism from every corner, ultimately resulting in the Holocaust of World War 2 in which some six million of them were systematically exterminated in 4 years through the medium of Hitler’s Nazi death machine.  And to this day, although back in their homeland, they continue to bear the brunt of unbridled aggression across the world.  It is this idea of utter condemnation, comprehensive punishment, and historical illustration that God now directs against the Babylonians.

                       

He does so by painting a series of five detailed examples, or taunt-songs, or woes of how His punishment will be played out against this godless nation.  There will be some level of overlap and parallelism across the five woes, as each deals with a sinful rebellion against God and His response to it.  But as we will see each of them touches on a different aspect of the nature of God and His creation.  So although broadly they can all be identified simply as sin on the surface, if one takes the time to look deeper variations of this theme begin to emerge that ultimately traverse a wide spectrum of reality.

The first of these taunts is what I will refer to as the economic woe.  It is the sinful human practice of operating contrary to God’s designation of personal responsibility and culpability in one’s own crimes.  He reveals the substance of it in Habakkuk 2:6b-8:

                        And say, ‘Woe to him who increases what is not his –

                        For how long –

                        And makes himself rich with loans?’

                        “Will not your creditors rise up suddenly,

                        And those who collect from you awaken?

                        Indeed, you will become plunder for them.

                        “Because you have looted many nations,

                        All the remainder of the peoples will loot you –

                        Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land,

                        To the town and all its inhabitants.

There are two primary themes to be seen in this woe.  The first is the sin of money worship.  God pronounces a curse upon those, such as the Babylonians, who profit from theft.  They take what does not belong to them to increase their personal portfolio of wealth and/or possessions.  He applies a rhetorical question to these people.  “For how long” is not a question at all.  Rather, it is a statement.  The Lord is saying “they will not do this for long.”  Now, with the framework of Biblical pre-eminence that America was founded on, it is probably a no-brainer for most people reading this to affirm what God is saying here.  From our earliest days of church based childhood we were taught the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20; number eight of which is “You shall not steal.”  Even for those not raised in a church, the cultural stigma associated with theft and its associated laws of punishment is usually enough to warn people of the evil of this action.  Beyond that, God Himself has offered no respite to a humanity which typically seeks to rationalize the rightness and marginalize the wrongness of their sins.  He makes clear in Romans 2:15 that even were someone to be completely ignorant of any other source of information spelling out the immorality of their choices, they are still without excuse because “they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them”.  God has left no back door for humanity to sneak out of in an effort to avoid His fiery wrath and condemnation.

But again, most people will fall into the first two groups who do in fact have outside influences coordinating with the morality God has ingrained into them to teach them that stealing is wrong.  But be that as it may, as already stated, we are notorious as a race of beings for explaining away that which we choose to ignore about ourselves.  In this case, and as it relates to thievery, we are quite capable of building a web of arguments that result in being convinced of a lie; namely, that certain activities that we enjoy engaging in, although in reality a form of theft, are not really wrong after all.  To illustrate this point, allow me to relate a personal experience.  I once spoke to a prominent Christian leader in the church I was attending.  We were discussing the types of popular entertainment we enjoyed, one of which was a British television show that we both shared an interest in.  This person revealed that they often downloaded episodes of this show prior to their release here in the United States.  File sharing services were utilized for this process, which are web sites or software applications through which unrelated Internet users across the world can upload digital media files for the purpose of sharing them with others of like mind. 

The idea is that if one person obtains a legal copy of the song, movie, television show, etc. in question then they can make it available so that others would not have to procure said item legitimately.  This has been an ongoing war for over a decade now, as the various entertainment industries, with U.S. and international copyright laws on their side, do battle against the Internet public who rail against the restrictions of governmental laws and demand that they be given access to whatever they want whenever they want it.

