Habbakuk 1:1-6

Habbakuk is one of the shortest and most obscure books in the bible. It is one of the short and obscure group of twelve prophetic books called the Minor Prophets. They are obscure because their very brevity makes it often very difficult to ascertain their background and context. Moreover, they are mostly written in Hebrew poetry with its rich imagery. This, however, tends to make them nearly incomprehensible to a 20th century reader.

Luckily, in today's passage there is a reference to the Chaldeans. We know this is a sub-group of the Babylonians, and is a term often used as a sort of synonym for that people.

Thus we know that this prophet's oracles were proclaimed at some time between the ascendancy of the Assyrians - Israel's neighbor to the east - and that of the Babylonians, also to the east but further south. Both groups originated in what is now Iraq, and each created vast aggressive empires. The Assyrians conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, only to fall themselves a few decades later to the Babylonians. The Babylonians, in turn, conquered the Southern Kingdom, Judah, in 586 BC, and drove into exile all the principal inhabitants of Jerusalem. They, too, eventually fell to the Persian empire from still further east in what is now Iran, in about 450 BC.

Thus our prophet is writing not long before the final Babylonian conquest of Judah - say, about 600 BC - and is both bemoaning what he foresees as coming upon his people, but also acknowledging that when it does it will be a just punishment visited upon them by their God for their unfaithfulness to him and his covenant with them.

His description of this enemy is especially vivid. In verse 1:6 he refers to them as a "fierce and impetuous nation". I specially admire the King James Version's translation of this phrase as a "bitter and hasty nation". He speaks of them seizing dwellings not their own (which still happens in modern Israel), and of their horses as being swifter than leopards and more menacing than wolves.For the entire passage of today's Lesson, the prophet foresees no relief or redemption for his people, much like Amos. But at the very end is a famous verse (at 2:4) "...but the righteous shall live by their faith." On this verse, and a similar one at Genesis 15:6 referring to Abraham, St. Paul built his seminal doctrine of Justification by Faith. It is spelled out in the course of the first 8 chapters of Romans, and more briefly in Galatians 3:6ff.