Where it fits

Habakkuk is the 35th book of the Bible, with three chapters. We know almost nothing about the prophet, and the book is dated by its content to the late 600s BC, when Babylon was rising and Judah was in decline, a few years before Babylon invaded in 605 and 597 BC. Unlike most prophets, Habakkuk speaks mostly to God, not to the people. Read straight through, it takes about ten minutes.

The prophet and his message

The book opens with a complaint. “How long?” Habakkuk asks God. Violence, injustice, and strife fill the land, the law is paralyzed, and God seems not to listen (1:2–4). God answers, and the answer is worse. He is raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, a fierce and fast-moving nation, to sweep through the land (1:5–11). Habakkuk objects. How can a holy God use a nation more wicked than Judah, one that treats people like fish to be caught in a net (1:12–17)? Then he says he will stand at his watch and see what God says (2:1).

God's reply is to write the vision down plainly, because it will surely come, even if it seems slow (2:2–3). The proud are not upright, but the righteous will live by his faith (2:4). Five woes follow against the arrogant empire, for plunder, greed, bloodshed, drunken violence, and idolatry (2:6–20). Chapter 3 is a prayer set to music. Habakkuk recalls how God came in power at the Exodus and Sinai, asks that in wrath he remember mercy (3:2), and ends with some of the most striking words of faith in the Bible. Even if the fig tree doesn't bloom, the vines have no fruit, and the fields and flocks fail, he will rejoice in God his Savior, because God is his strength, making his feet like those of a deer (3:17–19). The situation hasn't changed, but Habakkuk has.

Three ideas to hold on to

1. You can bring hard questions to God. Habakkuk's complaints are in the Bible, and God answers him rather than rebuking him.
2. God is at work even when it doesn't look like it. The vision may seem slow, but it will come (2:3).
3. Faith can rejoice without good circumstances. The book ends with trust that doesn't depend on a harvest (3:17–19).

Passages people ask about

• Habakkuk 1:2–4. The first complaint.
• Habakkuk 1:12–2:1. The second complaint, and Habakkuk at his watch.
• Habakkuk 2:2–4. God's answer, including “the righteous will live by his faith.”
• Habakkuk 3:1–2. A prayer for mercy in the midst of wrath.
• Habakkuk 3:16–19. Trust when everything fails.

How it points to Jesus

Habakkuk 2:4 is quoted three times in the New Testament, each time at a key point in the argument: in Romans 1:17, as a summary of how people are made right with God; in Galatians 3:11, to show that this was never through the law; and in Hebrews 10:37–38, to encourage believers to persevere. In each, the point is that faith in God, now centered on Jesus, is the way of life. Habakkuk's patient waiting for a promise that is slow to arrive also echoes the early church's wait for Christ's return.

A common misunderstanding

“Faith” in Habakkuk 2:4 isn't mainly a matter of believing certain things. The Hebrew word suggests faithfulness, steadiness, and trust that keeps going. Paul builds on that to say that the way to life is trust in God, not self-reliance. Readers also sometimes take the book's ending as a tidy resolution. Habakkuk never gets a full explanation of why God uses Babylon or why the righteous suffer. What he gets is a view of who God is, and that turns out to be enough to sing about.