Habakkuk 1

¹ The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw.

² LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save?

³ Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up.

⁴ Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.

⁵ “Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not believe though it is told you.

⁶ For, behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.

⁷ They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.

⁸ Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.

⁹ All of them come for violence. Their hordes face forward. They gather prisoners like sand.

¹⁰ Yes, they scoff at kings, and princes are a derision to them. They laugh at every stronghold, for they build up an earthen ramp and take it.

¹¹ Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. They are indeed guilty, whose strength is their god.”

¹² Aren’t you from everlasting, LORD my God, my Holy One? We will not die. LORD, you have appointed them for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish.

¹³ You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he,

¹⁴ and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them?

¹⁵ He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.

¹⁶ Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good.

¹⁷ Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?

Around Habakkuk 1

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Habakkuk as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

Habakkuk does not begin with praise. He begins with a complaint. “LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear?” Violence, strife and injustice are all around him, and the law is paralyzed.

God answers, and the answer is worse than the silence. He is raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, a nation swift and fierce. Habakkuk protests. How can the God whose eyes are too pure to look on evil use a nation more wicked than the one it punishes?

Then the prophet does something unusual: “I will stand at my watch and set myself on the ramparts,” he says, and waits for the reply. It comes: the vision is for an appointed time, so wait for it. The proud will fall, and “the righteous will live by his faith.”

The book ends not with an answer to every question but with a prayer. Even if the fig tree does not flourish, even if the fields yield no food: “yet I will rejoice in the LORD.”

Background

The book belongs to the late seventh century before Christ, as Babylon was rising to power and shortly before it conquered Judah. That is the world in which a prophet asks God how long, and is told that something large is already on its way. The opening line calls him only Habakkuk the prophet.

How Christians read it

The line about the righteous living by faith (2:4) is quoted three times in the New Testament, in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, and it stood at the center of the Reformation. The book also shows that bringing hard questions to God is itself an act of faith: Habakkuk argues with God, waits for him, and ends in trust. The book gives room to the question and to the waiting.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 21 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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