So the fellow Christian I was speaking with was quite happily right in the middle of this circus, grabbing copies of his beloved show for free.  Although he was not profiting from these acquisitions, copyright laws are very well defined.  It is illegal to engage in these activities, whether an individual thinks such restrictions are fair or not.  And Romans 13:1 makes it crystal clear that we Christians are to be in obedience to the governing authorities who are in charge of us.  The person I was speaking with even went so far as to argue that they had researched the law and found that what they were doing was perfectly acceptable.  The rationalization of sin was running rampant and Satan was giggling quietly in the corner.  Although this particular example may not apply specifically to your life I am quite sure you can see the point and connect the dots of the overarching truth here in order to highlight these sorts of gray areas (which really aren’t gray at all) in your own patterns of behavior.

In addition to this category of sinners, notice the other side of the coin here.  Those who take out loans to make themselves rich rather than earning their profits through work are lumped right in with the thieves.  Now this one really stings.  Here in the U.S. with our multi-billion dollar per year credit card industries where the name of the game is instant gratification, we have a national fascination with charging in order to acquire the goods we want with immediacy rather than working diligently to save the money to make our purchases.  Only the heart of God knows, and probably weeps, over the millions of professing Christians who sacrifice their cheerful giving to the Lord’s work in favor of paying off enormous and out of control credit card debt, unnecessary vehicle loans, extravagant home mortgages, and the like.  And the Lord says that such people are no better than thieves in the grand scheme of things!

Note that the Bible is not enforcing a complete moratorium on loans or credit here.  The idea we should keep in our minds is “irresponsible debt”.  This is debt owed that cannot easily be repaid and places oneself into a cycle of paying off creditors that threatens to bury us under the weight of our own short sightedness.  Notice the phrasing of Psalm 37:21: The wicked borrows and does not pay back.  It is not the borrowing that is expressly classified as wicked.  Rather, it is the failure to pay back the loan.  The Apostle Paul in Romans 13:8 says to “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another”.  His point is expounded by the previous verse: “Render to all what is due them”.  The point is not to never owe money.  It is to pay back what is owed in a timely manner so that you are free to express love and by so doing fulfill the Law.  Unpayable debt or irresponsible debt makes us a slave to that debt.  It distracts us and chains us to stress and obligation.  Instead of this model of behavior we are to be clear minded and freed to express love and the gospel of Christ. 

Another aspect of this issue is the warning found in James 4:13-14: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.  We ought not to live on borrowed time, as it were.  We should not assume anything about our lives in the next minute, let alone in six months or six years.  And the assumption of debt is in principle right in league with that type of mindset.  So while not being a black and white, cut and dried error of behavior, it is also not in lock step with the biblical model presented here. 

A third scriptural angle to view this issue in is very simply the love of money and wealth.  Look at the way verse 6 is phrased: “And makes himself rich with loans”.  Unsatisfied with what is currently possessed, the sinner acquires more and greater quantities of lucre via the medium of debt.  He mismanages what he has and places himself in a precarious financial position in a self-serving addiction to monetary gain.  In Matthew 19:23 Jesus said “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  And in Luke 16:13 He made the following statement: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and wealth.”

So then, we have ample evidence in the Bible of the wrongness of thinking behind thievery and irresponsible debt.  But now the question must be asked and answered, “Why are these two linked the way they are?”  In the context of this woe against the Babylonians, why does God lump irresponsible debt in with thievery in His condemnation of sinful behavior?  The answer is the second major theme of this taunt-song and the key is in the link formed by the warning against debt.  Picture verse 6b on one side of a chasm.  On this cliff stands the woe against stealing; ‘Woe to him who increases what is not his’.  Across the gap stands verse 7a; ‘Will not your creditors rise up suddenly, and those who collect from you awaken?  Creditors and collectors have nothing to do with theft.  The two by themselves are unrelated.  But when we insert the end of verse 6 as the structure bridging the gap it suddenly makes sense.  The sin of stealing is linked and carried along with the sin of the love of money and its visible evidence, irresponsible debt, across to the other side of the pit where the creditors rise up and the collectors awaken.  God’s point is that just as when we take out loans we cannot repay and face the consequences of repossessions and collection agencies, so also those who engage in theft will face inevitable consequences.

