The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 3: Tools in the Box

Imagine a tool box.  It is rather nondescript; a dull gray in color with a handle on the top and plastic clasps on the front, both colored black.  It has obviously seen some use; there are scuff marks on the corners and a few paint smudges scattered here and there.  Inside is a motley assortment of well used tools.  The bright chrome of the tool heads contrasts with the varicolored rubber grips on the handles in blues and oranges and yellows.  There is a tool for every job in this box; screwdrivers, wrenches, ratchets and sockets, a tape measure, a hammer, and a level.  A few of the screwdriver heads are rough where the metal has been sheared away from heavy use.  The hammer has one of the claws opposite the head partially broken off.  But every tool is still perfectly serviceable.

Now let's modify the image just a little.  Let's suppose that the carpenter who owns this tool box and the tools inside just happens to be a metal-smith with his own smithy.  Rather than purchasing these tools at a hardware store he actually made them himself.  He took rods of steel and cut them into bars after heating them to red hot.  Then he took one bar for each tool, heated it again and forged it into the shape he desired.  Finally, he finished the job by attaching a handle.  These tools aren't just implements to be discarded whenever it is most expedient.  They are labors of love for the smith/carpenter.  He enjoys the process of making and then using his tools so much that he gave them names.  Although the claw end of the hammer is damaged, the carpenter has no intention of discarding it.  When he has free time he plans to repair it in his workshop.

With one more addition our picture will be complete.  Let's further suppose that the carpenter made good use of his time as a young man, and learned not just blacksmithing and carpentry as trades, but was also educated in electrical engineering and software design.  He understands the principles of chip-set manufacturing and constructing circuit boards.  He is skilled at writing software applications to perform a myriad of tasks.  And he took these skill sets and applied them to his instruments.  He designed and built miniature silicon chips and inserted them into the body of his tools.  These chips allow them to perform a variety of extra tasks that would not ordinarily be associated with common carpentry items.  They can record the number of times they've been used, the cohesiveness of the molecular structure of their metal (in other words, how close they are to breaking), trigger a tiny alarm in a built in speaker which lets the carpenter know when they are approaching structural failure, and even use logic to determine what the optimal striking / driving point or torque is, depending on which type of tool is being used.  Calling these items one of a kind is a vast understatement!

With this image established we will follow our carpenter to one of his jobs.  This particular assignment is a roofing job, with hundreds of nails to be driven into the particle board which covers the roof trusses of a house under construction.  The carpenter knows that his hammer is going to pull extra duty today as the tool of choice.  After a long day in the hot summer sun, he drives back to his work shop.  When he arrives he checks his hammer over to ensure it remains in good working order.  The hammer has recorded for him that it was used 568 times that day.  The ache in the carpenter's shoulder confirms that assessment.  The structural report shows no error codes, meaning that failure is not imminent. He never coded logic into the hammer's chip to detect when it is being lifted or carried.  It certainly has no need of a rear facing camera to see the face of the man wielding it.  It simply knows in its limited approximation of intelligence that it performed a job today by striking 568 nails.  The carpenter wearily puts his trusty nail driver back into the tool box and retires for the evening.

This picture of tools made for a purpose with a creator who designed them, produced them, and uses them at his whim is a parallel of the picture that God paints in response to His prophet's frustration and complaint that we looked at in the last chapter.  God opens this divine answer in Habakkuk 1:5 with authority and strength:

                        “Look among the nations!  Observe!

                        Be astonished! Wonder!

                        Because I am doing something in your days -

                        You would not believe if you were told.”

One of the fascinating elements that we see in scripture of the communication between God and man is the dispensing of formalities that God tends to employ.  If one of us were speaking with Habakkuk and he voiced his concerns about the evil pervading his country and the corresponding perversion of God's law, our tendency would be to commiserate with him for a few moments before giving him our actual response.  We would comfort him with platitudes and empathy, real or feigned.  God doesn't bother with any of that.  He cuts right to the chase just as He did in Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus in John 3.  The timid Pharisee comes to Jesus at night and in verse 2 opens the conversation with “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”  This was not at all what Nicodemus wanted to get at in his dialogue.   What he really wanted to know was how one gained access to the kingdom of God.  But in a typical human prevarication he beat around the bush with this opening salvo, probably intended as a compliment to butter up his target and try to gain points with Him.  How do we know answers about the kingdom was what he wanted?  Because of Jesus's reply in the next verse.  Jesus had no need of human compliments.  He was completely immune to human pride which flattery is intended to inflate.  And He saw right through Nicodemus's pretense to what was in his heart when he said “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

It is this same pattern of dispensing with formalities and cutting right to the heart of the issue that we see in Habakkuk.  God jumps right past all of the unimportant fluff and gets straight to what His prophet needs to hear.  And in what a manner He does it!  It's like a bucket of cold water dumped on Habakkuk's head.  Because by telling him to “Look among the nations!  Observe!  Be astonished!  Wonder!”  God is driving home the point that He knows perfectly well how fickle and flighty humans are.  This is the same reason the preaching of the word of God is always relevant to the hearers.  Humans have a tremendous capacity to forget the things they should know.  We cut corners at the earliest opportunity.  We take the path of least resistance whenever possible in a monumental love affair with pragmatism.  And we all too often fail to pay attention to what God is doing.  Psalm 19:1-2 says “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”  Yet in spite of this evidence of God at work all around us how often do we actually stop to pay attention?  The answer is not much.  Jesus said in John 5:17 “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”  Yet how often do we ascribe the trials, turmoil, and even the jubilation of our lives to human agencies rather than to the one who empowers those agencies and in whom they all “hold together” (Colossians 1:17)?  The answer is most of the time.  This is exactly the point God is making here in Habakkuk 1:5. 

He is not averse to using sarcasm in the scriptures when describing human stupidity.  So it's as if God is saying to Habakkuk (and to us) “Wake up you dummy!  I'm doing things here that you can't see because you can't stop staring down the length of your nose.  In fact, my ways are so utterly foreign and mystifying to you that you wouldn't even believe what I'm about to do if someone told you.”  This is in fact an echo of the same message God communicated through the prophet Isaiah approximately a century before Habakkuk came along, in Isaiah 55:8-9 - “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  As we discussed in chapter two, the writings of Isaiah were almost certainly very familiar to Habakkuk.  Yet in spite of this Habakkuk then and we today insist on taking glory from God continually by giving credit for what we experience to circumstances, fortune, or other people instead of to Him.

What did this divine orchestration of circumstances look like in Habakkuk’s case?  What were the tools that God pulled out of his tool box for this job?  It was the Babylonian Empire…

                        “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,

                        That fierce and impetuous people

                        Who march throughout the earth

                        To seize dwelling places which are not theirs.

                        “They are dreaded and feared;

                        Their justice and authority originate with themselves.

                        “Their horses are swifter than leopards

                        And keener than wolves in the evening.

                        Their horsemen come galloping,

                        Their horsemen come from afar;

                        They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour.

                        “All of them come for violence.

                        Their horde of faces moves forward.

                        They collect captives like sand.

                        “They mock at kings

                        And rulers are a laughing matter to them.

                        They laugh at every fortress

                        And heap up rubble to capture it.

                        “Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on.

                        But they will be held guilty,

                        They whose strength is their god.”

There are a few items to note here.  First is that there is a clear sense of almost fatherly pride in this description of the Babylonian army.  Consider the adjectives that God uses to describe them: fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth, dreaded, feared, horses swifter than leopards, keener than wolves in the evening, their horsemen come galloping from afar, and they fly like an eagle.  The reader gets a sense that this is a proud father describing his beloved son to someone else.  Perhaps the son is a baseball player or a soldier.  And the father takes great pleasure in delighting over the talents and abilities of his child. 

