(Part 10 in a series of posts on Habakkuk.)

Habakkuk 1:12-17

Habakkuk brings his second question to God in verses 12-17: “Is God fair?”

Habakkuk 1:12-17 – 12 O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die. O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish. 13 Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? 14 You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler. 15 The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net, he gathers them up in his dragnet; and so he rejoices and is glad. 16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food. 17 Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy? (NIV)

Habakkuk is trying to reconcile three different truths here – 1) that God is sovereign, 2) that God is holy, and 3) that Babylon is wicked yet prospers. Habakkuk believes that all three of these things are true, but he does not see how all three can be true at the same time.

1) God is sovereign over the nations. (verse 12)

Habakkuk is convinced that God is sovereign over the nations. Habakkuk demonstrates his conviction in two ways. First of all, Habakkuk believes that God is sovereign over the people of Israel. Look at the first part of verse 12 where Habakkuk speaks, “O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die.” (Habakkuk 1:12a)

God is everlasting. He is the first and the last. He is sovereign over all things. God had bound himself in a covenant relationship with his people, and so as long as God continued, God’s people would live on. Habakkuk was confident that even if God judged his people for their sins, he would not completely destroy them. Which is exactly what God told his people through the prophet Jeremiah: “Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you but only with justice; I will not let you go entirely unpunished.” (Jeremiah 30:11)

Habakkuk also believed that God was sovereign over all the other nations as well. Look at the second part of verse 12: “O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.” (Habakkuk 1:12b) The Babylonians were coming, and Habakkuk affirmed that God was the one who had appointed them and ordained them for this task. God is sovereign over the nations.

2) God is holy and cannot tolerate wrong. (verse 13)

The second thing Habakkuk is convinced of is this: God is holy and cannot tolerate wrong. Look at verse 13: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” (Habakkuk 1:13) This is one of the great teachings of Scripture, that God is absolutely holy and pure. 1 John 1:5 says that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” God is perfect, holy, righteous, and pure. There is no sin or evil or darkness in him at all. Habakkuk goes even further here in verse 13. Not only is there no darkness or evil in God himself. His eyes are too pure even to look on evil.

Now this does not mean that God closes his eyes and ignores all the evil and wrong in the world. Far from it. God sees every sin every person commits every day. When Habakkuk says, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil,” he means “to look with any type of acceptance or approval.” When we look at sin in the world we are sometimes horrified, sometimes disgusted, but we are also sometimes attracted and tempted. Not so with God. God has only one reaction to sin. He is offended. All sin is a direct affront to God’s holiness. God is holy, and therefore he is offended by sin. He cannot tolerate wrong. Were it not for his gracious love and forgiveness, God’s righteous wrath would destroy us all in an instant.

Of course, the fact of God’s holiness prompts some additional questions from Habakkuk. He asks God, “Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?” Habakkuk is trying to reconcile what he knows about God with what God has just told him about the Babylonians. He cannot understand how God could use the wicked Babylonians to punish those more righteous than themselves.

3) Babylon is wicked and yet prospers. (verses 14-17)

Habakkuk knows that God is sovereign over the nations. He knows that God is holy and cannot tolerate wrong. And yet there is also a third thing that Habakkuk is firmly convinced of, and that is this: Babylon is wicked and yet prospers.

Habakkuk pictures Babylon as a fisherman and all the people of the nations as helpless fish in the sea. Babylon is violent and cruel, pulling up the people of the nations with hooks and dragging them away in his nets. Babylon worships his net because it is by conquest that “he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food.” Babylon enjoys his pleasures at the expense of the nations he conquers. And Habakkuk doesn’t see any end to this. It seems no one can stand up to the Babylonians. Will they continually empty their nets, destroying the nations without mercy? If God is using Babylon for his own purposes, how can he then hold Babylon accountable for its own evil actions?

Habakkuk doesn’t have a problem with any of these three things individually. He is convinced that all three are true. He just cannot see how all three can be true at the same time. For example if God were not sovereign over the nations, then God could not stop Babylon, and so Babylon’s success would not raise any questions for Habakkuk. If God were not holy, he would not care about Babylon’s wickedness, and so that would also remove the problem. Or if Babylon was good and prosperous, or wicked and suffering for that matter, then Habakkuk would have no problem reconciling that with a sovereign, holy God either. But the problem for Habakkuk was that all three conditions existed at the same time. He knows God is sovereign. He knows God is holy. And he knows Babylon is wicked yet prospers. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes him question God’s justice. It makes him wonder, “Is God fair?”

(Looking ahead: Next time we will look at Habakkuk’s response to this in 2:1.)

Here are the links to the whole Blogging with Habakkuk series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.