The plunderers will become the plundered.  The looters will become the looted.  The tables will ultimately be turned because of the human bloodshed and violence done to the land, the town, and the inhabitants.  I am going to place myself on a precarious theological limb here and call this “Biblical karma”.  To be clear, karma in its raw form and definition is most assuredly not a concept which comes from the Bible.  Rather, it is sourced in Hinduism and Buddhism.  It is the idea of the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence which come together and decide their fate in this and future existences.  If that sounds confusing, consider this practical example.  A cruel and selfish man becomes enraged when he is accidentally cut off in traffic by a mother driving a carful of children.  His road rage consumes him and he follows the offending woman to her destination; a department store.  After the man watches her and her gang of offspring leave their vehicle and enter the location he gets out of his car, slashes all four tires, keys both sides of the car, and leaves a nasty note under the windshield wiper filled with hateful language.  Smugly self-satisfied, he drives home and relaxes for the evening.  The next day, out for a walk near his home, he is struck and killed by a city bus.  A follower of eastern religion would say that was karma at work.  Here is a key point though.  In eastern philosophy karma is tied to a belief in reincarnation.  That is, the teaching which says when a person dies their soul is reborn into a new body.  Each time this happens the quality of the new existence is directly impacted by the moral pattern of behavior in the previous existence.  In other words, if you are an evil person in this life you will wind up in a less privileged position in the next life.  This is the significant differentiator that makes the notion of karma completely unbiblical.  Nowhere in the word of God is such a notion of death and rebirth supported.  So it is a very precarious approach to even mention the notion of karma in relation to biblical truth.  In spite of that fact, I am knowingly doing it anyhow purely for the purpose of illustrative example.

With those caveats out of the way, my contention here by calling what God is describing in His woe against the Babylonians “biblical karma” is this.  The idea of karma, although warped and twisted by idolatrous mankind in their distorted religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, has its roots in the absolute reality of how God designed the universe.  It is a biblical principle present everywhere in scripture that man is held accountable for his actions, either immediately or in the due course of time.  From the very beginning of recorded history, in Genesis chapter 3, we see God causing consequences to come into being for the choices and actions of Satan, Eve, and Adam.  Both Adam and his wife attempted to place blame for their rebellion on the shoulders of another.  But God was having none of it.  He handed down individual punishments for each person that fit their crime.  Further on in the historical biblical record, Exodus 17:8-13 records an incident in which Amalek attacked the Israelites, apparently without provocation.  In verse 14 of that chapter God delivers a decisive ruling against the Amalekites: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”  Repeatedly throughout the book of Leviticus God says that for each type of crime given description, the one who has sinned “will bear his guilt” or “he will be guilty”.  There is no concept of a passing of the buck in the mind of God as He considers His creation.  What goes around will come around, but only under the direct supervision of the Lord Himself.

So I believe that the nucleus of what has come to be known as karma was miss-appropriated by the human inventors of Hinduism and Buddhism.  They observed the world around them and how things operated; the natural laws if you will that govern the existence of life.  These natural laws were obviously designed and implemented by God long before Buddha and his contemporaries developed their set of truth claims.  Then they took what they saw that God had already super-intended, modified it to fit their own agendas, and slapped a fancy moniker of “karma” on it.  In a sense we might say “God was there first”.  In light of that truth, it is the Lord who has the authentic rights of ownership to the philosophical concept behind the idea of karma.  That is the sense in which I am using the terminology here.  And that is the over-riding concept behind this first woe that He is sending in the direction of the Babylonians in response to Habakkuk.  The prophet is being given a sneak peek if you will, a glimpse into the future that, although lacking details educates him on exactly what will ultimately come to pass in regard to the perplexing usage of the Chaldeans for divine discipline of Judah.

