Habakkuk 3
The book ends where complaints rarely end - in worship. This final chapter is headed A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth (v. 1), a psalm set for music, and it gathers up everything the prophet has wrestled with and turns it into a song. He opens with awe and one urgent request: O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy (v. 2). He has heard what God intends to do, and it frightens him; so he pleads that in the storm of judgment God would not forget to be merciful.3
Then the prayer becomes a vision, and the language turns vast and shining. Habakkuk watches the LORD come in majesty - God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran (v. 3) - His brightness like the light, His glory covering the heavens, the everlasting mountains scattered and the perpetual hills bowing before Him. He rides upon chariots of salvation; the sun and moon stand still in their habitation; He marches through the land in indignation, and the reason is named plainly: thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed (v. 13). This is the God of the Exodus and Sinai remembered and adored - the One whose every act of judgment is also an act of rescue.
The sight overwhelms the prophet: When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice… I trembled in myself (v. 16). And then, on the far side of that trembling, the book rises to its summit - one of the most remarkable confessions of faith ever written. Habakkuk does not deny the disaster; he names it in full, crop by crop, fold by fold - and still declares: Although the fig tree shall not blossom… yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places (vv. 17-19). The questions of chapter one are not all answered. But the prophet has found something steadier than answers.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Habakkuk 3:1-7O LORD, In Wrath Remember Mercy
1A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. 2O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. 3God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. 4And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power. 5Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. 6He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. 7I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.
The chapter is headed A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth (v. 1) - a psalm meant to be sung, with a musical notation we no longer fully understand but which marks this as worship set to music, not private muttering. And the prayer opens with a confession of holy fear: O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid (v. 2). Habakkuk has listened all through the book - to God's answer that the Babylonians are coming, to the long catalogue of woes pronounced over the oppressor - and what he has heard leaves him shaken. This is not the easy fearlessness of someone who has not grasped the stakes. He has grasped them, and he trembles. Then he prays the one thing the moment most needs: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. He asks God to keep His saving work alive even now, in the middle of these terrible years - and, above all, that in the outpouring of deserved judgment God would not forget to be merciful. It is the prayer of a man who knows the wrath is just and pleads for mercy anyway.3
With verse 3 the prayer becomes a vision, and the prophet's eyes lift to see the LORD Himself coming in majesty: God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise (v. 3). The places named are no accident. Teman lay in Edom, Paran in the wilderness south of the promised land - the very country of the Exodus, the direction from which the LORD had once come down to Sinai and led His people through the desert. Habakkuk is deliberately reaching back to the founding rescue of his nation. He summons the memory of the God who split the sea and shook the mountain, and he sees Him on the move again. And the scale is cosmic: His glory covered the heavens, and the whole earth rang with His praise. Before a single detail of the coming deliverance is spelled out, the prophet has fixed his gaze on the One who delivers - the God whose glory fills the sky and whose coming the earth itself cannot help but praise. The vision steadies him, because it is larger than the threat.
The portrait of the advancing LORD grows almost unbearable in its brightness: And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power (v. 4). Rays of blazing light stream from His hand - and even that dazzling display is only the hiding of His power, the veil over a strength too great to be seen directly. What we glimpse is the edge of the glory; the full force stays hidden because it could not be borne. Then the imagery turns to judgment marching in His train: Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet (v. 5). And creation itself cannot stand its ground: He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow (v. 6). Notice the words chosen - the mountains are everlasting, the hills perpetual, the oldest and most immovable things the human eye knows. And they scatter; they bow. The point lands with great force: there is nothing in all creation so settled, so ancient, so seemingly permanent that it does not give way before the LORD. His ways are everlasting - He alone is the truly immovable one. Even the tents of distant peoples tremble at His approach (v. 7).
Habakkuk 3:8-15Thou Didst Ride Upon Thy Chariots of Salvation
8Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? 9Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. 10The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. 11The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear. 12Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. 13Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck. Selah. 14Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. 15Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.
