Habakkuk 3:19

The book opens with Habakkuk crying out over the violence and injustice he saw in Judah (Habakkuk 1:2–4). God answered that he was raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, to judge his own people (Habakkuk 1:5–6), and he described that formidable and ruthless nation at length (Habakkuk 1:5–11). The answer troubled the prophet even more than the problem, and he asked how a holy God could use a nation more wicked than Judah to punish it (Habakkuk 1:12–17). Then he took his stand on the watch to hear what God would say (Habakkuk 2:1). God told him to write the vision plainly, assured him that Babylon would face judgment in its turn, and gave him the word that stands behind this whole passage: “the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:2–4).

The questions of Habakkuk 1 and the woes against the oppressor in Habakkuk 2 give way to worship in Habakkuk 3, a prayer shaped like a psalm. In it the prophet recalls how God came in power to save his people in the past (Habakkuk 3:3–15), and our four verses are his response to all that he has heard. So the faith of these verses comes after a long and honest wrestling with God’s ways in Habakkuk 1–2.

Habakkuk prophesied late in the seventh century BC. The Assyrian Empire was in decline and Babylon was rising fast, and Judah, caught between them, was decaying within through oppression and idolatry. Babylon first came against Jerusalem in 605 BC and destroyed the city and the temple in 586 BC, as God had said through Jeremiah that he would bring Nebuchadnezzar against the land (Jeremiah 25:9). For Habakkuk’s people an invasion meant famine, slaughter and exile.

“When I heard” looks back to what God has just shown him. The “voice” (qôwl) is God’s own revelation: the vision of the LORD coming in judgment in verses 3–15, and with it his plan to send the Chaldeans against Judah. Habakkuk tells what it did to him, from the inside outward.

His belly trembled. The word beṭen means the belly, and especially the womb, and Hebrew speaks of these inward parts as the place where deep feeling is felt, so this is fear felt in the pit of the stomach. The verb, râgaz, means to quiver with any violent emotion, especially anger or fear. His lips quivered “at the voice”. The word for lips, sâphâh, also means speech and language, and the verb tsâlal means to tinkle or rattle, the chattering of a man too shaken to speak steadily.

“Rottenness entered into my bones” goes deeper still. Râqâb means decay or rottenness, and the bones (ʻetsem) are the frame that holds the body up. The same word can stand for the body or the self, and used of a day it means “the selfsame”. Habakkuk is describing complete weakness, as if the strength that held him upright were crumbling under the weight of God’s word. Then “I trembled in myself” uses râgaz again, now for the whole man.

This is a right response to a revelation of God’s holiness and judgment. Isaiah cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone,” when he saw the Lord (Isaiah 6:5). Habakkuk trembles before the majesty of a God who is righteous and who can use even a wicked nation to carry out his purposes, and that fear humbles him and drives him to trust.

Habakkuk now names, one after another, the things his people lived on. Judah was a farming people, and its food, trade and security all depended on the land and the animals. An invading army that besieged the cities and stripped the land would bring exactly the losses he lists.

“Although the fig tree shall not blossom” pictures failure at the very first stage, before any fruit can form. “Neither shall fruit be in the vines”: the word for that fruit, yᵉbûwl, means produce or a crop, and figuratively wealth. The olive gave oil for food, for light and for anointing, and “the labour of the olive shall fail” uses kâchash, which means to be untrue, to lie, deceive, deny or fail. After all the work the farmer has put into his grove, the olive tree lets him down, as though it had lied to him.

“The fields shall yield no meat” takes in all the grain land, and with it the bread of the whole people. Then the verse turns from crops to animals. The flock of sheep and goats, which gave meat, milk, wool and sacrifices, “shall be cut off from the fold”, and gâzar means to cut down or off, and figuratively to destroy, divide or exclude. Whether through death, disease or plunder, the fold stands empty. The herd of cattle, which pulled the plough and gave meat and milk, is gone from the stalls.

Fig, vine, olive, field, flock and herd together cover the whole life of the land, so the verse pictures total ruin. Habakkuk says “although”, and he means it as a real prospect. He has counted the full cost before he speaks of joy, much as Job said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15).

After all that loss comes one word: “Yet”. Everything in verse 17 may be taken, and Habakkuk will still rejoice. The first verb, ʻâlaz, means to jump for joy, to exult, the gladness of triumph that shows itself. The second, gîyl, means to rejoice and be glad, and Strong’s gives its root sense as spinning round under strong emotion. The second line says the first again in fresh words, “the LORD” becoming “the God of my salvation”, and the repetition makes the declaration stronger.

“I will” is a resolve. Habakkuk chooses to rejoice, and he places that joy “in the LORD”, the covenant name of the God who bound himself to his people. He calls him “the God of my salvation”. The word yeshaʻ covers liberty, deliverance, safety and salvation, every way God rescues his people, from present danger and from sin. “My” makes it personal: this God is Habakkuk’s own deliverer, so his hope remains when every earthly support has failed.

Scripture often speaks of God himself as his people’s joy. The psalmist goes to “God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4), and David says, “The LORD is my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1). Paul learned “in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11–13), and he tells the church, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). James calls believers to count it all joy when trials come, because the testing of faith produces patience (James 1:2–4).

The last verse names the source of the prophet’s courage. “The LORD God” joins God’s covenant name with Adonai, “my Lord” or “my Master”, so it speaks both of God’s bond with Habakkuk and of his rule over all. The word for strength, chayil, means strength, ability, wealth or an army. Habakkuk, whose bones gave way in verse 16, now says that God himself is all the strength he has. David said, “the LORD is the strength of my life” (Psalm 27:1), and Isaiah promised that “they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).

The prayer ends with a musical note: “To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.” The chief singer, from nâtsach, is the leader of the singers, and nᵉgîynâh means stringed music. Habakkuk’s prayer was meant to be sung with strings in the worship of God’s people. His trembling, his resolve and his joy became a song for the whole congregation, so that others facing their own day of trouble could sing it with him.

The day of trouble Habakkuk feared looks ahead to the last day of the Lord, when the great day of the wrath of the Lamb comes (Revelation 6:12–17). Jesus bore God’s judgment on sin for his people on the cross, for “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:4–6), so those who are in him are delivered from that day. He is the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The rest Habakkuk reached for is given in him: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30). He tells his disciples, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The peace of God that passes all understanding keeps the hearts of those who bring everything to him in prayer (Philippians 4:6–7), and “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9–11).

When fields and folds fail, Christ is “the bread of life” (John 6:35). God has given us a lively hope through his resurrection and an inheritance kept in heaven that can never fade (1 Peter 1:3–5). That is why we can count it all joy in trials (James 1:2), knowing that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). Jesus himself, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

The LORD God who was Habakkuk’s strength came among us as Immanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and in him we can say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). Believers have been raised with Christ and made to sit together “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6), and in all our troubles “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37). Habakkuk’s song for the chief singer points to the new song the redeemed sing to the Lamb (Revelation 5:9).

Habakkuk shows us that fear and faith can be in the same heart at once. He trembled, and he was honest about it, and still he chose to rest in God and to rejoice in him. The things we lean on, our work, our health, our savings, our plans, can fail as surely as a fig tree or a vine. The God of our salvation remains. When we fix our joy on him, it can survive the loss of the harvest, and he who is our strength will set our feet on the heights and turn our fear into a song.