This may seem utterly misplaced coming from God and directed toward the Babylonians.  But consider what we have already examined in chapter one about the relationship between man and God.  Humans are Imago Dei.  As such they are images or representations or facsimiles of who God Himself is.  They are examples of divine handiwork.  Our tendency is to view Babylon exclusively in the context of their historic barbarism and cruelty, their paganism, and their toll in human life and circumstances.  But in doing this we ignore the bigger picture of God’s sovereignty and His oversight of all creation.  Just like the carpenter with his hand-made and one of a kind tools, God’s perspective on all of humankind is radically different from ours because He views them, all of them, as the pinnacle of His creation.  Lest we doubt this truth, consider a fundamental gospel passage such as John 3:16: “For God so loved the world”.  God’s stated reason for sending Jesus as an atoning sacrifice was because of His great love for the world, the people, whom He had created.

Now, it must be said that there is a flip side to this fatherly pride which is the second point of note from the passage above.  Namely that God’s opinion of the Chaldeans is not completely rosy.  And He is no stranger to sarcasm when appropriate.  In Isaiah 44:19 we read: No one recalls, nor is there knowledge of understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals.  I roast meat and eat it.  Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!” 

We see a similar attitude here in Habakkuk as God demonstrates His mastery of the back handed compliment.  Woven in between the praises and the fatherly pride described above is a thread of disdain, criticism, and rebuke.  It is so understated and almost casual that you might have missed it at first glance.  But look again: seizing dwelling places which are not theirs, justice and authority originating with themselves, coming for violence, collecting captives like sand, mocking at kings, and laughing at rulers.  None of these are godly character qualities and/or actions.  They do not reflect the attitudes or motivations that God exemplifies and Christ modeled.  God doesn't come right out and mark the difference between the positive and negative qualities of the Babylonians.  But it should be understood that one who knows God as He has revealed Himself in His word should be able to spot the difference between godliness and ungodliness. 

Can you pick out the sinfulness and tell it apart from the righteousness?  Or are you so distanced from the word of God that it is primarily your own wisdom, upbringing, and preferences which form the worldview that you use to judge the merit of what you see around you?  On the other hand, if you have discernment over what is biblical when you view others, are you able to apply those same lenses onto your own life?  Do you seize things that don’t belong to you?  Now most of us would immediately rush to assure that we are not thieves.  But do we take small things and brush them off as inconsequential?  Do we steal time from our employer, taxes from our government, or offering from our church which by extension is stealing from God? 

Are you a violent person?  Again most would quickly assure that that is not the case.  But don’t make the mistake of thinking that violence is only physical.  Words can often do just as much damage as fists, even if the effects are more difficult to see.  Are you a husband who dominates his wife and crushes her spirit with the words that he speaks?  Are you an un-submissive wife who undercuts and blocks the efforts of your husband at every turn in a passive aggressive form of violence to his character, his self-esteem, and his role in the home?  Are you an impatient parent who snaps at the slightest infraction of your children and rather than coach them to godliness just make them fear putting a foot wrong and incurring the wrath of their parent?

Do you mock and make fun of whoever the current President of our country is because you disagree with his policies and beliefs?  Do you discount the biblical truth that God has placed him in this position of authority?  Do you ridicule instead of praying for him?

Does your “justice and authority originate with yourself” in the sense that your own pride, ego, and selfishness is what drives how you spend your time?  Do you consider your offering to the church as a bonus that you will only pay if the leaders appease you?  Do you wield your authority in your secular job like a club, dominating your subordinates instead of treating them as equals?  Do you consider the highway your personal purview and antagonize those who dare to stray into your domain?

If any of these descriptions apply in any way to you (and let me be clear that no matter how much you try to disseminate we all fall into those categories somewhere) then you had better go back and re-read that passage above.  And this time realize that God isn’t just describing the ancient Babylonian Empire, here referenced as “the Chaldeans”.  He is describing the irony of man, created in the image of God, who rolls around in sin like a pig frolicking in the mud.  He is describing you!

After this double edged description of the Babylonians God finishes His response with a closing of such finality it is frankly astonishing in the vast scope encompassed within its simplicity.

                        “But they will be held guilty,

                        They whose strength is their god.”

This is so understated that our tendency might be to glance over it or skip past it casually.  We want to see fireworks.  Our minds are so small that we cannot conceive of something as being powerful unless it is blindingly obvious.  But power that requires such advertising is not true power.  God doesn't need a voluminous diatribe against the sins of Babylon to finish them so utterly they had no hope of rescue.  The same approach was seen by Elijah at Horeb in 1 Kings 19.  The Lord sent a strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire yet He was not in any of these displays of supernatural power.  His voice finally appeared at last in just a “gentle blowing”.  In a similar way here in Habakkuk where God almost casually passes sentence what He is doing is pronouncing ultimate doom upon the Babylonians.  When the judge of all the universe says that you’re guilty then you truly have no hope.  You are without recourse, without appeal, without defense. 

And what was the source of their guilt?  It was not the atrocities they were committing against the nations, which would all too soon include Judah.  It wasn't the destruction of the temple or the taking into exile of the Jews.  In Jeremiah 51:24 God makes it clear that the evils of Babylon went beyond what was necessary for Judah’s punishment when He says “But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares the Lord.  But this evil was just the outworking of the root of the issue, which is revealed here in Habakkuk.  Namely, the Babylonians had as their god their own strength.  This was the decisive factor in God’s mind which condemned them.  It seems like overkill to us that God would make such a big deal out of someone trusting themselves rather than Him.  But He makes it clear here that there is no middle ground or gray area.  Either we put our trust in God and rely on His strength or we are held guilty.  And notice the general nature of the pronoun which is used; they.  This verdict extends beyond just the Chaldeans and is leveled against anyone who follows in their footsteps of stealing God’s glory by making anything else the object of their affections.

Now then, having examined God’s response to Habakkuk’s complaint in some detail, what is the big picture here?  What is He communicating to His prophet?  Habakkuk complains about the evils and atrocities in Judah that are perverting God’s character and causing injustice to reign supreme.  The Lord responds by describing the Babylonian Empire that He is raising up.  How does this help answer Habakkuk’s concerns?  The answer is that God is explaining how He is going to see justice done.  He is going to use the Chaldeans to punish Judah for their iniquity.  They are the “tools” He will commit to the task of righting the wrongs that Habakkuk was seeing as well as those that had taken place before his time.  This was not a new methodology for the Lord.  He utilized the Assyrians the exact same way in 722 B.C. when they invaded Israel and sacked Samaria.

In Isaiah 10 God describes Assyria as “the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hands is My indignation”.  He goes on to say “I send it against a godless nation and commission it against the people of My fury to capture booty and to seize plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.”  However, just as Babylon later would pervert the righteous justice that God used them for, so did Assyria before them: “Yet it does not so intend nor does it plan so in its heart, but rather it is its purpose to destroy and to cut off many nations.”  And ultimately the Assyrians were judged just as Babylon would be, not for God’s use of them in judgment but for the pride of their own hearts which perverted that judgment: So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.” 

The point here is that both Assyria and Babylon were tools in the hands of the Lord.  Living, breathing, thinking tools yes.  But still tools nonetheless.  Just as in our example at the beginning of the chapter, although the hammer had a chip which allowed it to record how many times it had struck a nail in a single day that doesn't mean it was responsible for its own swinging.  And lest you think that example is far-fetched and compromises too much of human volition, consider the words of the Lord in Isaiah 10:15.  In reference to Assyria just a few verses after what was highlighted above he says this: “Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it?  Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it?  That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, or like a rod lifting him who is not wood.”

Our minds tend to recoil from such descriptions of humanity.  We insist that no, we have some measure of control.  God cannot possibly be sovereign in such minute detail that He uses people like pieces on a board.  You may very well be squirming mentally right now, arguing with me over the accuracy of what I’m saying.  If so, then let me drive the dagger a little deeper with a modern day example.  As stated in chapter one, often we tend to read scripture with a clinical view that is detached from the reality of what the biblical characters were experiencing.  But let’s bring this example of Babylon that we find in Habakkuk into the present day.

