Thursday 20th July
Read Habakkuk 1:5:7
“‘Look at the nations and watch –
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.
6 I am raising up the Chaldeans,
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
7 They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honour.” (NIVUK)
Though many consider these words God’s response to Habakkuk’s questions concerning the rise of violence and the impotence of the law they can just as easily be read as the recounting of an earlier oracle (for example Jeremiah 4-5, particularly 5:15-17). A continuation of the question perhaps? In favour of these words not being Yahweh’s response to Habakkuk’s concerns is the complete absence of any actual response, or comfort, or deliberation!
These words, be they past or present, contribute to the bigger question Habakkuk is wrestling with. What Habakkuk sees is a world that doesn’t seem to conform to the order Yahweh established within it. Within his own nation violence is everywhere, justice is perverted and the law is paralysed (v1-4). When he looks wider, at the international scene, not only is Yahweh’s law disregarded, but the ‘law of the Chaldeans’ is on the march (v7) and unstoppable. It is powerful while Yahweh’s law is powerless!
Placed in this wider context, Habakkuk’s confusion is completely comprehensible. The world is literally upside down. It is equally true today. Authoritarian dictatorships seeking to impose their view of the world on others are on the rise. Sweeping through other countries claiming that which they do not own (v6). Dictators only concerned with their own honour and prestige (v7). We would question if this is the way God is working in the world if we didn’t see it with our own eyes on the nightly news (v5). Bad news everywhere.
Do you know any people who watch the news with ‘fear and dread’? Do you have any ‘good news’ to share with them? News that sets the world ‘right side up’?
