Habakkuk 3:7

Habakkuk’s book begins with questions. He grieves over the injustice he sees in Judah (Habakkuk 1:2–4), and God answers that he is raising up the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, to judge it (Habakkuk 1:5–11). The prophet then asks how a holy God can use a nation more wicked than Judah (Habakkuk 1:12–17), and God replies with woes on the oppressor and with the word that “the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). All this belongs to the late seventh century BC, when Assyria was in decline and Babylon was rising, shortly before the first Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 605 BC and the city’s destruction in 586 BC.

Chapter 3 is the prophet’s reply, and it is worship. Its heading calls it “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth” (Habakkuk 3:1), a word for a passionate, wandering song, and with its musical markings it was likely meant for public worship. Habakkuk has just prayed, “O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years” (Habakkuk 3:2). Verses 3 to 15 answer that prayer with a vision of God coming as he came in Israel’s early days. Such an appearing of God to people is called a theophany, and in Scripture it often comes with storm, fire and the shaking of the earth.

Habakkuk remembers on purpose. The psalmist does the same when he resolves to remember the works of the LORD (Psalm 77:11), because what God has done shows who he is and what he will do. By the end of the prayer the prophet can say that he will rejoice in the LORD even if the fig tree does not blossom and the vines are bare (Habakkuk 3:17–19). This vision is what carries him there.

Teman was a leading region of Edom, southeast of Judah, known for its wisdom and settled by the descendants of Esau. Mount Paran belongs to the desert wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, south of Canaan. Both names point to the country Israel crossed after leaving Egypt, where God came down on Sinai with thunders, lightnings and fire to give the law (Exodus 19:16–19). Moses’ blessing speaks of the LORD coming from these same southern regions (Deuteronomy 33:2), and Deborah’s song tells of the earth trembling as he marched from there (Judges 5:4–5). When Habakkuk names these places, he is saying that the God of the Exodus is on the move again.

The verse gives God two names side by side. The first, ʼĕlôwahh, is a singular noun for God, probably a longer and emphatic form of the short name El. The second, “the Holy One”, says that he is set apart and pure. To say that God “came” from a place is to speak of him in human terms so that we can picture his arrival. He is above all that he has made, and he also draws near and acts within it for his people.

His arrival fills everything. The word for glory, hôwd, means grandeur, majesty and splendour, the greatness of God made visible. The verb kâçâh means to cover, to fill up or to overwhelm, so his majesty spreads across the whole sky. The earth answers with praise. The heavens declare the glory of God in the same way (Psalm 19:1–4), and Isaiah was given a vision of that same glory (Isaiah 6:1–3).

Verse 4 describes how God looks as he comes. His brightness, nôgahh, is brilliance or radiance, and it is “as the light”, like the sun at its height. Scripture speaks of God this way elsewhere: he covers himself with light as with a garment (Psalm 104:2), and he dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16).

The “horns coming out of his hand” are the hardest picture in the verse. The word qeren means a horn, and in Scripture a horn stands for strength, power and dominion. The same word can mean a ray of light, and with the brightness just mentioned the picture is of rays flashing from his hand. Both senses fit together here, since the light that streams from God is itself his power. Scripture tells of something like it when Moses came down from Sinai and the skin of his face shone (Exodus 34:29). The hand, yâd, is the open hand, the picture of power and action. The rays come from God’s own hand, which means that this power is his own and goes out by his will.

God marches as a warrior, and judgment travels with him. Pestilence, deber, is plague or epidemic disease, from a root with the sense of destroying. Scripture often shows it as an instrument of God’s judgment, as in the plagues he brought on Egypt (Exodus 9:15), the tenth of which struck the firstborn (Exodus 12:29). It goes “before him”, and the Hebrew behind that phrase is pânîym, the word for face, so the plague moves ahead of his very presence like an advance guard.

Behind him come “burning coals”. The word resheph means a live coal, and it can also mean lightning, a fiery arrow or a fever. Fire follows at his feet as he walks, as Sinai was wrapped in smoke and fire when he came down on it (Exodus 19:18). Nahum speaks of the LORD’s indignation in the same way (Nahum 1:5–6). These judgments fall on sin, the sin Isaiah charges even against Judah (Isaiah 1), and they show how serious it is to oppose a holy God. For his people the same march is good news, because the one who commands plague and fire is coming to deliver them.