“For behold, I am raising up ISIS, those fierce and impetuous terrorists who march throughout the Middle East to seize dwelling places which are not theirs.  They are dreaded and feared; their justice and authority originate with themselves.  Their tanks are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves in the evening.  Their armored columns come speeding, they come from afar; they fly like eagles swooping down to devour.  All of them come for violence.  Their horde of faces moves forward.  They collect captives like sand.  They mock at presidents and the United Nations is a laughing matter to them.  They laugh at every city and use artillery and missiles to capture it.  Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on.  But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god.”

Does this make you uncomfortable, this notion that God could possibly use ISIS for His own ends?  Wouldn't God have nothing to do with such a barbaric and cruel Islamic caliphate who wantonly terrorizes Christians and murders people without conscience? Yet this is exactly the same thing He did with Babylon in Habakkuk’s day.  He used as a tool an empire that was exceedingly cruel, put many Hebrews to the sword, laid siege to Jerusalem for so long that mothers began to eat their own children to stay alive, and burned the city to the ground?

The point is not whether God is using ISIS in a similar manner.  I am by no means a prophet and the words I write are not authoritative except where I quote scripture.  The issue is not whether God is actually doing this.  The point is, what would be your response if He did?  Would you decide that enough was enough and this God is too bloodthirsty for you?  Would you decide that a God who defines love in a manner that also includes punishment and suffering for people is not really a God of love after all because He doesn't fit into your nice little definition of love that you have created in your own image?  Let’s stop playing games with the sovereignty of God.  Either He is sovereign and has absolute dominion and authority over all of His creation or He is not.  There isn't any middle ground here.  A nation cannot be partially sovereign over its territorial waters.  If it lacks authority in an area then it is not sovereign in that area.  Any person on earth who understands how modern nations operate would accept this.  But why do we then turn around and strip God of this same prerogative?

The answer is that we cannot stand the thought that someone other than us is in control of things.  Our hubris demands that we fight for every scrap of authority we can muster.  It compels us to seek our own glory and the satisfaction of our own whims.  It asks the same question that Satan asked of Eve in the garden: “Did God really say…?”  And don’t think that just because you are a Christian you are immune to being deceived.  Colossians 2:8, addressed to Christians in Colossae, says “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”  This warning is just as relevant for us today as it was for the Christians in the first century.  Our perception of the world around us should be defined by the Bible, not by our own understanding or the propaganda of a pagan and satanic world system whose primary goal is the destruction of God’s character and reputation.

                               

The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 2: Complaining 101

One of the most favorite pastimes of the human race is complaining.  The voicing of complaints is such an elementary component of our collective psyche that it almost defies historical investigation because of how vast in scope the spectrum of human complaints runs.  In a speech in November of 1969, President Richard Nixon described what he called a “silent majority” of Americans.  What he meant by this was a large group of people who did not join in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, who were not participants in the counter cultural hippie movement of the time, and did not typically express their views publicly.  Opposed to this silent majority is what came to be known as the “vocal minority”.  This group of people is different in every way.  They express their views repeatedly, publicly, and forcibly.  And they are active in demonstrations against those cultural mores they disagree with.  In the context of these sociological opposites an interesting pattern began to emerge.  Namely, the vocal minority is seen as almost universally negative.  Most Internet forums have special places for people to voice complaints about whatever product or area of interest the forum was designed for.  And invariably, these complaint sub-forums are brimming with folks unhappy about this, or dissatisfied with that, or campaigning for the other.

               

Care must be taken, however, not to be unfair in our treatment on this subject.  Complaining or complaints are neutral words by themselves.  Complain simply means “expressing dissatisfaction or annoyance about a state of affairs or an event”.  That expression of dissatisfaction is not necessarily wrong and doesn’t have to be negative.  It is when humans get ahold of this concept or behavioral paradigm that things tend to go downhill in a hurry, as described above.

               

Modern psychology has attempted to explain this curiosity of human behavior.  The “negativity bias” is a term developed by psychologists which says that, “even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things.”  Clifford Nass is a professor of communication at Stanford University.  He says that leaning toward negativity is a general tendency for everyone.  His explanation for this is that the brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres.  He goes on to say that negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones.  The result is that when people have negative experiences they tend to think more about them and use stronger words to describe them.

               

Modern scientific efforts to understand and explain human psychology notwithstanding, as the authoritative source on humanity and authored by its creator, the Bible provides, while certainly not as technical of an explanation as a scientific journal, a much more fundamental description which pierces straight through to the root of the issue in a manner that scientific endeavors cannot possibly hope to match.  Specifically, according to the Biblical record mankind's tendency to complain is rooted in one thing; sin.

               

Sin can be defined as the complete antithesis of God's character.  It is the willful violation of His moral law which reflects His attributes.  It is the intentional elevation of oneself to a higher level of importance and exaltation than God.  To put it another way, as it pertains to this discussion, sin is the state of selfishly desiring to possess something that is not currently possessed.  We can see this in Isaiah 14:12-14 with the five “I wills” of Satan:

·         “I will ascend to heaven”

·         “I will raise my throne above the stars of God”

·         “I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north”

·         “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds”

·         “I will make myself like the Most High”

In each case, the item that Satan desired was something he did not currently have.  His lust for these things led to his willful rebellion against God and his exile from Heaven.  Fast forward to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3.  Scripture records that when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.”  The same pattern existed with Adam and Eve as with Satan before them.  They lusted after the taste of the food available from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in spite of the fact that that they had ample sources of delectable food all around them.  They lusted after the pleasing appearance of the fruit which grew from the tree, in spite of the fact that, as a product of God's creative work which He deemed “very good” the Garden of Eden was obviously filled from end to end with beautiful flora and fauna on a scale we can hardly imagine.  And they desired to obtain more knowledge for themselves, in spite of the fact that as the first humans, prior to any genetic corruption in human DNA, they would have possessed more raw intelligence than any person since then, with the exception of Jesus.  The Apostle John sums up this trifecta of impurity in 1 John 2:16 as follows: the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.  Satan, Adam, Eve, and every other person who has existed since then, again excepting Jesus, has followed the same pattern of desire for that which they do not currently possess.  We can see this in popular cultural euphemisms such as “the grass is always greener”, which means that to our sin ravaged eyes, the things which others possess, in this case represented by grass, tend to appear more pleasing, or greener, to us than our own.  This lasts until we actually come to own that which we lusted after.  At that point the item loses its luster and suddenly something else appears greener, or more beautiful, or more successful, or more useful, or more enjoyable, etc.

               

Furthermore, the Bible is replete with descriptions of those who became dissatisfied with what they had and sinfully complained about it.  Perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon is the Hebrews who were led out of Egypt by Moses under God's direction to be forged into the nation of Israel.  Their record of complaint against Moses and against the Lord began almost before the dust of Egypt had fallen from their sandals, when Pharaoh and his army drew near to re-capture them as they camped along the shore of the Red Sea.  We pick up the account in Exodus 14:10 – As Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel looked, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they became very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord.  Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?  Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt?  Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, 'Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'?  For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”  The fear of the people and their desire for that which they did not have, namely clear and present physical safety, prompted them to sin by complaining against God and distrusting His provision for them.  In the familiar account God saves the Israelites through the parting of the Red Sea and the subsequent destruction of the Egyptian army.  Yet only three days later, at Marah, they took up their lament once again in 14:23 – When they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah.  So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”  In this case the people desired once again what they did not have, clean water, and complained about it.  This theme recurred about a month later in the wilderness of Sin (a remarkably ironic name), recorded for us in 16:2 – The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.  The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”  Now it was food on the table of the people's desire and complaint.  In a seemingly never ending litany of objections, the Israelites continued this trend at Rephidim in Exodus 17:1-7, Mount Sinai in 32:1, Taberah in Numbers 11:1-6, and finally culminating at Kadesh with their rebellion and refusal to enter Canaan in Numbers 14:1-4.

