Life delivers both good and bad surprises, but faith doesn’t protect us from tragedy, loss, or suffering. The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk wrestled with this reality during one of Judah’s darkest periods, and his honest questions before God reveal timeless truths about faith, justice, and divine love. This introduction to Habakkuk sets the stage for understanding why God’s people suffer and how we can trust Him even when He doesn’t rescue us.
Habakkuk Introduction: The Old Testament book of Habakkuk speaks to two of the most fundamental questions of the Christian faith:
- How long will God let His people suffer?
- Why should we keep believing Him if we’re not spared the tragedies of life?
The author, Habakkuk, was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah. He was roughly contemporary with Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Habakkuk Themes
- How can a loving God let His people suffer?
- Why should we keep believing him if we’re not saved from the tragedies of life?
Habakkuk Timeline
640 BC – Josiah becomes King of Judah (2 Kings 22:1-2)
626 BC – The Babylonian prince Nabopolassar re-establishes Babylon as an independent city. The Babylonians — also known as the Chaldeans — are one of the vassal states of Assyria and they are threatening rebel.
612 BC – Naboppolassar forms an alliance with the Medes and embarks on a quest to gain dominance over the empire and destroy Assyria. They sack Nineveh.
609 BC – The Eqyptian king decides he needs Assyria as a buffer between his kingdom and the Babyloian/Mede alliance. He heads north to help Assyria resist the rebellion, marching through Judah in the process. King Josiah decides to stop him. Josiah is killed at Megiddo. His death is disastrous for the nation (2 Kings 23:29-37).
After Josiah’s death, the people place his son Jehoahaz on the throne. But 3 months later as the Pharoah returns from his unsuccessful attempt to help the Assyrians against the Bablylonian/Mede alliance, the Pharoah deposes Jehoahaz, carts him off to Egypt and installs Jehoiakim on the throne.
605 BC – Nebuchadnezzar II, now the ruler of Babylon, defeats Egypt in the battle at Carchemish. Jehoiakim swears allegiance to Babylon and the whole of Syria and Palestine fall under Babylonian control (Jeremiah 46:1-2).
Habakkuk Setting
- It is during the rule of Jehoakim that Habakkuk prophesized.
- Habbakuk’s world is in tremendous geo-political turmoil.
- Into that setting Habakkuk seeks the Lord, asking how long will this go on? When will you rescue your people?
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Life’s Surprises and the Problem of Suffering
Life is full of surprises.
Sometimes they are good surprises. You get a raise or a new job. You find out you are going to be a parent or a grandparent.
Sometimes they are bad surprises. You fail in school. Your business goes under. A relationship breaks up, or you lose a good friend. Maybe you lose everything and have to move to a new place. Or civil war breaks out and you are caught in the conflict.
The problem is we do not expect bad surprises.
We are children of a loving God, so we think bad things are not supposed to happen to us. Consciously or not, we assume that if I am a child of a loving God and a follower of Jesus Christ, I should be living in a bubble that will protect me from suffering, failure and loss.
Both blessings and tragedies come to both the forgiven and the unforgiven. Faith does not protect you from being fired or experiencing a serious car wreck or any of the tragedies of life. Cancer strikes both believers and non-believers. Civil war happens whether you are a Christian or not.
That raises a really tough question: How can a loving God let these bad things happen to me? How can we say that God is good, loving, merciful and gracious when his people are persecuted, experience loss and tragedies, or are caught in the conflict of war?
We often speak of God with the metaphor of a loving father. What father lets tragedy strike his child if it is in his power to prevent it? Why do God’s people suffer?
Habakkuk’s Central Question
That is precisely the question answered by the book of Habakkuk.
The book begins with the prophet calling out to God in distress. His life is full of injustice. He is suffering under a corrupt government, and he cries out to God for relief.
When God answers, Habakkuk discovers the answer is worse than his original complaint.
Now Habakkuk faces even tougher questions. How can a loving God let this happen to his people? And furthermore, why should we keep trusting him in the midst of this?
Those are the themes our study will address. Before we look at the text, let’s set the historical stage for this book.
Who Was Habakkuk? When Did Habakkuk Prophesy?
