Who is to blame for all this violence? For all this pain and suffering? How long will this nightmare last??
Take it to the top.
That’s what this prophet does, and his words of accusation of the wicked ways the world works matter just as much today as they have mattered for these past millions of days. If not for the response - at least for the power of protest and demand for change.
But has anything changed? This prophet’s promise is that no -- but also yes. It is more subtle.
But before we ponder the response -- what is the demand from the divine and what has it to do with us?
Habakkuk, the 8th of the 12 minor prophets likely lived in Judah somewhere towards the end of 7th century BCE, between the decline of Assyria and the rise of Babylon. His words were left behind as written prophecies that have intrigued readers for generations and left some curious traditions about who he may have been and what his visions are about.
Whatever he is living through can’t be days of ease and he’s angry and he blames God directly. As he questions divine justice, wondering how violence and evil can possibly serve a higher purpose in the broken world.
Unlike Abraham, or Moses, or Job, who confront God about the world’s injustice with an apologetic tone, Habakkuk does not hold back. Perhaps that’s why he was called by Kaufman, the famed biblical scholar ‘the prophetic Job’. He starts the book, with just three chapters, with what may be mid-dialogue with the divine:
עַד־אָ֧נָה יְהֹוָ֛ה שִׁוַּ֖עְתִּי וְלֹ֣א תִשְׁמָ֑ע אֶזְעַ֥ק אֵלֶ֛יךָ חָמָ֖ס וְלֹ֥א תוֹשִֽׁיעַ׃
How long, O ETERNAL One, shall I cry out
And You not listen?
Shall I shout to You, “Violence!”
And You do not save?
Habakkuk 1:2
He goes on with some specific qualms against the creator, wailing in pain for the injustice and how the holiness of Torah and divine law have been perverted. Nothing makes sense anymore. How long??
It is important and uncomfortable to note that once again the English word ‘violence’ that’s used here is a translation of the Hebrew word ‘Hamas’.
And so the prophet’s call for help transcends time and space and hurts our hearts with more unanswered questions. How long can this go on?
A 2013 sermon on Habakkuk by the Rev. Wil Gafney, whose wise Womanist approach has already helped us unpack so many chapters and see from them important perspectives that defy traditional and patriarchal positions, echoes the prophet’s question and probes the meaning of violence in our messy reality.
It is a powerful sermon, whether one believes in God or not.
“Like Habakkuk and Job I cry out to God about God. That I am not alone in this is scant comfort. That God hears in spite of all evidence to the contrary is some comfort. Comfort which I grasp like a drowning woman clinging to the broken pieces of what used to be a world that made sense.
Habakkuk was likewise clinging to a frail support in a sea of violence.
Hamas.
That is the Hebrew word for violence in this text.
Biblical hamas and its modern Arabic counterpart share the same root. Violence. The violence Habakkuk envisioned has long been presumed by many to refer to the Babylonian invasion but there is no time stamp in the book, no way to relate it to that or any other crisis. The truth is that violence is so epidemic in the broken world from the moment of the first sin, Cain’s murder of Abel – according to the text that is the first sin – violence is so epidemic in our world that it doesn’t matter whether we know what Habakkuk saw because we can all envision violence that makes us cry out to God. It’s also true that when you are surrounded by violence, whether a single act that forever changes your life or a larger conflagration whose borders you can’t even see, your experience is all-consuming and breathtaking whether on the international or individual scales.
We know next to nothing about Habakkuk, neither provenance nor patrimony, or for that matter matrimony. His prophetic identity is articulated as a matter of fact, the visions God sends him recorded in this little scroll seem not to be the first. They have a relationship and he has a vocation in the background of this brief text. Habakkuk’s cry reveals the expectations he has about God: he believes in a God who is or is supposed to be responsive. He expects God to do something about the state of the world. And he expects God to respond to his cries. He cannot fathom what is taking God so long to act. But he is sure that a response is coming.
He’s also sure that what he is seeing all around him is inconsistent with what he knows about the world. Torah, the embodiment of God in the world, God’s revelation, instruction, teaching..has been perverted, twisted, weakened, paralyzed, desensitized, rendered numb and insensitive. ..Something horrible has happened to God’s holy Torah: Justice has lost the battle and the judgments being rendered as Torah are crooked, perverse, perverted. Torah is Torah in name only and the justice system is unjust. How is such a thing possible and how long until God does something about it?
Are we still talking about Habakkuk’s time? Or are we talking about our own? I can no longer tell.
Those entrusted with the work of Torah, the work of justice towards citizen and alien, neighbor and stranger have betrayed their sacred trust. Our public ethic of the social good is based on and drawn from the ideals of the very Torah Habakkuk aches for. But something has happened to those who should be its servants and guardians.
How long Holy One?
The prophet couldn’t turn away even if he wanted to. And he may have wanted to. God knows I don’t want to see what I see in the world, not just on the TV and internet, but in our own city, sometimes in our own community, even in my own family…Seeing the world as it really is in all of its ugliness and brokenness. We can’t look away. Our very gaze is prophetic.”
Read the rest of this strong sermon here, or just pause and sit with Gafney’s questions, as they echo Habakkuk, and give words to the first question recorded in the Hebrew Bible - asked of the first humans by the creator - Ayeka, Where Are You? In the dialogue that keeps on going through so many days of delight and worse times of violence people and prophets respond with the same question -- and where are you, creator?
The pain is real and so is the violence of this conversation, and yet, there is some hope inside the rubble even if it extends beyond our needs for normal life and help right now.
That’s coming next in Habakuk’s conversation with the source of life that somehow we get to listen to and continue, each in our own way, and on on our own timeline.
Want to talk about this?
Please join me on March 7, 2024, 5pm ET for our monthly Zoom conversation Below the Bible Belt - linking the oldest book with today’s front-page news as we begin to wrap up the journey with the prophets, and prepare for the third and final section of the Hebrew Bible.
How do we reclaim, because we must, the moral voices of these prophets to help us reckon with our raw reality and begin the process of repair?
Please bring your questions, comments, responses and thoughts.
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