               

Lest we think that it was only the common Hebrew who bathed in the filthy waters of lustful desire for what they didn't have, the leaders of Israel also fell prey to this disease of sin fueled complaining.  Numbers 12:1-2 tell how Aaron and Miriam eventually rose up in jealousy against Moses and the authority he had been granted by God.  And even Moses himself, one who spoke with God face to face yet was still shackled by sin, began to feel oppressed and victimized in Numbers 11:10 where he had the audacity to complain against God for giving him charge of the people of Israel.

               

Even the need for Moses to function as the leader of the people and to judge them, which his father-in-law Jethro counseled him about in Exodus chapter 18, was fueled by the basic inability of sinfully complaining mankind to govern himself.  A judge becomes unnecessary and irrelevant in the absence of disputes.  James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States and our fourth president, said “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

               

In view of this human tendency to perpetually complain, we come to the book of Habakkuk.  In this small book of prophecy we find an astonishing treasure; nothing less than an instruction manual on how to voice complaints not sinfully, but righteously.  The book opens in verse 1 of chapter 1 with the following sentence:

                        The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw. 

            

And now a parenthesis is needed.  Although this is a seemingly simple sentence, there is one word in it which bears further consideration and requires that we not skip past it without pause.  That word is oracle.  This is an interesting term because it has a multiplicity of meanings; more so than most.  In pagan mythology an oracle included the answer of a god to an inquiry made regarding something of importance, the deity or demi-god who actually gave the answers, and the location where these answers were given.  The classic example of this is the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greek culture which encompassed all three of those elements.  But in a biblical sense, an oracle most commonly refers specifically to, as Webster phrases it, “the communications, revelations, or messages delivered by God to prophets.  And since the prophets in Israel tended to write these messages down, their prophetic writings in turn bear the moniker of oracles.  In a broader sense, the entire written revelation of God, comprised of the 66 books of the cannon of scripture, could all be said to be the oracles of God.

               

This much is probably somewhat apparent from the context in which the word appears in Habakkuk 1:1 above.  But what is perhaps not so obvious is the hidden meaning behind it.  This meaning only emerges after considering the Hebrew etymology of the word which is translated into English as oracle.  That word is “massa”, pronounced mas-saw’.  It means a load or a burden.  This communication that Habakkuk received from God was not just any old message.  It was a missive which had weight and depth.  It induced sobriety and carried with it a heavy burden of responsibility to communicate it accurately.  It was and is the specific divine revelation of the transcendent creator God of the universe. 

               

What’s the point?  We in our modern hubris, exaggerated self-importance, and lofty educational standards can have a dangerous tendency to play fast and loose with those portions of the word of God which, on the surface, appear to be less interesting or more tedious than others.  Test yourself on this.  Ask this question right now in the quiet of your own mind.  Would I prefer to read James or Leviticus?  What excites me more, the genealogies in Matthew or the sermon on the mount in Matthew?  Please don’t misunderstand.  Various portions of scripture are at different times in our lives more or less specifically relevant to what we are currently experiencing.  But we should take care lest we treat with a cavalier attitude any portion of scripture.  Not a single “jot or tittle” as Jesus put it, meaning small details, will pass away or is in some sense less important or relevant than any other.  If indeed it is all the words of God then it is all equally holy.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard Christians make offhand disparaging remarks about the aforementioned Leviticus.  It seems that in Christendom few people want to even read Leviticus much less teach it or be taught from it.  And I fear a similar attitude could be and sometimes is applied to a book such as Habakkuk.  It’s short, only three chapters long.  It’s buried in the midst of the so called Minor Prophets.  They are referred to as minor based on the size of their printed writings.  But I think sometimes people misconstrue the meaning of minor so as to apply it to the content of their writings as well as the length.  This should not be so.  As we begin to move into the book of Habakkuk we should fully expect that its substance will be powerfully transformative for the “renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2).

               

With that exaggerated pause out of the way, we can proceed with the next verses of this pint sized titan of truth.  Verses 2 and 3 read thusly:

                        How long, O Lord, will I call for help,

                        And You will not hear?

                        I cry out to You, “Violence!”

                        Yet You do not save.

                        Why do You make me see iniquity,

                        And cause me to look on wickedness?

                        Yes, destruction and violence are before me;

                        Strife exists and contention arises.

              

               

Undoubtedly, you read those words with a fair amount of detachment.  It is all too easy to apply a clinical view to scripture that sterilizes it of its context and white washes it of emotion.  This is especially true for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a developed country which is relatively free from direct, physical religious persecution.  But recall to mind part one of this series.  Paint in your mind’s eye once again the horrific imagery associated with worship of Baal, Asherah, and Moloch.  Put yourself one more time in the shoes of Habakkuk the prophet, as the bile rose in his throat upon seeing one of the earthen mounds built to honor Asherah with rampant fornication, as he saw the giant metal statue of Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom and recalled what was done there, and as he passed by a high place consecrated to Baal.  The entire point of the preceding prologue to the book of Habakkuk was to put us in a place where we might in some small way be able to envision what the prophet experienced.  Now go back and read the text of verses 2 and 3 again, but this time with the depth of emotion which Habakkuk might have had.  When he cried out “Violence!” to the Lord it was not a philosophical soap box he was standing on.  The violence was real, it was pervasive, and it was utterly detestable.  When the prophet says that he saw iniquity and looked on wickedness the level of depravity he was referring to were on such a level so as to make the words he used inadequate to describe it.

               

But notice that there is an element here to Habakkuk’s distress which is almost alien to us, it is so seldom a component of our own heartaches.  Look at where Habakkuk places the responsibility for what he is observing:

                        Why do You make me see iniquity,

                        And cause me to look on wickedness?

              

               

Even in the midst of mental and emotional anguish we can scarcely imagine, he did not forget to give credit where credit was due.  Habakkuk owned up to the truth of God’s sovereignty even in this most evil of times.  He recognized that although his pain was deep and his torment unbearable, it was God alone who was responsible for putting him through it.  He does not say that God is the author of the evil he was witnessing.  But he does acknowledge that God is allowing him to be subjected to it.  This is a principle that Habakkuk would have known well as a student of the scriptures, as he most likely was as a man committed to the role of prophet of God and entrusted with the heavy burden of receiving God’s oracles.  In that capacity he had probably read the oracles of Isaiah, long dead at the time Habakkuk lived.  Isaiah writes in chapter 43, verse 25 of the book which bears his name: “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”  And he elaborates even further and more comprehensively in 46:9-11 when he writes: “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country.  Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.  I have planned it, surely I will do it.  Even if Habakkuk had somehow missed what Isaiah wrote he surely was familiar with the Torah.  In Deuteronomy 32:39 Moses writes: ‘See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life.  I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.  This truth that God is in complete control, that so many in modern Christian society would argue against and discredit, was one embraced fully by Habakkuk, even as he endured things which most of us in our quiet cultured lives haven’t come close to touching.

               

So then, perhaps it should not be surprising to find in Habakkuk 1:4 what the source of the prophet’s concerns was:

                        Therefore the law is ignored

                        And justice is never upheld.

                        For the wicked surround the righteous;

                        Therefore justice comes out perverted.

