After God answers Habakkuk’s first complaint by simply stating the terrifying qualities of the Babylonian army He is raising up, Habakkuk brings a second complaint before Him. If God is the Holy One, the ancient of days, too pure to tolerate wrongdoing, why does He remain silent while the treacherous swallow up those more righteous than themselves? Habakkuk compares God’s people to the fish in the sea, creatures with no ruler to protect them, and the Babylonians as fishermen who pull them all up with hooks and nets, gather them, and rejoice.
God Does Not Seek Credit
Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food.
Habakkuk 1:16 (NIV)
The net in which the fishes are caught is given the glory, not God. Babylon does not acknowledge the Lord who raised it up; it acknowledges its own power, its own catch, its own luxury. Habakkuk cannot understand how God allows this. So many religions in the world are not built on worshipping God at all, but on worshipping His provisions — the sun that gives light, the river that gives water, the harvest that gives bread. Some have even worshipped the messenger and forgotten the One who sent him.
Why is it so hard for us, like Habakkuk, to accept that God allows people to take credit for what He alone has done?
Our thinking is shaped more by our own desires than by what God has actually said about His plan. We want to live in a world where good is instantly rewarded and evil is instantly punished, because that kind of constant feedback removes the doubts we have and grows our confidence. That is how we instinctively think success ought to work. And because we are more oriented toward success than toward faith, idols come into the picture. No one turns to an idol that isn’t working for them. The people in Habakkuk’s vision worship the net because the net is giving them fish. It is success we are chasing, and whatever hands us that success is what we end up crediting.
God is not correcting them, not because He excuses sin, but because in their own minds they have honored what they believe to be the true source of their success — their pastor, their deity, their prayers, their effort. Where would repentance even begin for someone who has, in their own eyes, already given proper credit? God is not tormented by this the way we are, because God is not protecting His own reputation. He was not making Himself known to people from the beginning; He worked quietly in human lives for thousands of years before revealing Himself to a chosen few. That kind of restraint is only found in God and in His Son. Everyone else in Scripture, even Paul, wrote openly about the work they had done and would not let it be taken from them. We are the same. We want credit at work, at church, in our families, for every kindness we extend and every prayer we pray. Thus, we struggle to understand how God can remain untroubled when His people fail to acknowledge His presence as the source of their success, because we tend to imagine God as being like us—made in our image—rather than recognizing the truth that we are made in His image.
The Righteous Will Live by Faith
I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
Habakkuk 2:1 (NIV)
Habakkuk is not simply waiting for an answer; he is asking God to teach him how to answer rightly when he is corrected. There is a kind of stubbornness in the way he speaks, the same stubbornness we see in Jonah. Habakkuk seems to know God the way a second-generation believer knows Him — through what his parents and elders have told him, rather than through a direct encounter of his own. That secondhand knowledge can make a person bold enough to challenge God, to demand that He prove Himself, in a way that firsthand experience rarely does. When Job finally hears God’s voice, he does not argue any further; he simply trembles and falls silent.
Then the Lord replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright — but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness”
Habakkuk 2:2-4 (NIV)
God’s answer is not immediate correction of Babylon; it is a revelation to be written down, made plain, and carried forward for a time not yet come. God is calling Habakkuk to trust Him more, despite everything he can see around him. The circumstances may lead us toward disbelief, but God is asking him to stand in faith, not in sight — to live by what has been written on the tablet and will surely come to pass, not by the chaos unfolding in front of him. God turns to pronounce a series of woes on Babylon, beginning with its greed.
Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations and takes captive all the peoples. Woe to him who piles up stolen goods… woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain.
Habakkuk 2:5-6, 9 (NIV)
Why do people avoid confronting their greed and instead use it to drive themselves toward personal career and spiritual goals?
The Scripture consistently treats greed as evil, and yet it is the one vice modern Christians seem most comfortable with. There is no other sin that is so openly celebrated, yet somehow we have made room for greed — for wanting the next promotion, the next spiritual gift, the bigger church, the wider platform. If ten people came to our church last year, we want fifty this year. If someone received the gift of tongues, they should now receive the gift of healing. This same greed has quietly gotten into the way we handle Scripture itself. Somewhere along the way, memorising verses became a competition — a prize for whoever recites the most, a reward for the best student of the Bible. What began as encouragement to read the Word has become something that dulls it. A verse meant to meet someone in their darkest moment, recited so many times for applause, loses its power to reach them when they actually need it. We have not made God’s Word useless; we have stripped it of its meaning by using it to seek credit for ourselves rather than to know Him.
Exposed Nakedness
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbours, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies. You will be filled with shame instead of glory. Now it is your turn! Drink and let your nakedness be exposed!
Habakkuk 2:15-16 (NIV)
This pattern of exposure goes back to Adam and Eve, whose disobedience left them naked and ashamed before God. It is a pattern that continues today. False prophets who confidently predicted the outcome of pandemics or the timing of Christ’s return are exposed again and again, and yet people keep following them, the same way passengers on a hijacked bus never rise up and overpower a single armed man, even though the odds favour them. No one wants to be the one who leaves, because leaving the church feels like leaving God’s presence altogether, even when it is the church that has become the obstacle. Meanwhile, the world is full of people who give away years of honest work for free — open-source software shared with anyone who wants it, no cost, no ads — while the love of God is so often handed to us wrapped in advertisements and price tags. It is safe to say that those who monetise or guard access to God’s love have likely never tasted it freely themselves.
Idols That Cannot Speak
Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman? Or an image that teaches lies? For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, “Come to life!” Or to lifeless stone, “Wake up!”… But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.
Habakkuk 2:18-20 (NIV)
Why does mankind keep finding comfort in gods it has made with its own hands, rather than in the presence of the living God?
Perhaps because a handmade god never corrects us. We build a version of God shaped in our own image rather than submitting to the God in whose image we were made, and we do it because that version leaves us undisturbed. A lie told often enough starts to feel like the truth, even to the one telling it. Like someone who claims to be wealthy while quietly still working to make ends meet, we can present ourselves to the world, and even to ourselves, as righteous while privately still uneasy, still striving, still aware underneath the comfort that something has not actually been settled. Yet, if the lie is repeated long enough, across years and generations, it stops feeling like a lie at all, and the search for the real thing quietly ends.
The righteous will live by faith, not by watching the wicked prosper or waiting for every wrong to be set right before our eyes. Every woe pronounced on Babylon’s net, its greed, its shame, its idols, is really a mirror held up to every substitute we are tempted to build for ourselves. The call is the same one given to Habakkuk — to be silent before the Lord who is in His holy temple, and to trust Him with what we cannot yet see.
Reply