“ Faith was what would matter -
God ’ s faithfulness to them , and their answering faithfulness to God .”
He had watched and prayed and warned the people of what would happen if they didn ’ t turn away from their evil ways . He had hoped that some at least would listen , and that the nation as a whole would gradually be brought round to hear and obey . He had waited and watched and hoped .
And feared . Because he knew what the result might be if they didn ’ t . And he was right . Here they came now : a great enemy , fierce and strong , swift as a leopard , menacing as wolves , laughing at opposition , sweeping all before them . Why didn ’ t God act and stop them ? Why did he let wicked pagans like this have their way in the world , worshipping their own military might and scooping up whole nations the way fish are gathered in a net ?
The prophet is Habakkuk , seeing the people of Babylon sweeping through the ancient Near East , with vulnerable Israel in their path . He realizes that there is no escape . This , it seems , is what God has decreed And he finds himself called to a different ministry from what he might have expected as a prophet : summoning people simply to wait , to go on praising God even if everything goes wrong ( Habakkuk 3.17-18 ).
In the middle of it all he has a word , like a little motto , for those who remain faithful , who cling on to the God of Israel even when Israel as a nation seems to be drowning before the pagan onslaught . He contrasts the faithful with those who think they can manage by themselves . ‘ Look at the proud ’, he says . Their spirit is not right in them . The righteous one , however , shall live by faith .
“ Faith was what would matter -
God ’ s faithfulness to them , and their answering faithfulness to God .”
This saying , made famous by Paul ’ s quoting it in Romans 1.17 and Galatians 3.11 , emerges here ( verse 38 ) as well . Clearly it was a well-known text in early Christianity . What Habakkuk seems to have meant was that , when everything all around seemed to be turning upside down and inside out , God ’ s true people would hold on and last the course . Faith was what would matter - God ’ s faithfulness to them , and their answering faithfulness to God ( the word ‘ faith ’ can mean ‘ faith-fulness ’ in both Hebrew and Greek ). The New Testament writers seem to have latched on to the sentence in Habakkuk not least because they believed that the time of trouble for Israel that had begun with the Babylonian invasion had continued , more or less , right through to their own day ; and that now , with the coming of the Messiah , God was at last making the way through to the new age in which salvation , rescue and deliverance would come to birth .
Hebrews picks up , as well , the previous verse from Habakkuk ( 2.3 ): ‘ It will surely come , it will
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