              

               

Habakkuk’s primary concern with everything he was seeing, hearing, and experiencing of the evils of the Canaanite religions was not the human cost involved.  Rather, it was the violation of God’s law.  There are two reasons that we know it was specifically God’s law that Habakkuk was referring to.  One, quite simply, it cannot logically be anything else.  When Israel was founded as a nation its form of government was a theocracy.  This means that leadership was performed by priests who ruled in the name of God.  In the case of Israel this meant specifically the Levitical priesthood.  It was this context in which the Mosaic Law was given.  This set of laws, approximately 613 in number, functioned for the nation of Israel just as the Constitution functions for the United States.  And although Israel had by this time strayed far from that set of laws, there is nothing else that a prophet like Habakkuk would have had in mind when he wrote the word law.  The second reason we know it was the Mosaic Law that Habakkuk had in mind is this.  There is a general Hebrew word for laws.  But that is not what was used in Habakkuk 1:4.  The Hebrew term which is translated law here in Habakkuk is literally the word towrah, which we know as Torah and is an explicit reference to the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures where the Law was given and recorded.  So there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that what Habakkuk was upset about was the corruption and violation of God’s law which by extension automatically includes His character since the law was and is an extension of His nature.  In effect, what Habakkuk was complaining about was that God’s reputation was being destroyed!

               

The final piece of the prophet’s concern is his perception of why this corruption of God’s law is happening.  He says:

                         For the wicked surround the righteous;

                        Therefore justice comes out perverted.

              

               

Consider how Habakkuk and others like him of the faithful remnant of Israel must have felt in the midst of the heathen idolatry being promulgated by their fellow Hebrews.  They were quite literally the righteous surrounded by the wicked, as he says here.  Human nature is such that anyone who goes against the flow, questions the establishment, or seeks change tends to be marginalized by society.  Sometimes the rebel has no merit in his rebellion.  But at other times it is society that has no merit in its norms.  Such a case existed in Israel at the end of the 7^th century B.C.  God says in Jeremiah 32:30 that the sons of Israel and Judah “have been doing only evil in My sight from their youth; for the sons of Israel have been only provoking Me to anger by the work of their hands,” declares the Lord.  With this kind of environment all around him Habakkuk would have undoubtedly felt the oppression and the persecution of his countrymen.  They would have had very little tolerance for anyone who proclaimed to them the evil of their ways.  And although we have no record of any specific persecution that Habakkuk endured, there is an extensive record of the trials and tribulations that Jeremiah, his contemporary, went through for the sake of the word of the Lord.  Case in point is the verse referenced just above, which bluntly calls to attention the ungodly history of Judah that would have been hateful to the ears of those who were guilty of the offenses described.  So from Habakkuk’s perspective, evil ruled the day, righteousness was small and insignificant, and it appeared God was doing nothing to protect his own honor.  Is it then any wonder that Habakkuk was so dismayed?

               

No, it seems quite fitting for the prophet to feel the way he did.  What is astonishing is that, as stated before, the focus of his attention was primarily on the Lord’s law and not his own petty discomforts.  Most people would have been unable to look past their own noses to see the bigger picture of the glory of God being tarnished.  And in fact, scripture presents us with not only an example of just this sort of typical human reaction, but it does so with someone right out of Habakkuk’s own time period.  This is priceless, because it paints not just a competing picture of two different reactions, but ones that were prompted by the exact same set of conditions and pressures.

               

Jeremiah chapter 45 is a short interlude seemingly tossed into the middle of the prophetic battles that take place throughout most of the rest of the book.  In it we find a message from God through Jeremiah to a man named Baruch.  Baruch was Jeremiah’s secretary during part of his career.  He took dictation from Jeremiah, was his confidant, and was entrusted with God’s word.  But in chapter 45 we find Baruch apparently feeling sorry for himself.  We don’t know for sure what the problem was.  But we have a clue in verse 1 of the chapter: This is the message which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written down these words in a book at Jeremiah’s dictation, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah…  To understand this sentence and the context surrounding it we need to back up to chapter 36.  We know this chapter is describing the same time frame because it opens with “In the fourth year of Jehoiakim…”  It then goes on to explain how Jeremiah dictated the words of the Lord to Baruch, who recorded them in a scroll.  Then Jeremiah, who was restricted by King Jehoiakim from entering the temple, asked Baruch to go in his stead and read publicly from the scroll.  This public reading did not take place until the following year.  But when it occurred great was the consternation of the court officials who heard it.  They knew the probable reaction from the king, so they advised Jeremiah and Baruch to hide themselves.  Their fears were proven correct because when the scroll was read to Jehoiakim he burned it and ordered for the prophet and his accomplice to be arrested.  What was in the scroll that was so hateful to the ears of the king?  Chapter 36, verse 1 gives the answer: this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Take a scroll and write on it all the words which I have spoken to you concerning Israel and concerning Judah, and concerning all the nations, from the day I first spoke to you, from the days of Josiah, even to this day.”  So in effect, what it was that Baruch wrote down on the scroll and read was the entire book of Jeremiah, at least the portion that had been completed by that point.  Even a cursory reading of Jeremiah reveals that at every turn he was condemning the king and the people for their idolatry and urging them to repent and return to the Lord.  A convicting message rarely sits well with those experiencing the conviction.

            

So Jeremiah and Baruch had to hide themselves and live in fear.  We don’t know everything else that happened to them, but as mentioned earlier undoubtedly it was not a pleasant time to be a servant of the Lord in the midst of a nation giving itself wholesale to the Canaante gods.  It seems most probable that it was this persecution that he and Jeremiah were under from the king that was getting Baruch down.  But regardless of the details, Baruch’s response was much different than Habakkuk’s, as recorded in verse 3: ‘You said, “Ah, woe is me!  For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and have found no rest.”’  Look at the contrast between the object of Baruch’s complaint and the obect of Habakkuk’s complaint.  Baruch was focused on himself and his own comforts.  Habakkuk instead chose to focus on the Lord’s honor and righteous laws which were being compromised.  Going back to our description from before, Baruch displayed the standard human response to negative stimuli.  He lusted after something he did not currently possess, in this case comfort and a pain free life, and chose to complain about it.

How many of us, in similar circumstances, would act like Baruch?  The historical and biblical evidence is against us.  The patterns of our own lives convict us.  We know exactly how we are most likely to react.  It is certain that our typical response would be internally focused.  It is all too likely that we would choose the way of self-interest rather than the way of God’s honor.  Philippians 2:14 teaches us to “do everything without grumbling or disputing.”  And in response the Christian longs to cry out “Oh God, how?”  Sin is pervasive and invasive.  It is like a skim of rancid oil on the surface of a cool and clear spring of fresh water.  In order to get to the water we have to come into contact with the oil.  Sin corrupts every fiber of our being.  We are ready to surrender to it at the slightest provocation.  We happily lock arms with sin at the most innocuous violation of our perceived rights and privileges.   When we are offended, or ignored, or slighted, or inconvenienced, or interrupted, or awoken, or delayed, or worked, or disputed we all too often jump right back into bed with the evil of our flesh.  Again the Christian exclaims “My Lord and my God, how can I do this?  How can I fight this?  It’s impossible!”  And in response God graciously provides the answer to our dilemma even here in this Old Testament book of prophecy, prior to the incarnation of Christ and the New Covenant of grace.  Stay with us as we plumb the depths of God’s truth and we seek after the answers together.

The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 1: Through the Eyes of a Prophet

*Warning: the following contains graphic content*

               
Prophecy; the word evokes intense thoughts and emotions in people.  It mystifies us because it has connotations of the supernatural or the unseen.  It confuses us because prophecies are often difficult to understand.  It amazes us when we believe a prophecy has come true.  And it causes disdain in the skeptical, who firmly ground themselves in only what they can observe with their own senses. From the writings of Nostradamus to modern day claims about the end of the world, those who refer to themselves as prophets and the prophecies they utter have interested the human race for centuries. And although our secular world would be loath to admit it, the reason for all of this fascination is that the human race was designed with a built-in enthrallment with the mysterious.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts it like this: 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.  God intends for us to be continually mesmerized with the mysterious and the supernatural and the unseen, summarized here as eternity, without ever actually revealing the answers to the questions which this fascination inevitably raise.
               
