Today's passage
Good morning! We hope your week is going well. We are improving search across the platform so finding any verse or passage becomes easier. Today Habakkuk argues with God and does not apologize for it.
Habakkuk is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Old Testament. He writes from Jerusalem in 605 BCE, the year Babylonian forces under Nebuchadnezzar II defeat Egypt at Carchemish and inherit control of much of the ancient Near East. Judah, until now under Egyptian control, is caught in that transition. At home, King Jehoiakim has dismantled the legal and religious reforms his father Josiah spent his reign building, and Habakkuk believes it is all for the worse. The book of Habakkuk opens with clear words of lamentation and despair.
Habakkuk is agonizing over the social changes he sees around him. Josiah had spent decades rebuilding Judean society around Torah: centralizing worship, reforming the courts, and creating legal protections for the poor. Now, with a new king and a new Babylonian sovereign, many of those advances are being reversed.