Habakkuk 1:5-10 Behold you among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days which you will not believe… Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation; which shall march through the breadth of the land, etc. In these verses we have the doom of a nation of conventional religionists. The Jews were such a nation; they prided themselves in the orthodoxy of their faith, in the ceremonials of their worship, in the polity of their Church. "To them pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Romans 9:4). But they had now become abhorrent to their Maker. He was weary of them, and he threatens them with a terrible doom; the doom was so terrible that "ye will not believe, though it be told you." The doom threatened was terrible in many respects. I. IT WAS TO BE WROUGHT BY THE INSTRUMENTALITY OF A WICKED NATION. "I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to posen the dwelling places that are not theirs." "Nabopolassar had already destroyed the mighty empire of Assyria, and founded the Chaldeo-Babylonian rule. He had made himself so formidable that Necho found it necessary to march an army against him, in order to check his progress; and, though defeated at Megiddo, he had, in conjunction with his son Nebuchadnezzar, gained a complete victory over the Egyptians at Carehemish. These events were calculated to alarm the Jews, whose country lay between the dominions of the two contending powers; but, accustomed as they were to confide in Egypt and in the sacred localities of their own capital (Isaiah 31:1; Jeremiah 7:4), and being in alliance with the Chaldeans, they were indisposed to listen to, and treated with the utmost incredulity, any predictions which described their overthrow by that people" (Henderson). Observe that God employs wicked nations as his instruments. "Lo, I raise up the Chaldeans." "I will work a work," he says; but how? By the Chaldeans. How does he raise up wicked nations to do his work? 1. Not instigatingly. He does not inspire them with wicked passions necessary to qualify them for the infernal work of violence, war, rapine, bloodshed. God could not do this. The diabolic passions are in them. 2. Not coercively. He does not force them to it; in no way does he interfere with them. They are the responsible party. They go forth on the bloody message with a consciousness of freedom. How, then, does he "raise" them up? He permits them. He could prevent them; but he allows them. He gives them life, capacity, and opportunities; but he does not inspire or coerce them. Now, would not the fact that the destruction of the Israelites would come upon them from a heathen nation, a nation which they despised, make it all the more terrible? II. IT WAS TO BE WROUGHT WITH RESISTLESS VIOLENCE. 1. The violence would be uncontrolled. "Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves." They recognize no authority, and proudly spurn the dictates of others. "They recognize no judge save themselves, and they get for themselves their own dignity, without needing others' help. It will be vain for the Jews to complain of their tyrannical judgments, for whatever the Chaldeans decree they will do according to their own will: they will not brook any one attempting to interfere" (Fausset). 2. The violence would be rapid and fierce. "Their horses are swifter than the leopards." A naturalist says of the leopard that it runs most swiftly, straight on, and you would imagine it was flying through the air. "More fierce than the evening wolves." These ravenous beasts, having skulked all the day away from the light of heaven, get terribly hungry by the night, and come forth with a fierce voracity. Like the swift leopards and the ravenous wolves, we are here told, these Chaldeans would come forth. Yes, and swifter and more ravenous than the wolves, like the hungry eagle on its pinions that "hasteth to eat." What a terrible description of their doom! Alas! into what a monster sin has transformed man! he becomes leopard, wolf, eagle, etc. III. IT WAS TO BE WROUGHT WITH IMMENSE HAVOC. "Their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it." As the east wind, they would sweep through the country, like the simoom, spreading devastation wherever it passed; and like that wind would bear away the Jews into captivity, thick as the sand. "They shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them." They would regard all the great magnates of Judaea with a haughty contempt, and treat them with derision. And so would they be in their bloody expedition. They would regard their very conquering power as their god, and worship their success. CONCLUSION. All this was to come upon a nation of conventional reglionists. All peoples whose religion is that of profession, letter, form, ceremony, are exposed to a doom as terrible as this. - D.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. |
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