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Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World
What does it mean to be faithful disciples in a violent and unjust world?
Habakkuk described an era of rampant moral and social evil among his own people, and a vision of the rapid rise of the Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar. The world he described is familiar in so many eras of human history, including our own. The frightening international tensions, confusion about political alignments and alliances, fractured moral and religious traditions, and social dissolution and degradation cause the same fear and anxiety today as they did back then.
Confusing is a mild world for it--international, political, religious, moral confusion. It was (and still is) a world of national wickedness and international turmoil and violence, a world in which God appears to be asleep on his watch and yet claims to be "working a work" in Habakkuk's day and ours.
Hearing the Message of Habakkuk walks through the questions the prophet asked God about injustice and the jaw-dropping answers he received. This popular-level exposition
God's silence.God's sovereignty.Living by faith.God's judgement.Trusting God's Word.What we learn from Habakkuk's dialogue with God can help us today as we struggle to work out what it means to believe in God's sovereignty, justice, and love, and to live as faithful disciples in an unjust world.
Habakkuk described an era of rampant moral and social evil among his own people, and a vision of the rapid rise of the Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar. The world he described is familiar in so many eras of human history, including our own. The frightening international tensions, confusion about political alignments and alliances, fractured moral and religious traditions, and social dissolution and degradation cause the same fear and anxiety today as they did back then.
Confusing is a mild world for it--international, political, religious, moral confusion. It was (and still is) a world of national wickedness and international turmoil and violence, a world in which God appears to be asleep on his watch and yet claims to be "working a work" in Habakkuk's day and ours.
Hearing the Message of Habakkuk walks through the questions the prophet asked God about injustice and the jaw-dropping answers he received. This popular-level exposition
God's silence.God's sovereignty.Living by faith.God's judgement.Trusting God's Word.What we learn from Habakkuk's dialogue with God can help us today as we struggle to work out what it means to believe in God's sovereignty, justice, and love, and to live as faithful disciples in an unjust world.
- GenresChristian
142 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 11, 2024
13 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Christopher J.H. Wright
102 books201 followersChristopher J.H. Wright, (born 1947) is a Anglican clergyman and an Old Testament scholar. He is currently the director of Langham Partnership International. He was the principal of All Nations Christian College. He is an honorary member of the All Souls Church, Langham Place in London, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 12, 2025
Succinct devotional study of this overlooked minor prophet.
November 13, 2024
Whether one is looking for a personal devotional book, a study guide particularly useful for politically aware college and beyond groups, or a quick survey of an oft-neglected but rhetorically and philosophically complex book from the Old Testament, Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World is accessible, concise, incisive, and inspiring. Christopher J. H. Wright shows an awareness of Hebrew wording and rhetorical flow that one doesn’t normally perceive in such short study guides.
Indeed, Wright shows a sophisticated awareness of biblical theology in general and the way metaphorical and prophetic arcs in Habakkuk both draw from the Hebrew canon and extend into the full Christian canon. My only issues of contention are nuance and personal convenience. In terms of nuance, I find his equivalence of Habakkuk 2:20’s “The Lord is in his holy temple” as “seat of government” to be offensive. I don’t take issue with his wider argument that it means God is in control and that we need to get in line with God’s providence. However, he uses God’s providence as a means of taking issue with the political principle of separation of church and state (p. 82). I do not take issue with his position that the church needs to speak prophetically to issues which affect the state, the world, and all creation. I do not take issue with his accusation that the church tends to hide under the camouflage of purely “spiritual” issues. I simply think that we must guard against any religion (even a sectarian one) having undue influence in government. Also as a matter of nuance, I believe that the idea of “fear of God” has been overused in our society such that it really isn’t helpful. The term for fear in the Old Testament could be understood as reverent dread in that the faithful one may dread God’s judgment, but if it is wrapped in trust (as described on p. 103), the fear of the unknown and fear from uncertainty isn’t really what’s happening. My semantics here may be as artificial as my preference for entropy and futility to describe the human condition over the strict Calvinist term of “depravity.”
On personal convenience, I simply observe that the cheap…er…”cost efficient” paper stock used is so porous as to absorb my ink and create mini-Rorschach tests between lines, as well as to partially disintegrate and clog up my pen’s nib. That certainly won’t affect those who don’t use fountain pens, but I mention it because the less expensive stock suggests that the physical shelf life of the book may not be what one would hope, as well. [On the other hand, I am of such an age that it will surely outlast me.]
