Habakkukchapter 3
19 verses · BSBHabakkuk book hub →
Speaks with:Deuteronomy 33×3Psalms 18×3Psalms 105×2Philippians 4×2Psalms 85×1Psalms 90×1
Summary
Chapter summary
A prayer set to music, with Selah and a note for the chief musician, the prophet's questions resolved into worship. 'O Jehovah, I have heard the report of thee, and am afraid… in wrath remember mercy.' Then a theophany out of Sinai and the conquest: God came from Teman, his glory covering the heavens, rays coming forth from his hand, 'and there was the hiding of his power'; mountains scattered, the deep lifting up its hands, God marching forth for the salvation of his people and of his anointed. And the ending holds without a single circumstance improving: though fig-tree, vine, olive, field, flock, and herd all fail, 'yet I will rejoice in Jehovah' (3:18).
Context
Prophecy · Habakkuk — Habakkuk overview
- A. 1–7 God came from Teman and his glory covered the heavens
- B. 8–15 You marched through the sea with your horses
- C. 16–19 Though the fig tree does not blossom, yet I will rejoice
The outline
A.God came from Teman and his glory covered the heavensvv. 1 to 7
Read vv. 1 to 7 →B.You marched through the sea with your horsesvv. 8 to 15
Read vv. 8 to 15 →C.Though the fig tree does not blossom, yet I will rejoicevv. 16 to 19
Read vv. 16 to 19 →
The world behind this chapter
Habakkuk 3The history
Chapter 3 is formally a psalm. It carries a musical heading ("upon Shigionoth"), the word Selah three times in the body, and a closing note "to the chief singer on my stringed instruments" — the same kind of directions found on psalms in the Psalter. This was written to be sung in public worship.
The middle of it is a theophany — a description of God arriving — and it is stitched together from Israel's founding memories. God comes from Teman and Mount Paran, in the south, which is Sinai country. There is pestilence and burning coals, the mountains scatter, the sun and moon stand still, the sea is divided, and the earth is threshed in anger.
The point of reaching back is that the God who is about to let Babylon in is the same God who came out of the desert with Israel in the first place. Habakkuk's prayer is: revive thy work in the midst of the years; in wrath remember mercy.
Then the tone drops from cosmic to physical. Habakkuk says his belly trembled, his lips quivered, rottenness entered his bones, and he trembled in himself — that he would rest in the day of trouble. He is not calm. He is decided.
The last lines are an agricultural inventory of total ruin: no figs, no grapes, the olive crop failed, no herd in the stall. Those were the staples of the whole economy. Losing all of them at once is losing everything.
What it meant to them
This is where a book of complaints lands, and it is not on an explanation. Habakkuk never gets one. He gets God.
"Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation" was sung by people whose fig trees really were about to fail. It taught a generation how to worship in advance of a loss they could already see coming, and how to walk on high places while the fields were bare.
Sources cited
- Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David (public domain)
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Habakkuk 3. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.