Now then, is there any particular way in which this all relates to us in our present day?  I think the implication is obvious.  We have already seen how God warns against thievery and irresponsible debt.  As stated before, this prohibition probably seems rather obvious.  But beyond the evident there is an overriding truth that God will orchestrate repercussions against those who choose to defy His decrees and engage in evil.  In the case of a non-Christian, Revelation 20:13 states that at the final judgment: the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.  Whether it seems that you have skated free and clear for your misdeeds in this life or not, know that ultimate judgment is coming one day.  For the Christian, although our sins may be forgiven, remember that we are now adopted into the family of God.  He is our heavenly Father who is perfectly just.  As such, He will not hesitate to discipline His children when necessary.  Hebrews 12:6 makes this abundantly clear: For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.  So remember this warning before you consider following after the world in theft that you convince yourself is not really theft or irresponsible debt designed to gratify your lust for money that you convince yourself is not really wrong because the Bible doesn’t specifically say you can’t incur debt.  Instead, follow after the example given to us by Jesus, whose every thought and intention of the heart was to do the will of His Father.  Because “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and “the exact representation of His nature” (Heb. 1:3) the qualities of Christ’s character are in perfect alignment with everything we have discussed here from Habakkuk.  Therefore by studying the example left by Jesus we will place ourselves in the best position to also be in alignment with the will of God.                           

The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 7: Doing Nothing...By Faith

One thing must be acknowledged at this point.  Habakkuk has definitely had his say.  He has had more than ample opportunity to express his opinions and concerns.  God has been exceedingly gracious and patient in permitting His prophet to express himself.  It is nothing less than divine forbearance any time a human is allowed to pour their heart out to the Lord.  When we consider how high and holy God is and how low and profane we are it is incumbent upon us to admit that by all rights it should not be acceptable for us to even converse with the Almighty.  Psalm 8:3-5 brings this point out very well: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for Him?  Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty!  So the fact that He has allowed Habakkuk to ramble on for half a chapter like this is nothing short of miraculous. 

Furthermore, as we now begin to look at God’s response we will notice that something is conspicuously absent from His words.  At the end of chapter six we saw that Job received a withering rebuke from the Lord after his arrogant demands that completely overstepped his authority.  But here in Habakkuk 2:2-5, as the Lord opens this next portion of the conversation, there is no evidence of any sort of condemnation.  In fact, He responds very specifically and directly to the prophet’s questions.  In a sense, He permits Habakkuk to guide the conversation and positions Himself in a posture of response.  There is no sense of admonishment, no hint of discipline, and no sign of the chastening that Job got.  This is a very convincing further evidence of the correctness of Habakkuk’s approach.  If the man had been in the wrong here, would God really have remained silent about it?  I think not.  In fact, quite often in scripture He responds with immediacy when mankind dishonors Him.  Acts 12:21-23 records an incident in which Herod Antipas was cultivating his self-styled image as god and king, following in the footsteps of his father Herod the Great.  Scripture says that as a result he was immediately struck by an angel of the Lord, eaten by worms, and died.  God does not always act so quickly to correct the arrogance of His creations.  But I find it to be non-credible to suppose that if Habakkuk had been in the wrong with what he said, that God, in the midst of a back and forth personal conversation with him, would have let it slide without comment.

Now then, what exactly is the content of this answer from God?  This passage divides itself neatly into four parts, one per verse from 2:2 to 2:5.  All four of these components carry a unifying theme which undergirds them and serves to communicate the over-arching message that God is trying to open our eyes to.  He begins in verse 2:

                        Then the Lord answered me and said,

                        “Record the vision

                        And inscribe it on tablets,

                        That the one who reads it may run.

