Believe the Unbelievable: A Study in Habakkuk

By J. Alexander Rutherford

What do we do when God's actions or words contradict our understanding, contradict what we have believed? The book of Habakkuk answers this question in the face of the Babylonian invasion of Judah. Habakkuk is a book of discipleship, a book written to bring its reader to a deeper faith in Yahweh in the presence of His unthinkable deeds.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Teleioteti
• Release date: Oct 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999017224

J. Alexander Rutherford

James Rutherford holds a PhD in Theology from Moore Theological College (thesis: "Rightly Defining the Son of God: An Examination of the Definition of Chalcedon"). Prior to this, he graduated from Pacific Life Bible College with a Bachelor of Pastoral Leadership and from Regent College with a Master of Arts in Theological Studies, majoring in biblical languages (Hebrew focus), and a Master of Theology (thesis: "God's Kingdom through His Priest-King: An Analysis of the Book of Samuel in Light of the Davidic Covenant"). Currently, James is working on community outreach in Punchbowl and Greenacre NSW and manages Teleioteti.ca. He is happily married to Nicole and the father of Aliyah, Asher (who has gone to be with his Lord), and Adriel. When not writing, James serves at Riverwood-Punchbowl Anglican Church, enjoys cooking, and enjoys exploring the East Coast of Australia with his family.

Book preview

Introduction

If you have picked up this study guide, you are probably wondering what the little book titled Habakkuk is all about. The goal of this study is to give an answer to that question. I hope to introduce the reader to the book of Habakkuk, its role in the Bible, its contents, and its significance for us today. But this study is also intended to do more. My hope is that you, the reader, will come away with a burgeoning love for the Old Testament and the tools necessary for reading it well. Habakkuk is entirely suitable for this end. Its obscurity avails itself well for demonstrating the enduring value of the Old Testament. As I have studied Habakkuk, I have been continually amazed by its content and beauty. My prayer is that as you work through this guide alone or in a group, you will gain sufficient knowledge to understand Habakkuk and to apply it to your life. I hope that in doing so you may love and delight in Jesus Christ all the more.

As the title suggests, this book is a study guide for Habakkuk. It is not a commentary, so engaging the material within will require much prayer and diligent reading of the text of Habakkuk. It is primarily intended to be used in a group setting, ideally with leaders mature enough to answer the difficult questions that may emerge from the study (such as God’s interaction with evil and suffering). Though I have endeavored in the introductions to each section and the various excurses to answer the questions I foresee emerging, each reader will face their own questions as they read. I could not hope to fully answer these questions in a book this size.

If the reader leading such a group or working through this guide’s content on his own is looking for a more thorough discussion of Habakkuk and its theology, I am working to publish two other projects on Habakkuk that are more extensive in content. Most relevant to this book’s intended readership, the everyday Christian, is a section-by-section commentary summarizing and applying each section of Habakkuk to a greater depth than was possible here, intentionally written to complement this study guide. I will also be releasing soon—God willing—a larger technical commentary on the Hebrew text of Habakkuk. This volume will be denser than the aforementioned one but will hopefully prove useful to those desiring a verse-by-verse analysis of the book.

This guide is written for an 11-week bible study. Each chapter corresponds to a week’s reading and questions. These chapters are grouped together into three parts. Part One (Chapters One and Two) provides an introduction to the Old Testament and an introduction to Habakkuk. Part Two (Chapters Three to Seven) covers Habakkuk 1-2, the dialogue between God and Habakkuk. Part Three (Chapters Eight to Eleven) covers Habakkuk 3, a prayer in response to the first two chapters of the book.

Lastly, this study is intended for the translation provided in the following section. God has blessed us in the English-speaking world with a plethora of fantastic translations. These are truly outstanding products of faithful men and women labouring for the glory of God. I am immensely grateful for the work our translators have done and am happy to use these translations—especially the ESV—in much of my writing. However, For various reasons, I have not found any contemporary translation to be a proper fit for this study of Habakkuk. The translation provided in this study is my own, translated from the Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text of the Leningrad Codex).¹ I have attempted with my translation to remain faithful to the original wording wherever possible while communicating as much of the poetic beauty as the work of translating allows. There are several reason why I have provided my own translation. I address them thoroughly in the introduction to my technical commentary, but I have also provided on Teleioteti.ca some of the reasons for individual Bible translations and a comparison of several major English translations on the places where their translations of Habakkuk differ the most.² Though most of the differences between translations are stylistic (expressing the Hebrew text in differing but nevertheless valid ways), there are several places where the differences in contemporary translations are significant. I have provided brief comments in the translation below on five of these differences.

My prayer is that the Lord would use this guide to grow you in your faith and love for Him and His Word.

May the Lord grant us so to be engaged

in the heavenly mysteries of his wisdom

that we progress in true godliness,

to his glory and our own edification.

Amen.³

A Translation of the Book of Habakkuk

1 ¹The judgment oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw:

Habakkuk’s First Complaint

²How long, oh YHWH,⁴ have I cried for help,

but you do not listen?

I shout out to you violence!

but you do not save!

³Why do you let me see iniquity,

why do you look upon wickedness?

Havoc and violence are before me,

there are legal disputes,

and strife is suffered.

⁴Therefore the law is numb,

and justice never goes forth,

for the wicked surround the righteous,

therefore justice goes forth crooked—

Yahweh’s Response to Habakkuk’s First Complaint

⁵"Look, all of you, among the nations and behold—

and be astonished and astounded!

For I am doing a deed in your day;

you would not believe it though it were told.

⁶For, behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,

that bitter and brash nation,

who traverses the breadth of the earth

to take possession of dwellings not his own.

⁷Terrifying and dreaded is he,

from himself go forth his justice and majesty.

⁸Swifter than leopards are his horses,

quicker than wolves of the evening;

his horsemen charge along.

His horsemen come from afar,

they fly like an eagle

hastening to eat.

⁹They all come for violence,

the horde of their faces forward,

and he gathers captives like sand.

¹⁰He raises against kings derision;

dignitaries are a joke to him.

He laughs at every fortification

and piles up a mound of earth and takes it.

¹¹He therefore moves