Habakkuk 1:17

"Shall he therefore empty his net, and spare not to slay the nations continually?"

It is the continuity of the state of affairs that already existed in Habakkuk's day that constituted the focus of his perplexity. God had just revealed through him the rise of a new power that .would crush Assyria (and Judah); but it would not be a righteous power at all, but essentially a continuation of the old order under a new name. We have already noted that such a continuity was due, actually, to God's mercy in deferring the well-deserved destruction of humanity throughout the historical period while the redeemed from all the earth were being gathered. But that mercy could not change the nature of the rebellious sons of Adam "born in Adam's image" (Genesis 5:3) who without restraint (except that of other rebellious states raised up against them) would continue to devastate the earth as long as God's mercy for all men (in the purpose of redeeming some of them) would prevail.

The answer to this question by the prophet, "He himself gave by inspiration in Habakkuk 2."[32] That answer lay in the prophecy of the doom of Babylon, "The remnant of the peoples shall plunder thee"; but such an answer did not promise any alleviation of the distress of humanity derived from rampant unrighteousness that without intermission prevails among the posterity of Adam.