The title Justice Prevails is a rather heavy-handed title, seeming to rule out all aspects of God's nature other than justice.[2] And the justice in the book is not really justice at all. Most of the book Habakkuk rightfully describes all the awful things that the Babylonians are capable of doing, but somehow a just God is just going to let them destroy the chosen people of God. Not only is the love of God missing from this book, but the justice presented is a distorted justice coming strictly from the mind of Habakkuk.
Habakukk starts his book out by asking questions. This relatively small book is full of questions and short on answers. In fact, no reasonable answers are given throughout Habakkuk's entire book. Even by the end, Habakkuk is left to steep in the answerless void that is his theology. A theology of an unknowable yet just God who uses wicked people to punish righteous people. And miraculously, somehow by the end he can still say he will rejoice in the Lord?[3]
This book of Habakkuk's is dangerous theologically. It portrays God in an irreverent light: The "god" of Habakkuk is a god that can be questioned, a god unconcerned with the people he chose through our father Abraham, a god who would use heathens for his purpose. This is not the God of the Torah. It also portrays a God unconcerned with the wickedness of foreign nations. Did not God send Joshua into the land of Canaan to judge the wicked nations there? How can Habakkuk then write a book exactly counter to the message of the book of Joshua? They both cannot be true. How can an evil people be sent by God to destroy his chosen people? That is not justice! It does not even make any sense!
This kind of "prophecy" of Habakkuk's only leads to a liberalization of interpretation of God's word, a disrespect for God, and in turn the moral degradation of society. We have already seen this in respects to the Northern Kingdom and their prophets. Jonah made a failed mission trip to Nineveh, and the Assyrians destroyed Israel anyway. (Someone should have told Jonah that God is a God of Israel, not Assyria.) Hosea had a prostitute for a wife! A prostitute! No wonder God destroyed Israel with the Assyrians, for all the wickedness of their "prophets"! Habakkuk only follows in the liberal and heretical footsteps of Jonah and Hosea. What is next? A prophet who uses theatrics and imaginative visions to pull in the new generations like a lustful song? A prophet who spends an entire book unjustly criticizing God?[4] May it never be!
- This is (hopefully, obviously) a parody on some of the criticism of Rob Bell's recent and controversial book, Love Wins. In using Habakkuk, I am NOT trying to equate Bell's work with Scripture, or even endorse everything he says as right. I am instead trying to point out some of the intellectually dishonest criticisms of his book by criticizing a book that everyone would accept as the inspired Word of God with the same criteria that is being used against Love Wins.
- I chose the title, Justice Prevails, because that also tended to be one of the big criticisms of Bell, that he ignored justice in favor of love. Here, I flip the criticism. Habakkuk seems to ignore love in favor of justice.
- Habakkuk 3:18-19
- A reference to other prophets that came after Habakkuk: Ezekiel (specific reference to Ezekiel 33:32) and Jeremiah's book of Lamentations.
