NOTES for Hab 1:3-4
The words of Habakkuk about the Torah (law), which is slacked, and about the incorrect (literarily. perverted) judicial decisions, have of course a quite concrete legal sense in all the times because the realities described by the prophet are identical at all times. But there is in the words of the prophet something more, beyond the purely legal frames. It is not surprising: because the Torah was never perceived practically either by the yahviste tradition or by the Jewish tradition as only the law, it also always supposed the lifestyle, the corresponding law, and the spiritual state, necessary for such a life.
Certainly, the Jewish traditional doctrine about the internal Torah appeared not immediately, but separate elements of that spiritual and ascetic experience, of which it grew, had to exist quite early, already at the pre-captivity period, at the time of later prophets. The Torah is slacked, says the prophet, and the judicial definitions (what we translate usually simply as "judgment") Bible of do not reach the goal (in the translation King James Version it is said "wrong judgment proceeded").
And it happens like that, according to the words of Habakkuk, because are lost in the society the entire spiritual and moral guidelines, in it reign general contention and a total egoism. And the link here is not only external, formal, legal, but spiritual also. Indeed, the spiritual chaos, the loss of all the moral guidelines is not a reason of the weakening of the Torah, but its consequence, if, of course we have in mind not external, legal, but internal spiritual measure of the Torah. Well then it turns out that the social problem is only an external demonstration of the spiritual problems, that these plunders and violence, this war of all against all, that sees the prophet, are not the disease in itself, but only the symptom of the disease.
It is not surprising that the Torah was given not only to an individual, but also to all people as a whole, as it is not surprising that the prophets never looked at public life, as on "something mean” and "unspiritual": because it is about the same Torah and about the same life. Man cannot (if only he is schizophrenic) live in the altar or at his home in his room one life and in the street another one. And Habakkuk, as other prophets, understands that perfectly. If the Torah, the law and the commandments given by God are for man a reality, he cannot have two lives. As the people also cannot have, if only it is about the people of God, the people-community.