Habakkuk Part 3

1181 words long.

Published on 2024-03-30

Cruel Nets

The prophets often speak of the wicked catching people in a net, or God doing the same thing to the wicked. No chapter in the Bible speaks more about using nets, dragnets, and hooks to trap people than does Habakkuk 1. However, there is more than quantity here; there is quality. The nets factor into this third section in three ways, and each of those three ways is examined in three parts.

First, Habakkuk poses three questions about God’s exercise of judgment that form a troubling syllogism. Habakkuk acknowledges that God is eternal by asking, “Are you not from everlasting… ?” Then he complains about the swiftness (or lack thereof) of God’s response to the wicked, asking, “Why do you idly look at traitors… ?” The implication is that since God is eternal, the torment we endure while waiting for him to act arouses no urgency within the Almighty. To drive home his proof and provoke God to refute him by acting, Habakkuk poses his third question, “Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?”

The concrete analogy that runs along the philosophical is two trios of references to fish-catching technology. One trio is the threefold repetition of the word “net”. In parallel fashion, we have a second trio, with the word dragnet appearing twice and hook once. Such clever logic! By his syllogism, Habakkuk is trying to catch God in a rhetorical net of his own weaving. The only difference between Habakkuk and the wicked is that they swallow up the innocent to kill them, while Habakkuk wishes God to swallow the wicked to rescue the innocent.

After charging God with negligence and the wicked with violence, Habakkuk hurls his sharpest harpoon: the affront to God’s glory. Even if God thinks nothing of the Chaldeans and other empires enslaving and killing the poor, will He not at least defend His own honor? The third and final act is to broadcast the effrontery of corrupt worship, expressed like a fractal in three ways. The wicked…

rejoices and is glad
sacrifices to his net
makes offerings to his dragnet

They don’t just do evil, they do it cheerfully.

When Jesus in John 21 turns the apostles' nets into tools of miraculous grace, this is an answer to Habakkuk’s complaint:

Is he then to keep on emptying his net

and mercilessly killing nations forever?

- Habakkuk 1:17 ESV

Jesus is now sending out fishers of men to save the nations, not kill them! (Note that this key complaint of Habakkuk is found in verse seventeen.)

The Nets are Five Empires

Yet there is more to be said about these nets in Habakkuk 1. Section two by symbol identified five empires. When we get to sections four and five, we shall see characteristics of and judgments against those same five empires, once in forward order (section 4), then in reverse (section 5), as in a chiasm. The progression in this section also says something about those five empires, plus a sixth, in the reverse of the order given in section two, so another chiasm. The progression is hook, net, dragnet, net, dragnet, net.

Hook stands by itself. In Job 41:1, God’s challenge is to draw in Leviathan with a fishhook, an impossibility. Thus this reference to hook in Habakkuk is a reference to the final deadly beast to be faced, Leviathan.

The remaining sequence is:

Net: Islamic Empires
Dragnet: Rome
Net: Greece
Dragnet: Medo-Persia
Net: Babylon

Dragnets use floats to keep part of the net at the surface and weights as ballast to drag the bottom. They catch more fish than simple nets. Thus dragnets match more culturally diverse, religiously syncretistic empires. Nets match monocultures that more forcefully suppress differences. For example, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon required everyone to worship his golden image or die. The Hellenistic culture of Greece, especially under Antiochus Epiphanes, compelled the adoption of Greek customs and forbade Sabbath observance and circumcision. Lastly, Islam’s laws established dhimmitude, a degrading and dehumanizing set of rules against all who did not convert to Islam. Individual rulers practiced tolerance, but the culture and its religiously inspired laws were suffocating.

On the flip-side, Medo-Persia practiced religious tolerance and helped the Jews resettle their land. Rome did go through periods of religious persecution, but the policy was generally more tolerant of differences than most other empires. The multicultural aspect of Rome was emphasized in this passage in Daniel about the empire of iron (Rome) which would “marry” (accommodate) with clay (other peoples):

And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron,

because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things.

And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.

And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay

and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom,

but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it,

just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay.

And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay,

so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.

As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay,

so they will mix with one another in marriage,

but they will not hold together,

just as iron does not mix with clay.

- Daniel 2:40-43, ESV

These two “dragnet” empires tried to maintain multi-ethnic states through persuasion, tolerance and providing benefits that would seduce people into accepting their culture.

Keep this in mind as you live your life. America used to be like a dragnet (the melting pot). It is becoming more like a net (woke cancel culture). This calls for much prayer.

Links to the other articles in this section:

Connections to other books The scope of inquiry is given. The riddle is connected to Genesis, Psalms 34 and 119, Jeremiah 32, Habakkuk, John 21, Matthew 13, and Revelation 9.
Defining 153 Noah's Flood is shown to have lasted precisely 153 days.
Fear 153 is connected to the Fear of the Lord through Psalms 24 and 119, Luke 12 and 2 Kings 17.
Hope Jeremiah connects a related victory number, seventeen (17), to hope. Then the themes of John 21 are connected to Habakkuk.
Habakkuk: Part 1 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:1-4. Habakkuk puts questions to God.
Habakkuk: Part 2 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:5-11. God doubles down: the bitter and hasty Chaldeans are coming.
Habakkuk: Part 3 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:12-2:1. Habakkuk complains with three threes about innocent people caught in a cruel net.
Habakkuk: Part 4 Analysis of Habakkuk 2:2-5. God offers a fourfold assurance to the faithful.
Habakkuk: Part 5 Analysis of Habakkuk 2:6-20. Five woes are pronounced against lawbreakers.
Habakkuk: Part 6 Analysis of Habakkuk 3:1-16. Prophecy of God's coming six-ply war against the wicked.
Habakkuk: Part 7 Analysis of Habakkuk 3:17-19. Six laments over a barren harvest and a seventh praise of God in faith.
The Fifth Trumpet of Revelation The Revelation 9 Plague of Locusts lasts 153 Years.
Habakkuk's War Revisits the sixth section of Habakkuk with a final insight into God's battle plan.