“Look among the nations and watch– Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days Which you would not believe, though it were told you.  For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, A bitter and hasty nation Which marches through the breadth of the earth, To possess dwelling places that are not theirs.  They are terrible and dreadful; Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.  Their horses also are swifter than leopards, And more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers charge ahead; Their cavalry comes from afar; They fly as the eagle that hastens to eat.  “They all come for violence; Their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand.  (Hab 1:5-9 NKJ)

 Habakkuk’s intercession on behalf of the nation cries out to God because of the violence, plundering, and injustice didn’t get the response he was looking for.  God’s reply, “I’m sending the Chaldeans.  Let’s put in a modern context. “Look among the nations and watch– Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days Which you would not believe, though it were told you.  ⁶ For indeed I am raising up something or somebody even more evil than you.”  ‘You cannot be serious,’ that’s a paraphrase of Habakkuk’s reaction to God’s reply.  He could not believe that a holy and just God would send such a wicked, sinful nation to bring about correction.  Thinking he had heard wrong Habakkuk responds with, “I will stand my watch And set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected. (Hab 2:1 NKJ)

 Israel was about to realize the price they had to pay for being the children of God, bearing His name and living in the covenant.  God’s viewpoint was eternal and not temporal, and so He was willing to wait seventy years if that’s what it would take.

 Back to my paraphrase, “Look among the nations and watch– Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days Which you would not believe, though it were told you.  ⁶ For indeed I am raising up greater evil to get your attention.”  We claim to ‘trust in God’, so could it be that God will hold us accountable when we trust everybody and everything but God—you decide