Assignment : Prayer Of Habakkuk

While most prophets focused on hearing the word of God and conveying it to the people (Tullock & McEntire, 2006, p. 289-290). Prophets rarely asked questions of God as they received his pronouncements. However, Habakkuk was different given how he frequently asked questions of God, such as, why are you taking action, or how will you accomplish this deed, after receiving God’s pronouncement. As a result, Habakkuk could be considered an early Jewish philosopher, given his propensity for asking important questions that ultimately clarified God’s pronouncements, intentions, and judgments.

Psalm 18 is the third longest of all the psalms and is one of the few to contain an extensive heading. This psalm also has a parallel text found in 2 Samuel 22 providing further information and highlighting its importance to the Israelite people. The text speaks of David’s military victories but the emphasis is not on himself but on the victory that was won through God’s power and might. God is shown to be a saving God, something present day Christians cling to daily.

Desperate to escape the despotic government, many people from Judah turned to false gods and idolatry.6 Pleading to God for rescue from such an immoral, faithless place, Habakkuk learned that the situation of Judah would be rectified in time.7 God said that He had prepared a chastising rod and that Babylon would be the avenging instrument of the just Judeans.8 After the Babylonians expelled Jehoiakim from the throne, God emancipated the Judeans and relieved the heinous social situation. In the end, Habakkuk knew that the just Israelite would not perish from the calamities of the Babylonian attacks;9 he knew that righteousness and faith would prevail. Instead of rectifying the situation at once, the Chaldean empire took control and continued to treat the Judeans harshly. Furthermore, Habakkuk became angry and questioned God again. Nevertheless, he heeded to the previous words of God and kept his faith. Before humanity lost faithfulness, Habakkuk needed to spread this message throughout the empire to save the Judeans. Habakkuk had to extend the word of God to all oppressed people, so he wrote in a style the Israelites could grasp.

The Exegetical Task: Some parts of the Bible call for time and patient revision to understand. Some people find help in Bible dictionaries, commentaries and Bible handbooks (Fee/Stuart p189). Fee and Stuart feels that everyone needs to understand both the prophets’ era and the context of a single oracle (Fee/Stuart p190). The words spoken by the prophets at a variety of times and places are written down without any indication as to where one oracle ends and another begins (Fee/Stuart p193). The prophets employed an assortment of literary forms. 3 of the most common are: “The lawsuit”, God is portrayed as the plaintiff, prosecuting attorney and judge against the defendant, Israel (Fee/Stuart p194). The Woe, Woe oracles implicitly or explicitly contain an announcement of distress, the reason for distress and a prediction of doom. “The promise”, This contains an allusion to the future, a mention of radical change and blessing (Fee/Stuart p195). Hermeneutical Suggestions: What is God’s word to us through these inspired oracles, spoken in another time to God’s people? Once we understand what God said to them then, we will hear it again in our own surroundings (Fee/Stuart p199). The prophets’ messages were concentrated on the near rather than the distant future (Fee/Stuart p200). Sometimes the New Testament makes reference to Old Testament passages that don’t seem to refer to what the New Testament says they do

As usual, the chapter begins with Israel’s rebellion against God. God sent the Midianites to oppress them for seven years because of their latest defection from Him (v. 1). The oppression was so severe that all of Israel’s crops and livestock were either taken or destroyed by the Midianites (v. 2-5). Israel cried to God for assistance, and He sent them a prophet to inform them of why they were downtrodden: they had disobeyed Him by turning to idols (v. 6-10).

The times that we live in are changing everyday and the people except wrong as right and I know that God and the prophets are not pleased. We must understand that God is the same and his word says in “ Malachi 3: 6 For I am the lord, I change not not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. That lets us know that God will deal with these things the same way he did back then. Just because times have changed God has not and the prophets would advise us to choose life and not death and turn from these things such as idolatry, social injustice, and religious ritualism. The prophets of old would remind us of God’s word when they tell us in his word what “ Jeremiah said in 2:4 hear ye the word of the Lord, o house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. So let us listen for God is speaking in the signs of the times because we our a wicked people who have forgotten about God and the message his prophets came bringing to get us on the right course for a better life. So

One of the most important tasks of the prophet, then, to whom God has given sharper eyes than others, is to perceive the true nature of the evil around him. What others accept as "doing what comes naturally" the prophet sees in all its grotesque horror. It is an abomination to the Lord… What God expects of the prophet is not flowery ritual but a kind of divine madness that shatters the complacency of religious people.

He says that the Egyptians would mock the Israelites, laughing that their God would lead them out of their servitude only to face destruction at his own hands. Rather than respecting his power, they would see that he was either unable or unwilling to complete the salvation he set his people upon. And so the Lord agres to set aside his anger at the people, while Moses returns to them with God’s commandments.

God told Habakkuk that He was going do amazing things, that, he would not believe, God do not promise that He will

In chapter three, we are enlightened by the story of Elijah and his sudden fear towards Jezebel’s threats of taking his life. We get to dive into the way God deals with Elijah when he arrives at the cave. Here God comes in the form of a whisper, but shows mighty acts by splitting mountains and rocks, earthquake and fire (Allen Jr., 16). However, the text tells us that God was not in any of those elements. Rather, He spoke to Elijah with a whisper asking him why he was there. In the context, this story takes place after Elijah proves that his God is the only one who is able to light a fire on top of an altar when Baal was unable to. Elijah then orders the crowds to then kill the false prophets. The form that the author

Habakkuk was a prophet in the Hebrew Bible, and he is the true author of the book Habakkuk. Habakkuk is the eighth of the collected twelve minor prophets. The literary genre of Habakkuk is prophecy, a message from God to the people. Habakkuk was written in the time frame of 612 to 588 B.C. (before Christ). The main personality of the book Habakkuk is Habakkuk and the Babylonians. The key themes of Habakkuk are Habakkuk struggles with why sin in Judah go unpunished, God uses the Babylonians despite how evil they are to fulfil his purpose, and God has a plan for his people regardless how bad circumstances appears. The purpose of the book Habakkuk is to show that God is in control of the world despite the apparent triumph of evil. God used

The prophet wrote a letter to the exiles in Babylon with hopes to diffuse the situation and to provide a sense of reality in their situation (Tullock & McEntire, 2006). In the letter, he advised them to live as normally as possible, by doing the same as they would at home. The people were reminded to be good citizens, to follow the laws of the city, to even pray for the peace of the city so they would have peace (Jeremiah 29:7). The other prophets were false prophets and deceivers, they were advised not to listen, and moreover to be leery of false dreams of prophecy, because they were not from God (Jeremiah 29:8-9). The fourth point that he tried to get across was that when the time was right God will bring them home.

The word that Jehovah spake concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by Jeremiah the prophet. 2 Declare ye among the nations and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed; her images are put to shame, her idols are dismayed. 3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they are fled, they are gone, both man and beast. 4 In those days, and in that time, saith Jehovah, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; they shall go on their way weeping, and shall seek Jehovah their God. 5 They shall inquire concerning Zion with their faces

THESIS While also known as the Intertestamental Period, the Second Temple Period demonstrates that while God was silent in regards of speaking through prophets, He was anything but in His orchestrating human events for the culmination of the coming Messiah. INTRODUCTION

Nevertheless Habakkuk’s theme was struggle and doubt. He ask God why the wicked in Judah were not being punished for their sin. He couldn’t understand why a just God promised to use the Babylonians to punish Judah. To end that God answered Habakkuk with words of hope for