The author, Habakkuk, was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah. He was roughly contemporary with Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
We know very little about Habakkuk himself, and the most important evidence for when this book was written is in the book itself.
In Habakkuk 1:6, God reveals to Habakkuk that he will use the Chaldeans (also known as the Babylonians) to judge the southern kingdom of Judah. That places Habakkuk in the period after the fall of the northern kingdom and before the fall of the southern kingdom.
Where is that in biblical history?
The history of the nation of Israel starts with God calling Abraham, who had a son named Isaac. Isaac had a son named Jacob, and Jacob, who was later renamed Israel, had twelve sons.
Through one of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob end up as slaves in Egypt. That eventually leads to God bringing them out of slavery through Moses and the Exodus.
The Exodus leads to the wilderness period, when they are wandering in the Sinai desert. The wilderness period ends with the conquest of the promised land, which is recorded in the book of Joshua. Each of the twelve sons of Israel became a large tribe, and they divided up the land by tribe, essentially creating the nation of Israel.
The conquest of the promised land is followed by the period of the Judges. After the twelfth judge, Israel says, this is not working, we need a central government like all the other nations, so they cry out for a king.
God gives them Saul, then David and Solomon. This period of the monarchy, or the united kingdom, also has its ups and downs, but overall it is Israel’s glory days of peace and prosperity.
The Divided Kingdom and the Fall of the North
After the death of Solomon in 930 BC, civil war breaks out over which of his many sons should inherit the throne.
Their struggle turns into civil war, and in approximately 931 BC, the ten northern tribes split from the kingdom, name Jeroboam their king and become the northern kingdom called Israel.
The remaining two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, make Rehoboam king and become the southern kingdom called Judah. That begins the period of biblical history we call the divided kingdom.
The northern kingdom cycled through nineteen kings, all of them bad. By “bad,” I mean they worshiped other gods and turned the people away from God, instead of seeking to follow Yahweh and keep his covenant.
Finally, God disciplines the northern kingdom for their rebellion against him. In 722 BC, the ten northern tribes are conquered by Assyria and taken into exile.
The southern kingdom had a more mixed history than the northern kingdom, with some good kings and some bad. Among the best kings were Hezekiah and Josiah. Among the worst were Manasseh and Amon.
During the long reign of the evil King Manasseh, Judah was a vassal state of the Assyrians, and Manasseh installed altars to the Assyrian gods in the temple of Yahweh.
As long as Judah paid their tribute and obeyed their Assyrian masters, they were left in a relatively quiet existence. However, those conquered states that rebelled were trampled with fierce cruelty.
Josiah and His Reforms
To set the stage for Habakkuk, let us pick up the story around 640 BC, when Josiah becomes king, in 2 Kings 22:1-2:
2 Kings 22:1 “Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath.” 2 Kings 22:2 “He did right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of his father David, nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left.”
Josiah is a good king, and he institutes many reforms. Under his reign he repaired the temple of the Lord and in the process found the book of the law, probably the Pentateuch. He read it and repented.
As a result of rediscovering the law, Josiah institutes sweeping reforms. He removes the foreign Assyrian idols from the house of the Lord and turns the people back to following Yahweh.
As Josiah is reforming, the Assyrian empire is weakening. The Assyrians do not protest when Josiah removes their gods, because they have bigger problems to deal with.
The Rise of Babylon and the Fall of Assyria
The Babylonians, also known as the Chaldeans, are one of the vassal states of Assyria. They see Assyria weakening and begin making moves to rebel.
They see a weak Assyria as their chance to seize power. The Babylonian prince Nabopolassar re-establishes Babylon as an independent city around 626 BC.
Nabopolassar forms an alliance with the Medes and embarks on a quest to gain dominance over the empire and destroy Assyria. Around 612 BC they sack the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.
Around 609 BC, the Egyptian king decides he needs Assyria as a buffer between his kingdom and the Babylonian/Medes alliance. He heads north to help Assyria resist the rebellion, marching through Judah in the process.