The vision now sweeps into the full march of the divine Warrior, and the prophet frames it with a striking question: Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? (v. 8). The question is almost rhetorical wonder. When the LORD split the sea and turned back the rivers, was it because He had some quarrel with the water itself? No - the upheaval of nature was never about nature. He rode out upon chariots of salvation, and the salvation was the point. The waters parted so that a people could pass through; the sea was driven back so that the captives could go free. Every convulsion of the natural order in the Exodus served one end: the rescue of God's people. And His coming is faithful, not arbitrary: Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word (v. 9). The drawn bow, ready for battle, is bent in keeping with the oaths God swore to His people - His warfare is the keeping of His promises. This is the deep comfort buried in all the terror of the vision: the God whose approach scatters mountains is moving, every step, to save.
Creation continues to convulse at the LORD's approach, and the language grows almost overwhelming: The mountains saw thee, and they trembled… the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high (v. 10). The mountains shudder; the great deep roars and throws up its waves like hands raised in surrender. Even the highest lights in the sky halt in their courses: The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear (v. 11). The image recalls the long day at Gibeon, when the sun and moon stood still while the LORD fought for His people; here the heavenly bodies stop in their tracks, outshone by the lightning of His arrows and the gleam of His spear. The picture is of the entire created order brought to a standstill, dwarfed, by the brightness of the LORD going out to war. And the war has a target: Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger (v. 12). He treads down the nations like a farmer threshing grain on the floor. The same coming that brings salvation to His people brings judgment on the oppressor - the two are not separate acts but a single march.
The center of the whole theophany now stands revealed, and it is salvation: Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck (v. 13). Here, at last, the purpose of all the brightness and shaking is named twice over - salvation… even for salvation. The LORD did not come out merely to display power; He came to rescue His people, and to crush the head of the house of the wicked, stripping the oppressor down to bare foundations. The imagery is of a decisive, total defeat of the enemy of God's people. The closing verses press the same point: those who came out as a whirlwind to scatter the defenseless, whose secret joy was to devour the poor, are themselves struck down (v. 14). And the vision ends back where it began, at the sea: Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters (v. 15). The LORD strides through the very waters that drowned His enemies and carried His people to freedom. The whole song of judgment is, underneath, a song of deliverance.
Habakkuk 3:16-19Yet I Will Rejoice in the LORD
16When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. 17Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.
Before the great confession of faith comes a confession of dread, and it is worth pausing on, because it shows that the joy ahead is no easy thing: When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself (v. 16). The prophet does not arrive at peace by feeling nothing. The vision of the LORD's coming has shaken him to the core - his stomach churns, his lips shake, his very bones feel as if they are rotting. This is honest terror at the holiness and power of God and at the day of trouble he knows is coming, when the invader cometh up unto the people. And yet, in the same breath, he names where it is leading: that I might rest in the day of trouble. The trembling is not the opposite of rest; it is the road to it. Having seen the LORD in all His majesty - the One who scatters mountains and rides chariots of salvation - Habakkuk can now wait quietly for the day of trouble, because he has seen who governs it. The shaking gives way to stillness. The man who trembled at the voice of God will rest in the storm of God's judgment, precisely because he knows whose hand is in it.
Now the book climbs to its summit, and there is nothing else quite like it. Habakkuk does not reach his joy by closing his eyes to the disaster; he names it, line by line, in pitiless detail: Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls (v. 17). This is total ruin. Fig, vine, olive, grain, flock, herd - every source of food and livelihood in his world, every visible support a person could lean on, gone. He pictures the worst the coming judgment could bring and writes it all down. And then comes the single most defiant word in the verse, the hinge on which the whole book turns: Yet. Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation (v. 18). Not because things are well - they are catastrophic. Not once the harvest returns - he assumes it will not. He rejoices in the LORD Himself, in the God of my salvation. Here the prophet finds the thing his joy was always meant to rest on: not the gifts of God but the God who gives them, not the harvest but the One who is Himself the harvest. When every other support is stripped away, the one that remains is found to have been enough all along.