The concepts to note in this verse are permanency and clarity.  It is interesting that God orders Habakkuk to write His response on tablets.  The Hebrew is very specific; it means a board, slab, or plank.  This stipulation seems odd because the Jews would have been using papyrus or parchment style scrolls for centuries.  The Egyptians developed papyrus technology around 3,000 B.C. With the notable exception of Mount Sinai and the stone tablets that God wrote on, scrolls and ink were the predominant medium of the written word at the time of Habakkuk.  So what is God getting at here?  Is He being literal with this requirement or does He have a hidden agenda and this is a symbolic instruction to make a point?

There are two possibilities.  One is that the Lord is calling to mind those aforementioned stone tablets originally given to Moses.  Why would He do that?  The original Ten Commandments were sacred to the Israelites.  They were one of the items placed inside the Ark of the Covenant for safe keeping.  They were a most holy relic of the history of God’s interaction with His people.  But by this point at the end of the sixth century B.C. the word, or oracles, of God had been relegated to dusty back storerooms of the temple.  We discussed this back in chapter one.  The reverence and respect due God’s words had largely been lost.  Although Josiah had temporarily lifted their significance one again, with his death and the subsequent descent back into idolatry under Jehoiakim, this notoriety would have been fading quickly.  And this would have been right in line with Habakkuk’s original complaint about the Law being ignored.  So with this instruction of writing upon a tablet God may have been calling to remembrance just how important a thing it was when He chose to speak.

Another possibility can be found in the final line of the verse, which is at first glance rather perplexing.  What in the world does running have to do with anything?  Consider this.  Typically, we in the western world, the United States in particular, tend to think of tablets as huge and heavy blocks as long as a man’s arm, being lugged around by Charlton Heston in the film from the 1950s, The Ten Commandments.  Or perhaps we’ve seen photographs of the Code of Hammurabi, the eight foot tall record made of diorite stone, of one of the first known system of laws in the world.  But often the clay tablets that ancient peoples made use of were much smaller, sometimes even as small as a modern day “tablet” computer (there is a reason they chose that moniker when designing these things).  As such, they could be surprisingly portable and convenient.  So expedient in fact that a runner carrying messages from one city to another could have read the message as he was running.  This may have been what was on God’s mind.

So it seems that the order of the day here is permanency and clarity.  God wants His message to not be lost.  He wants it to be inscribed on human hearts and branded on human minds.  Deuteronomy 11:18 says “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.”  The Lord also wants His missive to be clear and unmistakable.  Psalm 12:6 draws this illustration: The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.  As opposed to a base metal still waiting to be refined, God’s words are undefiled.  They are free from deceit or falsehood.  As such they are worthy to be viewed with undimmed eyes and unquenched spirit.

The next segment of God’s answer is as follows:

                        “For the vision is yet for the appointed time;

                        It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.

                        Though it tarries, wait for it;

                        For it will certainly come, it will not delay.

There are a couple of items to note here.  The first is that God has decreed a time.  He has fixed a moment.  He has established the parameters for His plans to come to fruition.  And the information contained in the message He is giving Habakkuk has been designated for that fixed instant.  As such, the Lord says that “it”, meaning the vision, “will not fail”.  Let’s stop and think about that for a minute.  Consider the level of control that must be exerted over something in order to make the claim that it will not fail.  And it’s not only a level of control over the specific item in question.  That same degree of oversight must be in place for every single potential extraneous influence that might come into play during the course of the resolution of the event(s) in question.  What we are talking about, in the interest of just making this one statement, is a mastery that is so complete and so final that it is incapable of being questioned.