In verse 6 God stops, and everything else moves. “He stood” uses ʻâmad, the ordinary verb for standing, and here it is the stance of a ruler who has taken his position and is about to act. “Measured” translates mûwd, a word that means both to shake and to measure. As a measuring, it shows God surveying the earth as its owner, with the right to assess it and apportion it. Then he looks, and at his look the nations are driven apart. Empires rise and fall at his command, and that includes Babylon. Moses sang at the sea that the LORD “shall reign for ever and ever”, and the psalms say that God reigns over the heathen (Psalm 47:8) and comes to judge the world with righteousness (Psalm 96:13).

The mountains and hills are the Bible’s picture of what lasts. Here the “everlasting mountains” are scattered and the “perpetual hills” bow like subjects before a king. The verse then says of God, “his ways are everlasting.” The word is ʻôwlâm, time out of mind, past or future, which is to say eternity. The KJV says “everlasting” of the mountains and again of God’s ways, and the contrast is the point of the verse: the oldest things in creation give way, and the God who made them stays the same. A psalm says that he was God before the mountains were brought forth (Psalm 90:2), and another that the LORD sits as King for ever (Psalm 29:10). Isaiah speaks of his power over the princes of the earth (Isaiah 40:21–23), Daniel records that his dominion is everlasting (Daniel 4:34–35), and Malachi gives the LORD’s own word that he is unchanging (Malachi 3:6).

So the terrifying display rests on something steady. His ways, meaning his character, his principles and his manner of acting, are the same in every generation, and his justice and faithfulness hold when the world is shaking.

Verse 7 turns to people. “I saw,” says Habakkuk, as a witness to the vision. Cushan and Midian were tent-dwelling peoples of the regions south and east of Israel. Cushan is often linked with Cush, a strong and distant people. Midian was a well-known nomadic people of northwest Arabia, the land where Moses once lived (Exodus 2) and the enemy Gideon defeated (Judges 7). The tent, ʼôhel, and the “curtains”, the tent hangings, stand for the peoples who live in them, and such dwellings are easily shaken. The tents of Cushan are “in affliction”, ʼâven, a word for trouble, vanity and wasted effort. The curtains of Midian “tremble”, râgaz, which means to quiver with violent emotion, especially fear or anger. Strong or distant, every people is subject to him. Isaiah foresees men hiding in the rocks for fear of the LORD (Isaiah 2:19), and Revelation shows the kings of the earth hiding from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:15–17).

The LORD’s anger was against those who stood in the way of his people’s deliverance, and the waters were where he showed his power. Habakkuk asks his questions in verse 8 to bring out that answer. The verb chârâh, translated “displeased”, means to glow or grow warm and so to blaze up in anger, and Scripture uses it of God’s anger and of ours. The rivers (nâhâr) and the sea (yâm, a word tied to the roar of the surf) recall two days above all. One is the day God divided the Red Sea, so that Israel walked through on dry ground and the waters returned on Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14:21–29). The other is the day he stopped the Jordan so that Israel crossed into Canaan (Joshua 3:16). A psalm puts the same kind of question to the waters themselves: “What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” (Psalm 114:3–7). The sea fled because its Lord had come for his people. God’s display of power over the water was deliberate, and it had a purpose.

The end of the verse names that purpose. God rides “upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation.” Horses and chariots were the picture of military might, and Moses had sung at the sea, “The LORD is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3). The word yᵉshûwʻâh, salvation, covers deliverance, help, victory and welfare. His chariots are chariots of rescue. When God moves in power through history, he moves to rescue and redeem his people.

In verse 9 the warrior’s weapon is out. The bow, qesheth, is “made quite naked”, a phrase built from two Hebrew words, ʻeryâh and ʻûwr, that speak of being bared or uncovered. A bow in its cover is at rest. This one is uncovered and ready to shoot, and that readiness is the meaning of the picture: God is prepared to act at once, in judgment and in deliverance.

The next words give his reason: “according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word.” An oath, shᵉbûwʻâh, is something sworn. These are the promises God swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to the twelve tribes descended from them, such as the covenant he made with Abraham (Genesis 15:18). “Thy word” says the same thing again in parallel. God’s coming is therefore an act of covenant-keeping. He is the faithful God who keeps covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9), and his judgments also follow the terms he set out beforehand in the blessings and curses of the covenant (Deuteronomy 28).

After the Selah comes a second picture: “Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers.” The verb bâqaʻ means to split or break open, and it is the verb used when the Red Sea was divided. The line also calls to mind the water that gushed from the rock in the wilderness (Numbers 20:11). The rivers may be the gushing waters themselves or the channels they cut through the ground. Either way, the earth opens at his word, and obstacles that would stop anyone else give way to him.

Habakkuk now gives creation eyes, a voice and hands. “The mountains saw thee, and they trembled.” The verb chûwl means to writhe or quake, as a woman does in labour or a person seized by fear, so the steadiest things on earth are in anguish at the sight of God. Sinai itself “quaked greatly” when he came down on it (Exodus 19:18). The flood of waters sweeps past, under his control as the Red Sea and the Jordan were.

