For lo - So God announces a future, in which His Hand shall be greatly visible, whether more or less distant. In His sight it is present.
I raise up - God uses the free will and evil passions of people or devils to His own ends; and so He is said to “raise up” those whom He allows to be stirred up against His people, since the events which His Providence permits, favor their designs, and it rests with Him to withhold them. They lift themselves up for some end of covetousness or pride. But there is a higher order of things, in which God orders their actions to fulfill His righteousness by their iniquities.
The Chaldaeans, that bitter - מר. In Judges 18:25; 2 Samuel 17:8, the less concise נפשׁ מר.
And hasty nation - נמהר as Isaiah 32:4. Jerome: “To its might and warlike boldness almost all the Greeks who have written histories of the barbarians, witness.”
Which shall march through the breadth of the land - rather, “the earth,” literally “to the breadths of the earth,” reaching to its whole length and breadth, all its dimensions as in the description of Gog and Magog Revelation 20:8-9, “the number of whom is as the sand of the sea; and they went up on the breadth of the earth; unhindered, not pent up, but spreading abroad, where they will, over the whole earth.” All before it, is one wide even plain which it overspreads and covers, like a flood, and yet is not spent nor exhausted.
To possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs - As God’s people had done, so should it be done to them. Spoiling and violence within Habakkuk 1:2-4 attract oppression from without. The overcharged atmosphere casts down the lightning upon them. They had expelled the weak from their dwelling Micah 2:9; others shall possess theirs. Yet this scourge too shall pass by, since, although the Chaldaean did God’s Will, He willed it not, but His own (See Isaiah 10:6-7). The words, “not theirs,” literally, “not to him” stand with a mysterious fullness of meaning. The dwelling places not being his by right, shall not remain his, although given to him, while God wills.