Judah's decline was a nearly generation-long slide of rebellion, war, destruction, and captivity that began with Josiah's death in 609 BC. Nebuchadnezzar took many into exile, including Daniel and his friends, and later Ezekiel and King Jehoiachin in 597 BC. Zedekiah ruled as a puppet king until Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed in 586 BC. As conditions worsened, the people excused themselves with the proverb "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," meaning the ruin was not their fault but their forefathers' punishment. This misreads the second commandment, which teaches that the effects of sin endure and compound for generations in families and societies that persist in enmity toward God, not that God punishes children for their fathers' sins. God's judgment on Judah did follow cumulative sins such as rebellion, idolatry, and Sabbath-breaking, yet it was just. He had repeatedly sent prophets to warn them, and they did not repent. The generation living through the decline was as sinful as its predecessors, if not more so, and Ezekiel 16 shows Judah's sins outstripping those of Israel and even Sodom and Gomorrah. In Ezekiel 18, God declares that "the soul who sins shall die." No child bears a father's guilt, and no father bears a child's. Each person answers for his own sin, and whoever repents will live. God takes no pleasure in anyone's death and calls the people to turn and live. Judah's fall therefore lay on the people themselves, and the remedy was individual repentance rather than blaming others.

Judah was crashing in 605 BC, and its decline provides the setting for Habakkuk's prophecy. The nation was on its deathbed, and conditions were so bad that it was hardly safe to go out on the street. Habakkuk, living in that situation and wondering whether he would survive, complained to God in prayer and asked why He did nothing. God told him to wait, because the vision would surely come at its appointed time, even though it tarried. In the midst of a collapsing society, God declared that the proud are not upright but the just shall live by his faith. This word is better translated as faithfulness, because it means belief actively at work, not merely a conviction held in the mind. God wanted leadership from Habakkuk as His prophet, and that leadership meant faithfully clinging to God and carrying out His will no matter how bad society became. The name Habakkuk means "he who embraces" or clings, and he determined to hang on to God for dear life. The same pattern applies in any society in decline, such as the United States today. God has no pleasure in those who draw back, but He is pleased with those who live faithfully by actively fulfilling their covenant responsibilities.

Judah's decline was driven by self-serving leadership. Ezekiel 34 summarizes Judah's shepherds as rulers who governed for their own well-being rather than the people's, and shepherd here means any human leader, whether in government, education, business, media, or the home. Sheep are timid and dependent, and people likewise need good leadership, or under Satan's influence on the carnal mind community life degenerates into survival of the fittest, leaving most people as virtual slaves of the mighty. Isaiah 3:12 shows this decline already underway more than a century before Ezekiel: those who lead cause the people to err and destroy the way of their paths. Isaiah 59, describing conditions about 120 years before Nebuchadnezzar's devastation of Judah, portrays a culture in collapse. Bloodshed, lies, injustice, and violence filled the land, truth fell in the streets, and no one pleaded for justice. Isaiah 57 and 58 add pagan idolatry and hypocritical, ritualistic fasting that never helped others. The righteous were few, and most had grown accustomed to the decay. Some cried out to God, yet He did not answer or raise up faithful shepherds. Their own iniquities raised a barrier between them and Him, and they were not repenting of the same sins that deepened the crisis. God waited for sincere change led by the people, obeying His Word and restoring justice. Israel's leaders consistently fell short because every leader follows a pattern, and the decisive question is whether the pattern is God's or the world's under Satan.