And although the full range of answers which we would like to have are barred from our understanding, God has provided an avenue through which we can achieve at least some level of satisfaction in our pursuit of eternity; namely the Holy Bible.  Out of all the ancient religious texts which litter human history, only the Bible contains prophecy as one of its principle forms of literary style.  Not only does it contain this prophecy, but much of it, having already come to pass, is verifiable through the study of our past and has been authenticated for us by previous generations of theologians.  However, what is interesting about the Bible is that not all of its prophetic writings are exclusively concerned with the fore-telling of future events.  Some biblical prophecy is rather of a communicative nature wherein God reveals Himself to His creations through the medium of those men in ancient Israel whom He chose to be His mouthpieces; the prophets.  These communications sometimes take the form of intimate conversations between creature and creator, written down and preserved through the centuries for our enjoyment and edification today.
               
One such prophetic interlude is with a relatively unknown man by the name of Habakkuk.  We know almost nothing of him.  He is not referenced anywhere in the Bible other than the book which bears his name where he is referred to simply as “Habakkuk the prophet” in verse 1 of chapter 1.  All that we know of him comes solely from this small book; only three chapters long.  In spite of Habakkuk's relative obscurity, we are able to place him historically through inferences found in chapter 1.  These clues give a time frame of the late 7th century B.C.  Chapter 1, verse 6 specifically mentions “The Chaldeans”, the ethnic and geographic term for the Babylonian Empire.  The following four verses build a picture of these people as fierce, warlike, and domineering.  This clearly has in mind the meteoric rise to power that Babylon experienced under first Nabopolassar who came to power in 626 B.C. and then his son, Nebuchadnezzar who began his reign in 605.  But the context of these verses, specifically the expressions of amazement found in verse 5 imply that the conquests listed are future events at the time of Habakkuk's writing.  In addition to these hints, Habakkuk's original complaint which prompted him to cry out to the Lord, found in verses 1 through 4, describe a time of moral and spiritual decay, presumably in Judah where he lived.  Josiah became king of Judah in 641 B.C. when he was 8 years old. 2 Kings Chapter 22 reveals that in his 18th year of reigning, the book of the Law, or Torah consisting of the five Mosaic books also known in English as the Pentateuch, was discovered in the Temple.  When it was read to King Josiah he “tore his clothes” in the traditional ancient custom of showing great remorse or dismay, presumably due to Israel's failure to abide by the law of God.  Josiah immediately began a series of spiritual reforms on a national level in an attempt to bring his nation back into a right relationship with the Lord.  These moral renovations were mostly successful in re-establishing, at least on a surface level, the Mosaic Law as the guiding principle of the land.  Sadly though, this spiritual revival was not to last.  Josiah was killed in battle with Pharaoh Neco of Egypt in 609 B.C.  Incidentally, Neco was attempting to pass through Judah on his way to assist the remnants of the Assyrian Empire in Haran who were on the run from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army, who had already begun their ascent to Mesopotamian domination.  Under Josiah's successor, Jehoiakim, Judah quickly slid right back into the spiritual cesspool they had started to climb out of.  This seems to fit perfectly with Habakkuk's concerns mentioned above. These two historical anchors, namely a period of spiritual decay in Israel just prior to the Babylonian conquest, combine to allow us to dial in the historical placement to a great level of precision and mark the book of Habakkuk as being written between 609 and 605 B.C.
               
With that historical context in mind, before we even examine the text of this book of prophecy, we must consider the state of affairs in Judah at the time.  As mentioned previously, the nation was sliding down the same slope of depravity and idolatry that their ancestors had been riding for the past three centuries.  Habakkuk would have had a front row seat to this disturbing decline.  And what exactly was he witnessing?  In short, idolatry of such an immense scale and pervasive influence and abhorrent evil as to make grown men pale in consternation.  If you think that is an exaggeration then I encourage you to think again.
               
Judah's idolatry centered around three primary pagan deities, who together bring to mind “the stuff of nightmares” as author Winkie Pratney puts it in his book “Devil Take the Youngest”.  These entities of purest evil were brought in wholesale from the Canaanite nations around them that Israel had failed to eradicate as God commanded in Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and other places.  The names of these abominable false gods were Baal, Asherah or Ashtoreth, and Moloch.  As G.K. Chesterton lamented, their names sound like laughter in hell.  And although they each had their own distinct characterizations and patterns of worship there was a significant amount of parallelism and crossover in both their origins and forms of devotion.

               
Baal served as the supreme god in Phoenician and Canaanite cultures.  He was their version of a sun god such as Zeus or Jupiter in the Greek and Roman pantheons, respectively.  The Babylonians knew him as Bel.  His name literally meant “lord” or “ruler”, and he reigned over the material universe.  Because of his relation to the sun it was thought that worship of him was best practiced as close to him as possible, in other words as high as possible.  So “high places” were erected, essentially artificial mounds or hills made of stone and dirt.  On these high places were conducted the pagan rites of Baal worship.  This worship revolved around agricultural fertility and produce such as wool, flax, bread, water, and oil.  All responsibility for providing these things were laid at his feet.  Needless to say, the people who worshiped Baal were very eager to curry favor with him, since what he provided was necessary not just for satisfaction, but for life itself.  This was especially relevant in an area like Palestine, which had little rainfall and few natural sources of fresh water.

               
The lengths that worshipers would go to in seeking to please Baal were nothing short of the very worst debauchery and vile practices imaginable.  These traditions stemmed from the mythical history built up around Baal himself.  Legend had it that during the height of summer, when temperatures were hottest and water was scarcest, Baal was thought to have been killed by Mot (representing sterility and drought).  Asherah, his goddess consort, searches for his body, finds it, and after sacrificing hundreds of animals, restores Baal to life.  To commemorate this cycle of life and death, Baal followers engaged in alternating forms of worship. 

               
First, when Baal was thought to have been killed they mourned and mutilated themselves.  This unsightly practice is even recorded in scripture.  1 Kings 18:27-29 records how, in the duel on Mt. Carmel, after failing to receive an answer from Baal regarding the sacrifice they had prepared, his priests began to cut themselves.  They used swords and lances, the Bible tells us, until “the blood gushed out on them.”  Clearly, these were no minor nicks or gashes.  Stories even tell of men severing sexual organs and running madly through the streets in an insane attempt to hear their god speak to them and receive his blessing.

               
The second custom of pagan worship entered into by the followers of Baal was to celebrate his supposed resurrection each year.  The typical method of paying tribute to this event was to engage in ritual cult prostitution of both sexes as well as wild orgies where people gave themselves over to every conceivable type and act of debased fornication, the fullest extent of which were typically reserved for Baal's counterpart, Asherah, alternatively known as Anat or Anath.

               
Where Baal represented the male aspect of this pagan idolatry Asherah brought the female counterpoint into full view as the moon-goddess, or “queen of heaven” as she is referred to in Jeremiah 44:25.  Her symbol was a limbless tree trunk known as an Asherah pole, carved into her likeness and planted into the ground.  Baal worship was done at high places in an attempt to be nearer to him but Asherah worship was often conducted in forested groves in association with the carved trees or on earthen mounds which represented her genital center, the “birthplace of all things”.  With Baal sexual immorality was a component of his worship.  When it came to Asherah, it was the whole package.  Sexual indulgences of every sort were not just favored, they were commanded.  Sodomy, lesbianism, and bisexuality with both male and female prostitutes and transsexuals were all part of the normative worship services of Asherah.

