Habakkuk 1

The book opens with Habakkuk’s anguished first complaint: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” He is surrounded by violence, injustice, and a paralyzed law, and God seems silent. God answers that He is doing something the prophet would scarcely believe — raising up the Chaldeans (Babylonians), a “bitter and hasty nation” that sweeps across the earth like an eagle, laughing at kings and gathering captives like sand, to be His instrument of judgment. But this answer only sharpens Habakkuk’s distress into a second complaint: how can God, whose “eyes are too pure to see evil,” use a nation more wicked than Judah to swallow up “the man more righteous than he”? He resolves to take his stand and watch for God’s reply.