The Pulpit Commentary — Habakkuk — Section 9

Learn: 1. That future events are known to God-Divine foreknowledge. 2. That God can revel\! these to men, should he so please-the possibility of revelation. 3. That those whom God selects to be his messengers nevertheless retain their individual and characteristic modes of thought and expression-inspiration not mechanical or uniform. Ver. 2.-The lamentation of a good man. I. OVER TIIE RELIGIOUS DEGENERA0Y OF ms AGE. Not merely for himself, but as the representative of the godly remnant of Judah, Hahakku.k expostulates with Jehovah concerning the wickedness of the times in which he lived. The picture he sets before Jehovah is one of deep national corruption, such as existed in the days of Jehoiakim (Jer. xx. 8; xxii. 3, 13-17). A picture of wickedness. 1. Great. (1) Violence was abroad, as it had been in the days before the Flood (Gen. vi. 11), in the time of David (Ps. lv. 9), a.nd even later in the reigns of Jotha.m and Ahaz (Micah ii. 2; vi. 12), practising spoliation, causing distress, and producing devastation, as it did in the long-past era. of the patriarch of Uz (Job xxiv. 1-12), evoking strife and contention, perhaps partly through the natural resistance of good men defending their property, but just as likely through the spoliators quarrelling over their prey, leading to deceit and treachery in order to gain its unhallowed end, "the wicked compassing about the righteous," and "plotting against the just" (Ps. xxxvii. 12). (2) Iniquity abounded, and that amongst a people whose ideal vocation was holiness (Numb. xxiii. 21); immoralities whose source was a· perverse heart (Matt. xv. 19); such practices as were inconsistent with the professions and privileges of those who did them; iniquity, or that which was unequal, and therefore contrary to law and truth. (3) The Law of God was fallen· into disrespect. The Torah, or Divine, revealed Law," which was meant to be the soul, the heart of political, religious, and domestic life" (Delitzsch), was slacked; it was benumbed or chilled, paralyzed through the moral and spiritual apathy of the nation, which gave it no response and yielded to it no obedience. (4) Human justice was itself perverted. ,Just because men's hearts had declined from the love of God, and had ceased to respect hie Law, jndgment seldom or never proceeded forth against evil-doers; or, if it did, it went forth perverted. When criminals were brought to trial, they could always secure a verdict in their favour. 2. Public. It was not merely a degeneracy, eating its way secretly into the vita.ls of the nation; the disease had already come to the surface. Vice and irreligion were not practised in private. Iniquity flaunted its robes openly in the eyes of passers-by. The prophet saw it, looked upon it, felt himself surrounded by it. Spoiling and violence were before him; .and sinners of every description around him. 3. Presumptuo'U,8. It was wickedness perpetrated, not merely against God's Law, but by God's covenanted people, in the face of remonstrances from God's prophets, and under the eye of God himself. The prophet states that Jehovah as well as he had beheld the wickedness complained of. 4. Inveterate. It was not a sudden outburst of moral and spiritual corruption, but a long-continued and deeply rooted manifestation of national degeneracy, which had often sent the prophet to his knees, and caused him to cry for Divine interposition. II. OVER THE BEEMIKG INDIFFERENCE OF Gon. 1. A frequent phenomenon. During the long antediluvian period Jehovah, apparently without concern! allowed mankind I? degenerate; though he saw that the wickedness of man was great m the earth (Gen. v1. 6), it was not till one man only remained righteous before him that he interposed with the judgment of a flood. From the era of the Flood downwards he" suffere? all nations to walk in their own ways" (.Acts xiv. 16). Job (x:xiv. 12) observed this to be the method of the Divine procedure in his day, Asaph in his (Ps. 1. 21), Habakkuk in his; and to-day nothing can be more apparent than that it is not a necessary part of Heaven's plan that "sentence against an evil work" should be "executed speedily." 2. A per- '[>lexing my6tery. That God cannot be indifferent to sin, to the wickedness of nations or to the transgressions of individuals, is self-evident; otherwise he could not be God (Ps. xi. 7; cxi. 9; cxlv. 17; Isa. )vii. 15; 1 Pet. i. 15; Rev. iv. 8). But that, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, he should seem to make no effort to protect, vindi- cate, strengthen, and diffuse the one, or to punish, restrain, and overthrow the other,- this is what occasions trouble to religious souls reflecting on the course of providence (Job xxi. 7; Ps. lxxiii. 2). The solution of the problem can only be that, on the one ba.ud, he deems it better that righteousness should be purified, tested, and established OH. J, 1-17.] 'l'HE BOOK OF HABAKKUK. 7