               
In stark contrast with Baal's and Asherah's purview of life and celebration, Moloch represented the powers of death, cruelty, and desolation.  He was the god of war in Canaanite culture.  In a recurring theme we have seen already, Moloch was known by a variety of names, such as Melkart, Baal-Melech, and Milcom, depending on which culture he was being worshiped in.  Similarly to Baal, he was seen as the sun with its power to scorch and burn.  But he was also seen as the winter cold, just as fatal to vegetation as the summer heat was.  Plagues, famines, drought, and war were all laid at the cruel feet of Moloch.  From a biblical perspective, what he is best known and remembered for is child sacrifice.  We might say that worship of Moloch was the even more repulsive and perverted form of Baal worship.  All of these various gods and goddesses incorporated human sacrifice to a greater or lesser degree.  But it was Moloch who truly embodied this disgusting practice.  Scripture refers to it as making one's children “pass through the fire”.  An example of this is found in 2 Kings 16:3 where it records the evil committed by King Ahaz of Judah.  In this particular passage it specifies Ahaz's son in the singular.  There is a reason for this.  The worship of Moloch did not target all children indiscriminately.  Rather, only the firstborn sons of each household were the ones marked for either sacrificial offering to the god or commission in his service as a priest.  If the former was the fate of a young Canaanite boy then his last few minutes of life on earth became an unholy descent into anguish and suffering such as can hardly be fathomed.

               
The unfortunate children would be taken by their parents to an evening worship service.  The air would be filled with an awful din of drums and flutes designed to drown out the screams of the dying.  A massive metal statue of Moloch himself, in the form of a sort of Minotaur with outstretched arms to receive his victims, took center stage of the evening's festivities.  The statue was hollow with an opening between the arms for either a sacrificial bowl heated white-hot by an external fire beneath, or an open flame burning within the body of the statue itself.  Prior to the “altar call” children were quieted in the arms of their parents, because if the youngster caused undue commotion from wailing it would have been unlucky.  When it was their turn the child would be laid in the arms of the statue to roll off into the deadly lap below.  As they burned their parents would stand by singing hymns and praying, the mothers in particular being very careful to show no remorse, since that would have decreased the expected blessing they would receive from the god.  The fiercer their pangs of sorrow over the loss of a son, the greater their eventual good fortune would be.

                
John Cunningham Geikie, a 19^th century Scottish minister and historian, describes it this way:

            
The hideous image of Moloch, god of the Ammonites, once more rose in the Valley of Hinnom, and Manasseh himself led the way in consecrating his own children, not to Jehovah, but to the grisly idol, ‘making him pass through the fire to the god’ as if the flames burning away the impure earthly body let the freed soul pass through them cleansed from all taint of earth to unite with the Godhead.  Human sacrifices became common at the ‘high places of Tophet’ in the Valley of Hinnom.

            
“The stately central mound on which the idol towered aloft rising ‘deep and large’ (Is. 30:33) in the midst…Night seems to have been the special time for these awful immolations.  The yells of the children bound to the altars or rolling into the fire from the brazen arms of the idol, the shouts and hymns of the frantic crowds and the wild tumult of drums and shrill instruments by which the cries of the victims were sought to be drowned rose in awful discordance over the city, forming with the whole scene visible from the walls by the glow of the furnace and flames such an ideal of transcendent horror that the name of the valley became and still continues in the form of Gehenna, the usual word for hell.”

                
If this all seems too surreal and obscene to be based in reality, then it is only because we are so sheltered and insulated against these basest forms of human depravity.  Habakkuk and others of the faithful remnant of Israel, however, had no such insulation.  Imagine the roller coaster of joy followed by horror upon seeing first the massive spiritual overhaul enacted by Josiah and then the immediate and rapid movement right back into idolatrous perversions of God’s commands.  Visualize yourself as a follower of the Lord in the days of Jehoiakim.  You live in the city of Jerusalem.  And on special nights each year, your stomach is twisted and turned by the awful baying of horns, the insistent beating of drums, the wild and frenzied chants of worshipers, the glow of night-time fires burning in the valley below the city, and the death shrieks of the smallest of victims almost but not quite completely drowned out by the cacophony raging around them.  Perhaps on another day you visit the Temple of the Lord, only to be repulsed by a graphic and obscene carved image of Asherah placed there in willful defiance and complete violation of the word of God.  Or maybe your travel through the city streets is interrupted by the mad revelry of Baal worshipers, slicing themselves open with knives and swords, and careening insanely through the heart of what should have been a city consecrated to Yahweh.  Can you imagine it?  Can you place yourself there and in your mind’s eye see what Habakkuk saw?  Can you feel what he must have felt?  And is your horror centered on the human aspect of suffering and cruelty that was bound up in these religions?  Or are you repulsed because of the direct and contradictory manner in which the very nature and character of God Himself is impugned, defiled, and disgraced by the senseless religious insanity of your countrymen?

            
You see, the real issue at stake here was not the deviant acts of unbridled sexual passions.  It was not the gross and dangerous self-mutilations.  It was not even the horrific atrocities being perpetrated against children.  Rather, the problem with all of these pagan religions was that they were directly opposed to central aspects of who God is.  The form of this opposition was in four distinct flavors: the perversion of God’s impartial grace and mercy, the perversion of the unity seen in the Godhead, the perversion of God’s right to the first fruits, and the perversion of God’s breath as seen in the sanctity of human life.

            
First we will examine the perversion of God’s impartial grace and mercy.  Scripture unmistakably teaches that God does as he pleases, He grants favor on those whom He chooses, and the right to ultimate judgment is His alone.  Psalm 115:3 verifies that “our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”  In Romans 9:15 Paul quotes Exodus 33:19 when he writes For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’  Solomon in all his wisdom displays God as a righteous judge when, in Ecclesiastes 12:14 he writes For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.  But conflicting with this view of God’s “whim”, if you will, as the source of all that comes to us, the Canaanite religions taught that human zeal was capable of producing blessing.  It was believed that the harder and more fully one devoted oneself to the worship of his or her goddess, the greater would be the return on one’s investment.  Slash yourself deeper and more often.  Immerse yourself more profoundly in the lusts of your flesh.  And if you really want a reward to top all rewards then surrender your firstborn to forcible immolation.  This man-centered view is contrary to biblical revelation on two fronts.  It promotes the un-biblical notion that man can produce his own merit. Further, it sets up as the source of any such merit that is granted, a being other than God.  When we consider that God’s providential deliverance of blessing to mankind is a part of His divine nature, specifically His generosity, love, and faithfulness then it can be seen that it is God’s character and reputation which was under attack here.

            
The second perversion displayed by these pagan religions is witnessed in the deviant and/or unbridled manner in which they engaged in sexual immorality.  These were not just random occasional flings.  It was a systematic, prolonged, and intentional gorging of human appetite for sexual stimulation and release.  And it was in direct contradiction to God's prescribed parameters for human sexuality; namely monogamous relationships bound by a marriage covenant.  This pattern was established by the Lord from the beginning.  Genesis 2:23-24, while not displaying God's intention in the form of a command, describes explicitly the expectation that God had for the fulfillment of the human sexual desires He instilled in us: The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”  For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.  God's design was that men and women would not just be joined physically in the act of sex.  In addition to this very real material component there is in mind here an immaterial joining of the minds and the emotions.  Paul elaborates on this in Ephesians 5 where he instructs wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to sacrificially love their wives.  Those couples who follow these instructions achieve a mental and emotional bonding that precedes physical sex and elevates it when it does happen to a level which is not otherwise possible.  This is what Adam meant when he exulted of Eve that she was now “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh”.  Why is this so important?  Is it merely a biblical recipe for happy marriages and stable homes?  It is that, but it is so much more.  The union, both physical and emotional, of male and female in a covenant marriage relationship serves to paint a picture of the very union of God Himself in His three persons of the Godhead!  There is perfect love, harmony, and intimacy between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  This is modeled in scripture most clearly by the twin passages of John 17:1 where Jesus says “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You” and John 16:14 where He reveals that “He (referring to the Holy Spirit) will glorify Me.”  In this perfectly balanced unity of love we see that the the Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, and the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son.  The love expressed between husband and wife, following this divine pattern, and imperfect though it may be, is essentially a stamp of God's very nature upon the institution of the family.  With this in mind consider the heinous ramifications when that prescribed plan for human sexuality is distorted and perverted.  It is not merely an affront to human sensibilities.  It is much more than just cruelty to those caught up in it against their will.  It is a perversion of the character of God.

