Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Habakkuk · About this commentary
I Am Raising Up the Chaldeans
Habakkuk 1:5-11
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. · WEB
God answers that he is already acting — and the answer is worse than the silence had been.
Look among the nations, watch, and wonder. God's reply begins by conceding nothing and promising everything: I am working a work in your days which you will not believe though it is told you.
Then the work is named. I am raising up the Chaldeans — Babylon , a rising power rather than an established one — and the description that follows is admiring in the way a report on a predator is admiring. Horses swifter than leopards, fiercer than evening wolves; horsemen flying like an eagle hurrying to devour; prisoners gathered like sand. They scoff at kings, laugh at fortresses, and build ramps to take them.
Two phrases do the theological work. Their judgment and dignity proceed from themselves — a nation that recognizes no standard above its own. And the last line of the speech: they are guilty, whose strength is their god. God announces his instrument and convicts it in the same breath, which is the seed of everything chapter 2 will say.
settled What this mark means