Habakkuk 3 explained: Trusting God When Everything Fails

A prayer to act again (vv. 1-2)

The heading ties this prayer to a musical term whose meaning is now lost, and Habakkuk says the old stories of God's deeds leave him in awe. He asks God to do such things again in his own troubled time, and even while punishing, to remember mercy.

God comes from the south (vv. 3-7)

Teman and Paran are desert regions south of Judah, near Edom and Sinai, so the poem pictures God arriving the way Israel's old songs said he came at Mount Sinai. Blazing light, plague, earthquakes and trembling desert tribes like Cushan and Midian show a power no one can stand against.

Warrior over sea and sky (vv. 8-11)

The poet asks whether God was angry at the waters, recalling how the sea and the Jordan River opened for Israel long ago. The sun and moon standing still echo an old battle story from Joshua's time, painted here with storm, arrows and lightning.

Crushing the enemy (vv. 12-15)

These lines are openly violent: God threshes nations like grain and kills the enemy leader with his own spear, to rescue his people and the one he anointed, most likely Israel's king or the people as a whole. Christians have sometimes read this anointed figure as pointing ahead to Jesus, though that is a later reading.

Shaking, but waiting (v. 16)

The vision leaves Habakkuk physically trembling, because he knows the Babylonian invasion is still coming. He resolves to wait quietly for the day when disaster falls on the invaders in turn.

Joy with empty fields (vv. 17-19)

He imagines total ruin for a farming people: no figs, grapes, olives, grain, sheep or cattle. Even then he chooses to rejoice in God, who makes him steady like a deer on high, rocky ground.

Key verse: Habakkuk 3:18

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether the great vision of God's coming mainly recalls past rescues like the escape from Egypt or also looks ahead to a future, final act of God.

Something to think about

When the things a person depends on all fail at once, what, if anything, could still keep them steady?