            
The third perversion of the Canaanite religions was in distorting God's rights to the first fruits of His creations.  Although this principle had perhaps its fullest human expression in Hebrew culture under the Mosaic Law we can again return to the beginning chapters of Genesis to see its roots.  Genesis 4:3-5 reveals the heart of the matter: So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.  Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.  And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.  The issue was not what Cain and Abel gave to the Lord.  Rather, it was the heart attitude they gave it with.  Abel gave the choicest and best portions of his sheep to God, sacrificing the enjoyment they might have brought him in order to bring greater glory to God.  Cain, by implication due to the contrast with which scripture describes his offering, chose to bring something other than his best.  We might say that Cain gave the Lord “whatever he had lying around.”  God took this principle and applied it to the nation of Israel in Exodus 13:2 when He commanded Moses, saying “Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of man and beast; it belongs to Me.”  In ancient Mesopotamian culture the concept of the firstborn was very important.  It was the firstborn son to whom a double portion of the inheritance of the father was given.  This offspring was seen as the primary continuation of the family line.  God used this cultural understanding to make it clear that He and He alone was to be of paramount importance in a Hebrew family.  Just as Abel pleased God by giving Him the best portion of his flock, Israelite families were to please Him not by sacrificing physically, but by consecrating spiritually the firstborn, or the first fruits, of their loins and wombs.

            
It was exactly this paradigm that the Canaanite religions sought to intentionally circumvent.  Although in this essay we have mostly looked at the practice of child sacrifice to Moloch, make no mistake, every pagan Canaanite religion involved some level of human sacrifice.  In the context of the biblical record, however, it is Moloch that rises to the forefront because of the explicit descriptions of Manasseh and other evil Israelite fathers committing this unconscionable atrocity, not simply against a randomly selected child of theirs, but specifically and purposely against the firstborn son.  This was what the cult of Moloch demanded because at its core it was fully satanic in nature.  Satan knows very well exactly what God wants and why He wants it.  Therefore, Satan will orchestrate human evil practices as best he can so as to definitively and comprehensively distort God's desires .  So we see that the evil of this act rises far beyond the horrific forced killing of small children and babies.  In a very real sense, the smoke of their torment and death rose up as a stench to the nostrils of almighty God and served as an example of human ambition attempting to take preeminence away from Him.  This glory is due the Lord because His worth demands it and His nature jealously guards it.  Thus we see once again the deliberate circumventing of God's character in the outworking of these religious activities.

            
The final perversion on display here is a complete and utter disregard for the sanctity of human life.  Once again turning to Genesis we read the following in chapter 2 verse 7: Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  God did not just make man out of the material elements of nature, flip a switch, and turn him on.  Instead he, figuratively speaking, breathed a portion of His breath into man in order to give him life.  It was the breath of God that produced life.  And this life was and is Imago Dei, or “image of God” as seen in Genesis 1:27.  An image is designed to represent truly and accurately that for which it is patterned after.  We don't paint a portrait of a person intentionally to look like someone else.  We don't craft a sculpture that has no correlation with what we are trying to model.  Nor did God create man “in His image” to do anything other than to, literally, look like or show God.  The sanctity of human life does not mean that the life of a man is inherently anything special in and of itself.  It only has significance in as much as it displays, or images, God.  Therefore, when that human life is destroyed, by any means, an image, or a portrait, or a sculpture of God is what is being destroyed.  And since God is absolutely good and perfectly holy then that loss of human life, no matter how depraved and far fallen from God's original design, represents the loss of a representation of the only true and good and perfect and holy being in all of existence and reality.  If that doesn't cause you to sit up and take notice then you are de-sensitized to the ways of the Lord.  At the very least it should cause us to once again realize the depths of evil to which these pagan Canaanite religions fell.  And it should cause us to understand why God desired to so jealously guard His people from these nations, even to the point of ordering their complete destruction, and the requisite loss of image bearers of Himself that it entailed, when Canaan was originally conquered. 

            
With that disgusting and horrific framework in view we should have a clearer picture of just what was in Habakkuk's mind as he conversed with his maker in the book that bears his name.  But beyond a good grasp of the historical, social, political, and economic context of the book of Habakkuk, a rather startling question rises alarmingly to the surface.  That is, “Wait a minute.  With these descriptions of ancient pagan Canaanite religions are we discussing 7^th century B.C. Israel or 21^st century America?”  Consider the following.  It was reported in 2012 that since 1973 and the case of Roe v. Wade 54.5 million babies have been killed in America alone.  That's 54.5 with six zeros after it for anyone who is counting.  54.5 million times has the image of God in an unborn baby been destroyed by a deliberate act of the will of an adult.  A study last year reported the following disturbing facts about Internet pornography: every second, there is an average 28,258 Internet users watching porn, over 35% of Internet downloads contain pornographic material, and every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is produced.  And America's love affair with violence is nothing short of chilling.  We gleefully consume films or television shows with violence through the roof, with nary a thought to the images of God that are being tarnished or eradicated.  A recent major network TV spy show had its debut and the most noteworthy thing about it was that it included a scene of a Russian double agent being burned to death inside an industrial furnace.  Our President gave his state of the union speech a few months ago and public radio commentators praised him for his aggressive, almost arrogant demeanor.  They saw it as a sign of strength.  From UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships) to teenagers cutting themselves in a desperate plea for attention, our country is pregnant with the unholy progeny of violence and aggression.

            
Although traditionally the secular culture of the United States is not considered in terms of being in any way religious, the similarities between our modern culture and the religions of ancient Canaan are unmistakable unless one chooses to bury ones head firmly in the sand.  We might call it the religion of humanism.  It is in reality the same issue that has affected mankind since the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  The reason is that man's sinful nature has not changed one bit.  Regardless of technological innovations or a veneer of civilization which covers and insulates against the “in your face” atrocities of ancient times, he is still at his heart the same old man trying to earn his merit as an outworking of his selfish pride, gorging his sexual appetites with utter abandon, stealing the first fruits of his work from their rightful owner, and playing fast and loose with human life.  The religion that he follows, whether he calls it religion or not, revolves on a man centered view of creation that, as Paul puts it in Romans chapter 1, “exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator”.  Shall we throw up our hands in surrender and hide behind the stained glass windows of our churches?  If we spend any time at all perusing the word of God we cannot help but walk away with a resounding answer of NO!

            

Instead of taking a “glass half empty” view of the unchanging depravity of human nature, we should instead be reassured of the supreme relevancy of the Bible to continue to be able to speak directly and authoritatively to the human condition.  If there is any hint of doubt in our minds as to the power of a seemingly insignificant little book like Habakkuk, crammed into a dusty and seldom visited corner of the Old Testament, to powerfully open a window for us into the mind of Almighty God, then we should dispel such notions now, before we have even begun.  We humans are transient and fickle creatures.  But the word of God endures.  Zechariah 1:3-6 paints a magnificent picture of this truth: 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Return to Me,” declares the Lord of hosts, “that I may return to you,” says the Lord of hosts.  “Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Return now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.”'  But they did not listen or give heed to Me,” declares the Lord.  “Your fathers, where are they?  And the prophets, do they live forever?  But did not My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, overtake your fathers?”  Regardless of whether people are evil, like the fathers spoken of here, or good like the prophets, men do not endure.  They wither and fade like grass.  But the word of the Lord endures forever. (1 Peter 1:25)  This doesn't simply mean that the Bible is still around after hundreds of generations of people have gone to the grave.  It means that it endures with power and relevancy that specifically deals with the events and situations of our lives even to this day.  So as we come to the end of this lengthy introduction to the book of Habakkuk and prepare to dive into it let us elevate it in our minds to what it truly is; the only source of the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence and through His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).