Those considerations (or prejudices) aside, Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World is quite useful in explaining Hebrew words and constructions in a non-academic way. I liked the three column chart of six sinful behaviors listed by Habakkuk on page 8. Wright gives the Hebrew word (transliterated into English characters) in the first column, the one-word NIV translation in the second column, and an amplified translation in the third. At other points, Wright clues in the non-Hebrew reader (and those of us who haven’t translated a given text for ourselves) as to the number of words and the juxtaposition of words in the Hebrew text. This sharpens the understanding of emphasis and rhetorical style (such as the difficult wording in 2:4a (p. 45) and how it may take an English phrase to translate each Hebrew word of 2:4b, respectively (p. 46). He does the same with 3:2b’s three words on p. 90. He explains how the Hebrew word for faith can mean both belief and faithfulness (p. 51), as well as how “your deeds” in 3:2 is more holistic in the sense of “your work” (p. 88).
I liked Wright’s illustrations of global and local injustice, tying God’s judgment on first Israel and then Babylon to modern (and historical) injustices (particularly pp. 22-27 and 74-75). Many phrases resonated powerfully with me, such as: “We may not understand the world we are in, but we do know the story we are in. And we need to strengthen our faith by continually bringing this story to mind.” (p. 99)
So, despite my earlier reservations about nuance and paper quality, I highly recommend Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World for both inspiration and resource.
Indeed, Wright shows a sophisticated awareness of biblical theology in general and the way metaphorical and prophetic arcs in Habakkuk both draw from the Hebrew canon and extend into the full Christian canon. My only issues of contention are nuance and personal convenience. In terms of nuance, I find his equivalence of Habakkuk 2:20’s “The Lord is in his holy temple” as “seat of government” to be offensive. I don’t take issue with his wider argument that it means God is in control and that we need to get in line with God’s providence. However, he uses God’s providence as a means of taking issue with the political principle of separation of church and state (p. 82). I do not take issue with his position that the church needs to speak prophetically to issues which affect the state, the world, and all creation. I do not take issue with his accusation that the church tends to hide under the camouflage of purely “spiritual” issues. I simply think that we must guard against any religion (even a sectarian one) having undue influence in government. Also as a matter of nuance, I believe that the idea of “fear of God” has been overused in our society such that it really isn’t helpful. The term for fear in the Old Testament could be understood as reverent dread in that the faithful one may dread God’s judgment, but if it is wrapped in trust (as described on p. 103), the fear of the unknown and fear from uncertainty isn’t really what’s happening. My semantics here may be as artificial as my preference for entropy and futility to describe the human condition over the strict Calvinist term of “depravity.”
On personal convenience, I simply observe that the cheap…er…”cost efficient” paper stock used is so porous as to absorb my ink and create mini-Rorschach tests between lines, as well as to partially disintegrate and clog up my pen’s nib. That certainly won’t affect those who don’t use fountain pens, but I mention it because the less expensive stock suggests that the physical shelf life of the book may not be what one would hope, as well. [On the other hand, I am of such an age that it will surely outlast me.]
Those considerations (or prejudices) aside, Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World is quite useful in explaining Hebrew words and constructions in a non-academic way. I liked the three column chart of six sinful behaviors listed by Habakkuk on page 8. Wright gives the Hebrew word (transliterated into English characters) in the first column, the one-word NIV translation in the second column, and an amplified translation in the third. At other points, Wright clues in the non-Hebrew reader (and those of us who haven’t translated a given text for ourselves) as to the number of words and the juxtaposition of words in the Hebrew text. This sharpens the understanding of emphasis and rhetorical style (such as the difficult wording in 2:4a (p. 45) and how it may take an English phrase to translate each Hebrew word of 2:4b, respectively (p. 46). He does the same with 3:2b’s three words on p. 90. He explains how the Hebrew word for faith can mean both belief and faithfulness (p. 51), as well as how “your deeds” in 3:2 is more holistic in the sense of “your work” (p. 88).
