Habakkuk's name carries the sense of one who grapples or embraces, and as Walter Chantry shows in this absorbing book the prophet lived out his name by wrestling with God in prayer in the midst of a national and international situation resembling our own in many respects. He cannot reconcile the violence and injustice he sees around him with the character of the God he trusts, and he says so plainly rather than piously.

The answer Habakkuk receives is not the one he asked for, and the book traces his movement from protest to the settled confidence of its closing lines, where he resolves to rejoice in the Lord though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no herd in the stalls. Chantry writes briefly and pastorally for Christians troubled by the state of their own nation, and the book can be read in a single sitting.