Then the deep cries out. The deep, tᵉhôwm, is the vast mass of waters, the word used of the waters that covered the earth at the beginning (Genesis 1:2), and it can also mean the great oceans or the waters under the earth. Its voice is the roar of its waves. It “lifted up his hands on high”, where nâsâʼ is the common verb for lifting or carrying, and lifted hands are the gesture of surrender, of pleading or of praise. The greatest and wildest thing in the world submits to its Maker. A psalm describes the same response: “His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth” (Psalm 97:1–6).

Verse 11 lifts our eyes to the sky. “The sun and moon stood still in their habitation.” The verb is ʻâmad again, the same verb as “he stood” in verse 6. Their habitation, zᵉbûwl, a dwelling place, is their appointed place and course in the heavens, and the two great lights halt there.

Verses 12 to 14 say what the whole march has been for. First comes judgment on the nations. “Thou didst march through the land in indignation.” The verb tsâʻad means to pace or step in regular order, the measured advance of an army, and the land (ʼerets) can be one territory or the whole earth. “Thou didst thresh the heathen in anger.” To thresh, dûwsh, is to trample or beat grain so that the kernel is separated from the husk, usually with oxen or a threshing sledge, and it pictures a defeat that is complete.

The heathen are the gôwy, the nations, and here they are the nations that set themselves against God and his people, Babylon above all. God used Babylon as his instrument and still held it to account for its own cruelty, as he did with Assyria before it (Isaiah 10:5–15), and through Jeremiah he promised judgment on Babylon in its turn (Jeremiah 25:12). Elsewhere he promises to make Israel itself a threshing instrument (Isaiah 41:15–16).

Habakkuk’s vision of God coming in glory is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and he came from the Father’s presence into our flesh with a glory “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God was manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). In that coming the power of God was hidden in a new way, for he took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7), and yet he is “the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).

The Lord of the rivers and the sea walked among us. All things were made through him (John 1:1–3), and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). He walked on the sea (Matthew 14:25), and when he stilled the storm with a word his disciples asked what manner of man this was, that even the wind and the sea obey him (Mark 4:39–41).

The salvation Habakkuk saw is Christ’s work. God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16), who came as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and bore in himself the judgment that the pestilence and the burning coals picture. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us, and we are reconciled to God by his death (Romans 5:8–10). At the cross he crushed the serpent’s head, spoiling principalities and powers and triumphing over them openly (Colossians 2:15). He bound the strong man and plundered his house (Mark 3:27), and through death he destroyed the devil, who had the power of death, and set free those who were held in bondage by the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). He came to preach good news to the poor and deliverance to the captives (Luke 4:18–19), and the Father has delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13–14). The oaths of the tribes are kept in him, for all the promises of God are Yea and Amen in him (2 Corinthians 1:20), and he is the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).

He came the first time to save: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), and he will come again as the warrior of Habakkuk’s vision. John sees him on a white horse, judging and making war, with eyes like a flame of fire and a sharp sword, treading the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God, a picture close to the threshing of verse 12 (Revelation 19:11–16). He comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him (Revelation 1:7). At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:9–11), which is the trembling of Cushan and Midian and the lifted hands of the deep brought to their end.

The Son of man receives an everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13–14), God has set him far above every power and put all things under his feet (Ephesians 1:20–22), and he is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8), the one whose ways are everlasting. Then God will make a new heaven and a new earth and dwell with his people (Revelation 21:1–4), and the earth will be full of his praise.

Habakkuk’s circumstances stayed as they were while he prayed, and Babylon was still coming. What changed was what he had seen: the God who came from Teman and walked through the sea was the God ruling over that hour. The passage gives us the same sight. When evil rushes in like a whirlwind and the strong feed on the weak in secret, God sees it, and he has gone forth for the salvation of his people.

The vision also shows who God is. He is holy, and his anger against wickedness is real. He is faithful, and he acts according to what he has sworn. He is unchanging, so that the God of the Exodus, the God of Habakkuk and the God we pray to are one and the same. His power is far greater than what we see of it, and all of it is turned toward rescue.

Remembering, then, is an act of faith. Habakkuk looked back to the Red Sea in order to face Babylon, and we look back to the cross and the empty tomb, where the Anointed One won the salvation this prayer sings of. The mountains and the deep trembled before him, and we who belong to him may bring the same awe with trust added to it. The prayer stops for a Selah after God’s coming, after his oath and after his victory, and each of those is a good place for us to stop as well.