I liked Wright’s illustrations of global and local injustice, tying God’s judgment on first Israel and then Babylon to modern (and historical) injustices (particularly pp. 22-27 and 74-75). Many phrases resonated powerfully with me, such as: “We may not understand the world we are in, but we do know the story we are in. And we need to strengthen our faith by continually bringing this story to mind.” (p. 99)
So, despite my earlier reservations about nuance and paper quality, I highly recommend Hearing the Message of Habakkuk: Living by Faith in a Violent World for both inspiration and resource.
November 26, 2024
Do yourself a favour and listen to this read by the author, because Wright has an absolutely lovely Northern Irish accent and reads his own work impeccably. I say this as someone who's always a bit leery of books narrated by their own authors. This one is so well done, it makes the informal style more pleasant than I think it would have been if I'd read it with my own two eyeballs. It feels more like a series of lectures or sermons on Habakkuk.
As always with expositions or commentaries, I really appreciated the way this book lays out the (probable) historical context for the prophecy of Habakkuk. I find it very easy to read through the Prophets without thinking about their context, and they end up just kind of floating around in my brain without much substance or meaning -- just disembodied principles. Realizing Habakkuk was probably prophesying and writing not long before the conquest of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar and the deportation to Babylon makes so much more sense of the book.
Beyond that, though, Wright unpicks this particular prophet's wrestling with issues of theodicy -- God and the problem of evil -- that have enduring relevance in any time. I am sure I wouldn't agree with all of Wright's political opinions, but for the most part I think he's just sticking to the truth about human power structures, their deleterious effects, and God's judgment on them. I especially appreciate that he doesn't let go of the scriptural teaching that, while God's ways are too deep for our comprehension and can often seem counterintuitive or disorienting (as Habakkuk finds), He WILL judge the wicked. That judgment comes repeatedly in history as God raises and casts down world powers, sometimes using them to punish other nations before judging them himself; but it will also come in the last day, fully and finally. Listening to this book was a helpful, comforting, thought-provoking reminder of the ongoing work of God even in days when the wicked appear to prosper.
As always with expositions or commentaries, I really appreciated the way this book lays out the (probable) historical context for the prophecy of Habakkuk. I find it very easy to read through the Prophets without thinking about their context, and they end up just kind of floating around in my brain without much substance or meaning -- just disembodied principles. Realizing Habakkuk was probably prophesying and writing not long before the conquest of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar and the deportation to Babylon makes so much more sense of the book.
Beyond that, though, Wright unpicks this particular prophet's wrestling with issues of theodicy -- God and the problem of evil -- that have enduring relevance in any time. I am sure I wouldn't agree with all of Wright's political opinions, but for the most part I think he's just sticking to the truth about human power structures, their deleterious effects, and God's judgment on them. I especially appreciate that he doesn't let go of the scriptural teaching that, while God's ways are too deep for our comprehension and can often seem counterintuitive or disorienting (as Habakkuk finds), He WILL judge the wicked. That judgment comes repeatedly in history as God raises and casts down world powers, sometimes using them to punish other nations before judging them himself; but it will also come in the last day, fully and finally. Listening to this book was a helpful, comforting, thought-provoking reminder of the ongoing work of God even in days when the wicked appear to prosper.
September 30, 2024
This was a good, succinct (which is saying something if you know your average Bible commentator) commentary on one of my favorite OT books. It’s comparable to Dale Ralph Davis’s commentaries on OT narrative books. I like the way the author applied it to our current situation, though I did not always agree with his application.
I’ve started the Ecclesiastes version in this commentary series and it seems to be really good also.
I’ve started the Ecclesiastes version in this commentary series and it seems to be really good also.
February 10, 2025
This is a great little study on the short book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk is only 3 chapters, but it is quite amazing. Unlike all the other prophets, it's quite similar to Job, as Habakkuk laments to God and God gives his responses. This book is timely given the state of the world at the moment with numerous wars and evil everywhere we look. I highly recommend, the narrator on Audible is awesome, but I've also acquired the physical copy for my library.
August 5, 2024
This is an excellent exposition of Habakkuk. The author courageously and wisely applies the book to today's world. Serious Christian leaders may finish this book like Habakkuk living both fear and faith.
June 21, 2024
Things were not so different 2500 years ago than today
Helped put what's happening in the world today in perspective, at least for me
Helped put what's happening in the world today in perspective, at least for me
July 3, 2024
Brilliant...absolutely brilliant. Every church, campus ministry, or small group should do this as a group study together. It will rock your world.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews