I am a year late in sharing this final post on our study of Habakkuk. Life spun out of control for a few weeks (VBS, perhaps?), and I simply never returned to it. I then hesitated to post anything else without adding to the unfinished series. Procrastination turned into complete forgetfulness. I apologize for the delay.
When we began our study of Habakkuk, the final verses may have been the only portion of the book that many of us were familiar with. Studying Habakkuk across ten weeks means we took it in small bites, but that’s not how it was meant to be read.
As a small book—a mere three chapters—Habakkuk chapter three is meant to be savored in the context of the whole. While being the logical conclusion to the book, the third chapter is distinct from the first two. In many ways it functions as a psalm. The opening phrase is a liturgical note, “Selah” is used three times, and the closing line is a musical direction to “the choirmaster.” So Habakkuk chapter three was meant to function in the life of Israel and now the church in the same way the psalms function. This precious chapter is a sacred prayer to which we have recourse when our hearts are troubled and weighed down by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
This chapter is “a speech addressed to God in which the prophet reflects on God’s actions on behalf of his people and realizes that the posture of faith involves continuing to trust, indeed, to rejoice, in God as the one who comes to deliver his people. Habakkuk has not yet seen a change in his position—indeed, he understands it may well get worse before it gets better—but he knows from Israel’s tradition and worship that God’s justice will ultimately be experienced. This is what he finally understands in this prayer, a prayer that in turn is presented as a challenge to those who read to appreciate its reality for them as well.” [David G. Firth, Habakkuk, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 554]
In verse 14 Habakkuk spoke of the enemy coming to scatter him. “And at that point the prophet stood as the representative of the whole people, and the enemy’s attack on him was an attack on all. Here in verse 16 we see a new focus on the prophet as the one who provides a model for all to follow.” [Frith, 558]
I hear, and my body trembles;
my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones;
my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
to come upon people who invade us.
Habakkuk’s response is like Isaiah’s when he saw the holiness of the Lord: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5) When Isaiah cried out “woe is me, for I am lost,” the word for “lost” has been translated in other versions as “undone,” and it carries the idea of disintegration. To be integrated is to be whole; to be disintegrated is to undo that integration—to come undone. Isaiah is so entirely overwhelmed by the holiness of God that it’s as if he’s coming unglued. This approximates Habakkuk’s bodily response to the approach of the Sovereign Judge of the universe, approaching in wrath to deal with the sins of both Judah and the Chaldeans causes Habakkuk to come unglued. And yet,
“However Habakkuk’s body is considered, it is like the rest of creation and cannot help but be overcome by Yahweh’s awesome coming. Yet, even though he struggles, the knowledge of Yahweh’s coming allows Habakkuk to wait with quiet confidence for Yahweh to act against those invading the nation.” [Firth, 558]
But how does one quietly wait in such dire circumstances? We find Habakkuk’s answer in 3:17–19:
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.
Judah has not been faithful and thus cannot expect to see abundance in crops or herds. But Habakkuk knows Yahweh is coming and will act against the oppressors. A period of struggle must happen, but it will not be the end. Thus Habakkuk can rejoice in Yahweh, finding joy in the God of his salvation. Although no timetable has been given, Habakkuk knows Yahweh is coming, and the prophet will exult in Yahweh’s victory. Until then, it is Yahweh who is Habakkuk’s strength, who lets him walk on high places with the certainty of a deer. It is this confidence that makes Habakkuk a model for all in Judah.
Habakkuk knows he needs to trust God in the midst of a sinful world where God’s judgment must address both his own nation and the foreign invaders, while prevailing for those who are truly his people. Through his prayer Habakkuk demonstrates how we too can fully rely on God’s justice. This is a prayer for the real world in which we live, where there are no easy solutions and where issues are complex. Because the Lord is a God of justice, he is also the God of our salvation. When God comes in power, his power is wielded with precision, expressing his justice as a surgeon wields a scalpel. This does not erase or minimize the challenges Habakkuk faces, but gives him a lifeline in the midst of them. He knows that God is enabling him to endure those challenges. Habakkuk’s faith in God’s power and justice allows him to trust God until that justice is experienced.
James Boyce suggests what makes this chapter, particularly the final verses, so forceful. “In my judgment it is the courageous way in which Habakkuk embraces all the calamities he can imagine and nevertheless triumphs over them in the knowledge and love of his Savior. He did not fear the supposed [worst case scenarios] because one greater than [these] was in the room. The greater one was the Lord. He was Habakkuk’s own personal Savior. He was the one who, he knew, would give him the necessary strength even in the most threatening times.” [James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets, Vol. 2, Micah–Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1986), 433–434]
Here’s the truth that Habakkuk and every Old Testament saint longed to look into—a new covenant representative for the covenant-breakers, the Redeemer, the sufficient Substitute, the once-for-all Sacrifice would come to rescue his people in the mighty power of God. Not as a mighty Warrior but born as a helpless infant. As he grew and lived, he was the chief delight of his heavenly Father. And yet his whole purpose in coming was to bear the awful wrath of God and satisfy his Divine Justice on behalf of sinners. You and me and everyone who believed in him would have our sins passed over and would no longer owe God our death, but our grateful lives. The night he was arrested the Lord Jesus was in such disintegrating agony over what was to happen at the cross that his sweat ran in bloody red rivulets down his face. Arrested and put through the injustice of a sham trial he was sentenced to death. He suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and at the cross, despised by men and forsaken by God, he died.
Yet here’s the thing. Like Habakkuk, once he’d prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord’s mind was at peace and he walked into his arrest, trial, and conviction as if he was commanding every move by every false actor. He was able to face the worst because he knew that this earthly life and even the awful wrath and justice which were to fall weren’t the final word. He wasn’t facing the end—he was facing the beginning. The dawn of the New Covenant realities were through the cross and the empty tomb. And so the writer of Hebrews, after listing the highlights of the faithful Old Covenant saints in chapter eleven, can declare:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)
Because of Jesus—who sympathizes with our fears and sorrows and provides more than a model for us to follow, he provides the power of his indwelling Spirit—we can run our race with endurance and anticipate the joy on the other side, when we will forever be with the Lord with no more fear, pain, loss, or death. For Jesus our beloved Savior is there waiting to welcome us, seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Therefore, we cannot but rejoice.
Grateful 