(Chapter 1, Verses 1, 2.) How long, O Lord, will I cry out and you will not hear? I will shout to you with violence, but you will not save. Why have you shown me iniquity and pain, to see plunder and injustice against me? According to the Septuagint: How long, O Lord, will I cry out and you will not hear? I will shout to you with violence, but you will not save. Why have you shown me hardships and sorrows, to see misery and impiety? Meanwhile, the prophet raises a question against God, why Nebuchadnezzar devastates the temple and Judah, why the once city of the Lord, Jerusalem, is destroyed? Why does the people cry out, and yet not be heard? Why does he cry out to the Lord, oppressed by the Chaldeans, and yet not be saved? Why does even the prophet, or the people on whose behalf he now speaks, live through this and be brought here, to see the wickedness of the enemies and their own labor? Why does injustice prevail against them? And this is said out of the narrowness of mind, not knowing that gold is refined in fire, and three young men come out of the furnace purer than when they entered (Dan. III). Moreover, we can also generally understand that the prophet, seeing sinners abound and possess riches in this world, compares their sons to newly planted saplings in their youth, and their daughters to adorned temples, their storehouses bursting with plenty, their sheep fat and multiplying in their ways, and other things that are more fully written in a lamenting voice and full of sorrow in the 143rd psalm. Why do you look at the despisers and remain silent, while the impious trample upon the more just, and you make men like fish of the sea, and like reptiles without a leader? We read something similar in the seventy-second psalm: But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped (Psalm 73:2), and so on. And again in the same psalm: And if there is knowledge in the Most High. For behold, the sinners and those who abound in the world have obtained riches, and so on, until my hands. But these things they speak ignorantly, investigating the judgments of God (Rom. XI), and the deep riches of his wisdom and knowledge, that God does not see as man sees. Man looks only at the present: God knows the future and the eternal (I Sam. XVIII). And how if a sick and burning with fever person asks for cold water, and says to the doctor: I suffer violence, I am tormented, I am burned, I am almost dead: how long, doctor, shall I cry out and you will not hear? And the wisest and most merciful doctor responds to him: I know when I should give you what you ask for: I do not just have pity, because pity is cruelty, and your will is against you. So our Lord God, knowing the weights and measures of His mercy, sometimes does not hear the one crying out, in order to test him and to provoke him to pray more, and to make him more just and pure as if he were refined by fire. Understanding this, the Apostle, having obtained mercy from the Lord, says: Let us not grow weary in tribulations (Ephesians 3:13); and he blesses God at all times (Psalm 33); and he knows that he who perseveres until the end will be saved (Matthew 10:22). And he glories in labor and pain. And as Jeremiah says: I will invoke tribulation and misery. Just as another person invokes God, so a holy man and invincible warrior, desiring to exercise and prove himself, wishes tribulation and misery to come.
It is not as though bringing a censure against God that the prophet says this. Rather, he speaks this way as it is the custom with people who are in some sort of trouble or who are righteously indignant with those responsible to present the injustice of what is being done under the guise of censure. Blessed David also says in like manner, “Why, O Lord, do you keep your distance? Why do you look down on us in good times and in bad? When the godless act disdainfully, the poor person is inflamed,” and so on, saying this not to censure God but to express indignation with those responsible for it and at a loss as to how they are not quickly called to account.
[AD 420] Jerome on Habakkuk 1:1-2