The book closes with a confession of strength that answers the trembling of verse 16: The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places (v. 19). The man whose bones felt rotten now declares that his strength is the LORD - not his harvest, not his circumstances, not anything that famine can touch. And the picture he chooses is exquisite. A hind is a deer, and a deer's feet are made for steep and dangerous ground; it leaps surefooted along cliff faces where a person would stumble and fall. The LORD will give the prophet feet like that - the ability to stand and even to climb in the very places that should be impossible to cross. He will make me to walk upon mine high places - not to escape the heights but to walk them, steady, where the footing is worst. This is the final answer to the whole book. Habakkuk does not get a removal of the danger; he gets the strength to climb through it without falling. And the chapter ends as it began, with a musical note - To the chief singer on my stringed instruments - for this is, after everything, a song. The complaint that opened the book has become worship set to music.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Habakkuk 3 with classical commentators side by side - useful for the divine name YHWH rendered LORD throughout (vv. 2, 8, 18, 19), for elohei yish'i (v. 18, “the God of my salvation”), and for the verb of exultant rejoicing in verse 18.
- Habakkuk 3 ↔ Psalm 85 · Luke 1 · Philippians 4Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Habakkuk 3 to the rest of Scripture - the plea that God would in wrath remember mercy (v. 2) read beside mercy and truth are met together (Ps. 85:10), the LORD's coming for salvation with thine anointed (v. 13) read with the horn of salvation in the house of his servant David (Luke 1:69), and the joy that outlasts loss (vv. 17-18) read beside Rejoice in the Lord alway (Phil. 4:4).
- Habakkuk 3 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Habakkuk 3 - the musical heading upon Shigionoth (v. 1), the geography of the theophany from Teman and Paran (v. 3), the much-discussed phrase salvation with thine anointed (v. 13), and the agricultural catalogue of loss in verse 17.
Where this echoes in Scripture
O LORD, In Wrath Remember Mercy
- Deuteronomy 33:2The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran.The same geography Habakkuk reaches for in verse 3 - the LORD coming from the south, from Paran, as at the Exodus.
- Psalm 85:10Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.The answer to the plea of verse 2 - the meeting of wrath and mercy that the prophet longs for.
- Exodus 19:18mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke... and the whole mount quaked greatly.The mountain bowing before the LORD (v. 6) - the trembling of creation at His coming down.
- Psalm 18:7-9Then the earth shook and trembled... He bowed the heavens also, and came down.The same theophany - the LORD coming in glory while the earth shakes beneath Him (vv. 3-6).
- Hebrews 12:26-27Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven... that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.The truth of verse 6 - everlasting mountains scatter, but His ways alone remain unshaken.
Thou Didst Ride Upon Thy Chariots of Salvation
- Exodus 15:1-3I will sing unto the LORD... the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The LORD is a man of war.The song behind this section - the LORD as warrior who saves His people through the sea (vv. 8, 15).
- Joshua 10:13And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.The image of verse 11 - sun and moon halting while the LORD fights for His people.
- Luke 1:69-71And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David... that we should be saved.The hope of verse 13 named - the LORD raising up salvation in His anointed.
- Acts 4:27against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate... were gathered together.The Anointed of verse 13 identified - the salvation of God’s people wrought with His Anointed.
- Psalm 77:16-19The waters saw thee, O God... the depths also were troubled... thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters.The same vision - the deep trembling and the LORD’s path through the great waters (vv. 10, 15).
Yet I Will Rejoice in the LORD
- Philippians 4:11-13I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content... I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.Habakkuk’s <em>yet</em> in the New Testament - joy and contentment that rest on strength beyond circumstance (vv. 17-18).
- Philippians 4:4Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.The chosen, willed joy of verse 18 - rejoicing in the Lord regardless of the harvest.
- Psalm 18:33He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon my high places.The very promise of verse 19 - surefooted strength to stand and climb where the ground is hardest.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness... when I am weak, then am I strong.The strength of verse 19 - the LORD as strength in weakness, lifting feet onto the high places.
- Romans 5:3-5we glory in tribulations also... and hope maketh not ashamed.The same defiant joy as verses 17-18 - rejoicing held fast in the midst of trouble, not after it.