All translations are only approximations, but "the just shall live by faith" doesn’t come close. Not even a little. Understand: Habakkuk stood alone among the prophets. He did not wrestle with the people, he battled with God.
Here is the background.
When Habakkuk questioned God’s allowance of spiritual and social corruption among His chosen people, God responded by sending the Babylonians to ravage Judah. (Habakkuk 1:1-11) Good people, innocent people, died and were devastated alongside the evil, all at the hands of God. The bodies of women, children, and the old strewed the street: their men butchered before them. Habakkuk stood and challenged God’s sense of justice. He did not simply cry, “how long O Lord,” he dared to demand “what the hell do you think are you doing?” (Habakkuk 1:12-17) Habakkuk rebuked God to His face and then stood on a tower waiting for a reply. (Habakkuk 2:1)
Months, possibly years passed before God reappeared with an unknown vision of salvation (the content of which some believe is the hymn comprising chapter 3). God orders Habakkuk to write the vision down for public display among the suffering masses. God, in His infinite cleverness, even uses word play: Habakkuk is to write the vision in language which can be read quickly and plainly— how the message runs—, but also the content is a source of hope, a refuge to be run into (Habakkuk 2:2; c.f. the Hebrew construction of Proverbs 18:10).
This vision requires Habakkuk to wait for the appointed time when God will set everything aright. But the vision isn’t for the immediate future. It’s going to take a while (Habakkuk 2:3). A long, indeterminate, you really can’t tell when, don’t hold your breath, like-a-thief-in-the-night, time. In the meantime, the in-between time, while death and devastation abounds, they are to hold onto this vision until it all makes sense, if it ever makes sense. Until broken backs stand upright. Until mother-screams no longer haunt the night.
And Habakkuk was to remember, and remind the people, that the righteous, the just, shall live by their faith.
But what does this mean?
The faithful are defined by negation in what follows. The rest of chapter two is filled with hôy proclamations: outcries of woe and destruction upon those who are not righteous, those who do not live by faith.
These people are physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive. They cheat, lie, steal, molest, and murder: metaphorically and literally. They are unchaste in the truest sense of the word: experientially impatient. They do not know how to wait. They must grasp everything into their hands immediately, no matter who gets hurt. Because impatience, much more than conscious evil, fills the soul with pain: hurt is always a bi-product of sin and impatience.
The faithful are not like this.
They are patient. The righteous, the just, are known through resilience.
When surrounded by insurmountable reasons to throw up hands in frustration or run razors across wrists, the faithful remain, holding themselves and each other together.
When everything seems— when everything is— completely and utterly broken, the righteous continue to love while just barely keeping their shit together.
When life reads like the poetry in Lamentations and the Almighty is the One causing all the pain, the righteous alternately sing and scream at, with, and through God.
When the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; when the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; when the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls the righteous remain sane through committed acts of faithful living in the face of unrelenting bullshit.
{There is no “perhaps” this time
No clever ending.
We’re still waiting.}