Much is made in modern Christendom over the question of God’s sovereignty.  Some camps of theologians argue for a God who is sovereign but in such a way that He permits the world to essentially run itself.  He began the work of creation and still oversees it, but not in a minute and finely detailed fashion.  They do not find it conceivable that God could really be specifically ordering each individual drop of water that falls, every plant that grows, all of the atmospheric disturbances that turn into storms, and the thoughts and intentions of every human heart.  Yet is that not exactly what would have to happen for God to be able to say that anything “will not fail”.  How can He be so sure?  What if someone six months from now makes a decision that is outside the scope of what God has decreed?  Does it throw His whole game plan off and He has to resort to plan B?  In the last chapter we looked at just the tip of the iceberg of God’s fiery condemnation of Job’s arrogance.  Look at some of what the Lord says in those four chapters:

• Job 38:12-13 – God says that He has command of the morning and the dawn, in other words time.
• Job 38:34-35 – God says that He commands the clouds to give an abundance of water and sends forth lightning.
• Job 38:39-41 – God says that He provides prey for lions and prepares food for ravens.
• Job 39:13-18 – God says that the ostrich treats her young casually and cruelly, forgetting them and their needs of safety.  He says she acts like this because He has made her forget wisdom.

Through these and many more examples, the Lord describes a control of His creation that is both vast and fine, broad and narrow, extravagant and subtle.  He demonstrates mastery over such disparate elements as the boundaries of the oceans and the birthing of mountain goats.  And God’s rule over creation extends to mankind as well.  In Exodus 33:19 He told Moses: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”  He had already demonstrated this to Moses in Exodus 14:4 when He said: “Thus I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.”  This God that Habakkuk served was and is fully in command of events on earth.  He, by His own whim and no others, caused Pharaoh to chase after the Israelites to re-capture them, knowing full well that this would result in the destruction of the entire Egyptian army.  This is a hard lesson but it is who God has revealed Himself to be, whether we understand it or not.  And most especially whether our cultured, modern, refined tastes like it or not.

It is precisely because of this absolute sovereignty which God exercises that He tells Habakkuk to wait for the vision to come to pass.  Although it may seem to be taking an exorbitant amount of time to come to fruition, the prophet is instructed to wait patiently for it with the full assurance and confirmation that his wait will not be in vain.  There is an astonishing perspective shift hidden within this command.  Usually, if God is yet to act in a situation, our tendency is to approach it mentally from a standpoint of waiting.  We wait for the circumstance to resolve itself.  We wait for God to intervene.  We even wait for the patience to continue waiting with patience.  In all of this waiting we are naturally inclined to view God’s involvement as taking a long time to develop.  The more desperately we want something the more it seems that He is taking forever to bring it to pass.  But this is a fallacy of human perception and thinking.  All events, being decreed by God, occur at precisely the moment He has chosen for them.  Observe the wisdom of the preacher in Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything appropriate in its time.  All of His decrees, decisions, stratagems, and devices are appointed.  They will certainly come to pass.  That means if something that we want to happen is not happening yet it is specifically because God does not wish it to happen yet.  Even the yearning for the thing and the longing we feel, oftentimes without satisfaction, has been placed there by God.  The remainder of Ecclesiastes 3:11 says: He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.  There is no facet of life that God has not ordered according to His desires.

Following this revelation of sovereignty, God then proceeds to give Habakkuk a picture of the very soul of mankind.

                        “Behold, as for the proud one,

                        His soul is not right within him;

                        But the righteous will live by his faith.

Notice what is being communicated here.  A contrast is being drawn between two opposites.  God is indicating that a person who is prideful is distorted or twisted.  The Hebrew literally means to be swelled up or heedless or show presumption.  Over against those who evidence such behavior are presented those, called “the righteous”, who live by their faith.  What is the contrast here?  Why are the proud compared with the faithful?  Having faith is intrinsically a demonstration of humility.  To place one’s trust in something or someone outside of you is to place yourself into a position of dependence.  If you are not the primary driver behind the wheel of the car then you have to submit your safety and well-being to the skills and abilities of the one doing the driving.  This is what it means to live by faith.  And God is saying that if we refuse to do that, then not only are we proud but our very souls are not right within us.  They are corrupted.  To put it another way, to live without faith is to be an aberration of nature.