Josiah’s Death and the Rule of Jehoiakim
King Josiah decides to stop him, as recorded in 2 Kings 23:29-37:
In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. And King Josiah went to meet him, and when Pharaoh Neco saw him he killed him at Megiddo. His servants drove his body in a chariot from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father. Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. Pharaoh Neco imprisoned him at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and he imposed on the land a fine of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away and brought him to Egypt, and he died there. So Jehoiakim gave the silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land in order to give the money at the command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land, each according to his valuation, to give it to Pharaoh Neco. Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. – 2 Kings 23:29-37
Josiah is killed at Megiddo, and his death is disastrous for the nation. Under Josiah, the kingdom prospered. He was a just and merciful ruler who tried to do right in the sight of the Lord.
After Josiah’s death, the people place his son Jehoahaz on the throne. But three months later, as Pharaoh returns from his unsuccessful attempt to help the Assyrians against the Babylonian/Medes alliance, the Pharaoh deposes Jehoahaz, carts him off to Egypt and installs Jehoiakim on the throne.
As Neco’s vassal, Jehoiakim reverses the reforms of his father Josiah. The prophet Jeremiah charges him with all manner of evil, which you can read in Jeremiah 22.
Babylon’s Ascendancy and Judah’s Turmoil
About four years later, around 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar II, now the ruler of Babylon, defeats Egypt in the battle at Carchemish. Jehoiakim swears allegiance to Babylon, and the whole of Syria and Palestine fall under Babylonian control (Jeremiah 46:1-2).
It is during the rule of Jehoiakim that most scholars think Habakkuk prophesied. As he writes his prophecy, Habakkuk and his country have faced a series of really bad surprises.
Habakkuk’s world is in tremendous geopolitical turmoil. Judah has an evil king on the throne who is as bad as Manasseh. The reforms of Josiah are a thing of the past. The king is unjust, ruling with a heavy fist, turning the people to foreign gods and enacting heavy punitive taxes to pay his tribute, first to Pharaoh and then to Babylon.
On an international level, they have lost whatever feeble protection they had from the Egyptian king. They are now a vassal state of Babylon, and the Babylonians are proving to be worse than the Assyrians.
What Makes Habakkuk Relevant Today?
Into that setting Habakkuk seeks the Lord, asking, how long will this go on? When will you rescue your people? Life is one bad surprise after another.
He looks around and sees his nation spiraling downward in evil and rebellion. He looks at the evil nations gaining power over Judah and oppressing the people. Life is bad, and it is getting worse.
Habakkuk turns to God and says, how long are you going to let this go on? When are you going to save your people? How long are you going to let this evil go on?
This book of Habakkuk speaks to one of the most fundamental questions of faith. We believe in a just and righteous and merciful God. We look around at the chaos and crime and violence in the world and say, Lord, where are you? How long will you let this go on?
Your people are struggling under an evil regime. Your people are turning away to idols. The wicked seem to prosper. The righteous seem to perish. Life is bad and it is getting worse. I am crying out to you, and you do not seem to be listening.
Then when God does answer, as we will see, the answer is worse than the original problem. I am sure many believers who lived during the time of Hitler’s Germany, as well as the many believers facing persecution today, ask this same question. God, how can this be? How can a righteous, just and merciful God let this go on?
That is the basic problem of the book.
How God Answers Habakkuk
As we will see, God does not exactly explain himself or justify specific actions. Rather, he calls us to understand who he is.
In God’s answer, we will see the answer to our two theme questions:
- How can a loving God let his people suffer?
- Why should we keep believing him if we are not rescued from the tragedies of life?
By engaging with Habakkuk, you will understand that suffering doesn’t contradict God’s love or faithfulness. You will feel permission to ask hard questions and bring honest doubts before the Lord. You will be able to maintain faith even when circumstances deteriorate and God’s plan seems worse than your problem. This ancient prophet speaks directly to your toughest faith questions today.
Further Study
Introduction to Prophets
Kings of Israel & Judah
Chronological List of Old Testament Prophets
Kings of Assyria in Biblical Times
Kings of Babylon in Biblical Times
Please listen to the podcast for more detail and explanation.
Next: Habakkuk 1:1-2:1 Habakkuk Complains
Series: Habakkuk: Faith Under Fire
Study Resources: Habakkuk
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