Habakkuk 3 Study Notes

3:1 The prayer of Hab 3 is a psalm to be sung to musical instruments and presented to a music director (v. 19). This psalm represents the prophet’s response to God’s message to him. The Hebrew word shigionoth refers to a type of song. Like many musical terms in the Psalms, its precise meaning is unknown; “dirge” and “song of irregular beat” are educated guesses (see note at Ps 7 title).

3:2 The report about you (or “what you have reported”) perhaps alludes to the revelation that God was punishing Judah through Babylon (1:5-11). God’s coming deeds made Habakkuk stand in awe (lit “fear”) and beg for mercy.

3:3-7 This vision portrays God marching north in power and wrath from the direction of Mount Sinai (Teman was in Edom to the south; Paran was in the wilderness of Sinai; Dt 33:2). God was casting lightning bolts (Hab 3:4), and was accompanied front and back by personified plague and pestilence. Earthquakes associated with God’s presence terrorized bedouin peoples such as the Cushan and Midian.

3:8-15 Sea (Hb yam, vv. 8,15) is the name of the pagan god Yam, who was a symbol of chaos subdued by Baal in Canaanite mythology; similarly the watery deep (Hb tehom, v. 10) was the goddess Tiamat subdued by Marduk in Babylonian mythology. The purpose of God’s march was to subdue his people’s enemies, who were symbolized by elements of nature. He will punish the wicked Babylonians and save his people and their anointed Davidic lineage, thus preserving the promise of the coming Messiah.

3:16 The Hebrew of v. 16b is ambiguous. Did the prophet await the day of distress to come against the people invading us (CSB) or “for the day of distress, for a people to come and attack us” (NJPS)? With the first rendering the prophet awaited a double distress: invasion of Judah and judgment on Babylon (vv. 13-15; 2:6-20). With the second rendering the focus is on the predicted Babylonian invasion (1:5-11). In either case, Habakkuk’s feeling of dread (my lips quivered . . . I trembled) best relates to the invasion of Judah that must come first.

3:17-19 But come what may, the prophet will trust in God, finding his strength and sure footing through faith. Yahweh is God’s personal name in the OT and is usually rendered “the Lord.” It occurs almost three hundred times following ‘adon plus a possessive (“my/our Lord”), rendered “Lord God” (cp. Gen 15:2). But here and seven other times Yahweh comes first, and the pair is rendered the Lord my Lord (Neh 10:30; Ps 8:2,10; 68:20; 109:21; 140:7; 141:8). The prophet applied to his own life the message of 2:4: “The righteous one will live by his faith.”