Why would this be?  Why does a lack of faith qualify one as an anomaly?  Because God designed us to live in and by faith.  He designed humans to be in communion with Him.  And to be in communion with God is to automatically be placed into a position of being less than the one you are in harmony with.  Thus being in accord with the Lord is to be inherently in a position of faith and trust and that is how He designed us to operate.  To function in any other way is to miss the mark.

To further emphasize this point God now presents His own word picture, in contrast with Habakkuk’s fish and fishermen illustration, to both respond to His prophet’s concerns and continue to build His own case:

                        “Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man,

                        So that he does not stay at home.

                        He enlarges his appetite like Sheol,

                        And he is like death, never satisfied.

                        He also gathers to himself all nations

                        And collects to himself all peoples.

The Babylonians are likened to a drunk man.  This drunk is betrayed by the alcohol he so desperately craves.  He is never at rest, never peaceful, always on the move.  And although that may seem appealing on the surface, in reality it is a curse that stems from discontent.  We are often dissatisfied with the normality of our lives.  We long to be out from under the burden of responsibilities, commitments, and pressures.  In our minds we fantasize about how wonderful it would be to fly free, unhindered by the trappings of civilization which hold us in bondage.  Have you ever wondered by vacations are so appealing to people?  It’s because they offer us a temporary reprieve from the mundane.  An escape from the humdrum.  They give us a teasing glimpse of this mythical land of freedom that we so desperately long for.

But the grim reality is that this idea of freedom and escape is a myth.  It is an illusion fostered upon our consciousness by the sin that consumes us.  And like death, this constant thirst for more freedom, more entertainment, more scratching of our psychological itches, will never be satisfied with the material.  In His word picture God likens our craving unto death itself, who is never satisfied with the harvest it has reaped so far.  There is always the drive to keep going, just over the next hill, to find the next fix.  And so we gather to us that which we think will satisfy us in an endless cycle of self-indulgence and materialism.

The Lord finishes His picture by explicitly referring back to Habakkuk’s concerns about the Babylonians with the description of our drunk gathering to himself all nations and collecting to himself all peoples, just like death.  This mirrors the prophet’s characterization of the Babylonians as fishermen who continually sacrifice to their nets and repeat the cycle of gathering up human fish, without end.  In the same way death is inexorable.  It respects neither class or training, age or intelligence, health or money.  It is the great equalizer that comes to us all in the end.

This portion of the Lord’s answer and the four parts that it is comprised of can be seen on two levels.  On one, which He will develop further with the rest of the chapter, He is specifically addressing the Chaldeans.  He is assuring Habakkuk that ultimately they will come to naught.  In the end, God has decreed what will happen.  It is completely outside the sphere of influence of either Habakkuk or the pagans.  And His words, although they may seem a long time in coming to pass, will happen at exactly the time that He has ordained for them to occur.  Further, the Chaldeans, in their quest for material wealth and power, will ultimately bear the curse of their idolatry in their own flesh.  Their very souls are corrupted and twisted.  They are not upright within themselves.  So even though they may appear on the surface to be content, prosperous, and powerful they will ultimately be left empty, devoid of meaning to their existence, and in the due course of time victims to the specter of death.

This response may seem unpalatable to us.  God is essentially saying, “Don’t worry about the Chaldeans.  It doesn’t matter what they do now because in the end they’ll get what’s coming to them.”  Hardly re-assuring perhaps for a Jewish prophet who will be watching his country burn in a few short years.  And probably not very comforting for we in our modern day, dealing with cancer, bankruptcy, apostatizing children, lost jobs, broken homes, flat tires, high blood pressure, and a country that seems hell bent on going to hell.  What we most want is for God to solve the problems we bring to Him with immediacy and finality.  We don’t want to be told that God doesn’t necessarily have any intention of relieving the day to day stresses and pressures we face.

But that is exactly the point.  And it is the second level on which God’s reply operates; as an address not just to Habakkuk about the Babylonians, but to all of humanity about the reality of their lives.  The beauty of this is that it both condemns and exhorts, warns and encourages, promises alternatively frustration and exhaustion or bliss and contentment.  The key differentiator is which side of the “trusting God” fence you come down on.

If you regard lightly and frivolously the words of God then you face His wrath.  Be not in spirit like Jehoiakim, king of Judah, was in deed when he burned the scroll of Jeremiah as it was read to him.  In Jeremiah 36:29-31 the Lord gave this foolish king the following response: And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, ‘Thus says the Lord, “You have burned this scroll, saying, ‘Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will make man and beast to cease from it?’”  Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah, “He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the night.  I will also punish him and his descendants and his servants for their iniquity, and I will bring on them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah all the calamity that I have declared to them – but they did not listen.”’”  But on the other hand, if you regard with reverence and devotion the words of God then what Jesus spoke in John 5:24 will be spoken of you: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”

And if you refuse to wait for God to act in His own time but instead try to manufacture events to your satisfaction then you will place yourself outside of the will of God Almighty and run the risk of being trampled by that divine will, which is guaranteed to accomplish its purposes.  Be not like King Saul, who disobeyed the Lord in the destruction of the Amalekites in an attempt to manufacture his own riches and comfort.  And then exacerbated his crimes by going to a medium or spiritist, which the Lord had expressly forbidden.  As a result Saul became the adversary of God.  In 1 Samuel 28:16-19 Saul received the following condemnation: Samuel said, “Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has departed from you and has become your adversary?  The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David.  As you did not obey the Lord and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the Lord has done this thing to you this day.  Moreover the Lord will also give over Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, therefore tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Indeed the Lord will give over the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines!”  Instead of acting like Saul, rest on the promises of God, such as the one found in Isaiah 64:4: For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.

And do not become a twisted mockery of what God created you to be by being a proud person of no faith.  Do not be foolish like Christ’s disciples in Luke 8:22-25: Now on one of those days Jesus and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they launched out. But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger. They came to Jesus and woke Him up, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm. And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?”  Rather, be like the centurion who, in Matthew 8:8-10, in spite of his pagan Gentile heritage displayed greater faith than the Israelite children of promise: But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.

Finally, do not be consumed by the pleasures of this world and ultimately, whether in this life or the next, become destitute as the prodigal son was in Luke 15:14: Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished.  Rather, follow the example of Jesus in John 4:34 by making obedience to the Father your food and drink: Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. 

In all four of these areas there is a duality of application.  You can give heed to the words of the Lord and experience peace, joy, contentment, and security.  Or you can ignore His instructions and experience conflict, despair, suffering, and chaos.  Ultimately, it comes down to a single question.  Will you trust God? 

Each of the four segments of the beginning of His response to Habakkuk revolves on the fulcrum of that most important of all issues.  The Lord instructed Habakkuk to record His words in such a way that they were securely stored and easily accessible because the foundation upon which trusting God is built is a reverence and adherence to His revelation.  He advised Habakkuk to wait for the prescribed and ordained fulfillment of the vision, regardless of how long in human terms it took to be accomplished, because it is critical for us to realize that a sovereign God’s timetable is not ours.  He does not order and orchestrate events in such a way as to appease our impatience.  And it requires trust on our part to hold fast to that truth in the midst of the storms of life.  God described those who are prideful and lacking faith as distorted and corrupted because He created us as beings of faith who depend on Him for everything.  To be and act in a manner contrary to this design is to be a pale and shallow reflection of our original blueprint.  And God painted a bleak word picture of addiction and ultimately doom to describe those who pursue profane rather than sacred solutions to their appetites because placing our faith and trust in things of this earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal will guarantee us lives of dissatisfaction, never achieving the lasting bliss we long for, which will eventually result in an eternity of the same empty existence. 

Will you humble yourself and trust the Lord or will you insist on placing your own wisdom on a pedestal that drives you to be heedless of the wisdom of God?  This is essentially the question He posed to Habakkuk and it echoes across the expanse of time to us today as well.