Translation & Sermon by
Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church
and Gloria Deo
Baptist Church of Manhattan, KS, 29 June 2025
Omitting greyed-out text should bring presentation time down to about 40 minutes.
We are picking up in the middle of Habakkuk chapter three. To recap the book of Habakkuk up to this point:
Chapter 1 started with Habakkuk raising concerns with God over the injustices going on in his home country of Judea as well as his concerns over the atrocities that would be committed against his people in the near future when the Chaldean army came to conquer Israel and take them into exile in Babylon.
In Chapter 2, God answered Habakkuk’s concerns by declaring that He will be both just and merciful: that He will punish the wrongdoing of the Jews – and also of the Chaldeans, but in addition to those acts of justice, God mercifully gives five warnings, calling for repentance before the judgment comes, and He also promises to give life to those who have faith in Him.
In Chapter 3, Habakkuk responds with prayer and worship toward God.
At the beginning of Habakkuk’s prayer in chapter 3, he remembers God’s past deliverances of His people from danger and God’s past demonstrations of His presence with - and revelations of His glory to - His people.
Verse 3 quotes from Deuteronomy 33:1-2, recalling God’s appearance at Mount Sinai and His presence with Israel through the wilderness.
Then it turns to quote from the Psalms of David during the Golden Age of Israel when God delivered His people from their enemies.
And in v.4, Habakkuk turns to the image of brilliant light, representing the power and glory of God in His dealings with mankind throughout history.
Now, where we are coming in, at verse 5, Habakkuk switches from remembering God’s past deliverances of His people, to remembering God’s past judgments upon those who were not His people.
If there is to be justice in this world, and if there is to be salvation for the people God loves, then there has to be punishment of the wicked. Yet, in the midst of a tumultuous world, it can be easy for us to begin to wonder if God will ever really punish evil and save us. Those who give up on God (and stop trusting Him to bring salvation and justice) will end up taking those things into their own hands and will try to control everything themselves, and they will end up losing everything for eternity. The stakes are perilously high!
How can believers keep up their hope in God in the midst of a world which seems terribly unjust and oppressive?
Ephesians 2:8 tells us that faith in God’s salvation is itself a gift from God, but what can we do to keep walking in that faith?
For our part, we can fortify our trust in God to fairly punish evil, by remembering times throughout history when God has already punished evil.
Habakkuk (like many of the prophets before him) sets an example for us by reviewing some of the great judgments of God throughout history so that he can keep trusting God in the midst of his own tumultuous times.
Please
follow along in your Bibles as I read Habakkuk 3:1-8:
{A
prayer in the reel-genre, by Habakkuk the prophet.} Yahweh, I have
listened to Your briefing; I have been afraid. Yahweh, Your work, in
the midst of the years, keep it alive - in the midst of the years,
make it known. During the turmoil, let it be mercy that You
remember! God comes from Teman – even the Holy One from Mount
Paran. SELAH
His majesty has covered the heavens, and His
praise filled the earth. Indeed, rays from His hand become bright as
light for Him, yet a hiding of strength is there. Before His face
goes disease, and fever goes forth at His feet. He stood and
measured the earth. He looked and undid nations. Even the
longstanding mountains were broken to bits; the everlasting hills
sagged low. The ways that are everlasting belong to Him. I saw the
tents of Cushan in trouble; the tent-curtains of the land of Midian
trembled. Was it with the rivers that Yahweh was incensed –
whether Your anger was at the rivers, or whether Your venting was at
the sea – when You rode Your vehicles of salvation on Your horses?
Habakkuk presents “exhibit A” of God’s judgment against the wicked in v.5
I believe that v. 5 recalls the plagues that God sent against Egypt back in the book of Exodus1. Both of the key nouns in v. 5 (“disease/pestilence” & “fever/burning coals/plague”) are listed among those 10 Plagues2:
The first word is in Exodus 9:3 “[B]ehold, the hand of the LORD will be on your cattle... a very severe pestilence.” (NKJV)
And the second word (which means “to burn,” thus the King James translation “burning coals,” although I prefer the New King James translation “fever” here) is found in Psalm 78:42-52, also describing the plagues of Egypt: “...He worked His signs in Egypt, And His wonders in the field of Zoan; Turned their rivers into blood, And their streams, that they could not drink. He sent swarms of flies among them, which devoured them, And frogs, which destroyed them. He also gave their crops to the caterpillar, And their labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, And their sycamore trees with frost. He also gave up their cattle to the hail, And their flocks to fiery lightning. He cast on them the fierceness of His anger, Wrath, indignation, and trouble, By sending angels of destruction among them. He made a path for His anger; He did not spare their soul from death, But gave their life over to the plague, And destroyed all the firstborn in Egypt, The first of their strength in the tents of Ham. But He made His own people go forth like sheep, And guided them in the wilderness like a flock…” (NKJV)
However, God’s ability to punish the wicked with sickness was not exhausted at the Exodus from Egypt. After Israel escaped from Egypt, God promised to send both of these same sicknesses upon His own people if they rebelled against His covenant in the future.
“disease/pestilence” is listed in Leviticus, Numbers, and in Deuteronomy among the curses which would fall upon covenant-breakers in Israel.3
And “fever/plague” is also found in the curses against breaking covenant with God in Deuteronomy 32:24 “They shall be wasted with hunger, Devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction...” (NKJV)
This was no idle threat: These curse actually came upon the Israelites after King David’s great sin in 2 Samuel 24:15 (cf. Ps. 78:50), and again in Jeremiah 21:6-9 after Israel’s unrepentant idol-worship, when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, and many Israelites died of these diseases4.
Later on, in the New Testament book of Revelation, the “seven plagues” of chapter 15 factor largely in the final judgment. Speaking of the end-time world empire united against God, Revelation 18:8 says, “...her plagues5 will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her.” (NKJV)
No wonder Habakkuk prayed, “O LORD… In wrath remember mercy!”
If there’s anything Habakkuk does, it is to remind us that no matter what the present or future holds, we must be in communication with God and siding with God rather than putting our hopes in any of the human systems operating so overwhelmingly around us.
Verse 6 verse gets translated in a variety of ways, but if you lay it out in phrases, the emphasis becomes clear: the supremacy of God6 shows up in every phrase:
In the first phrase, it doesn’t matter what translation you read, if God is “measuring,” “surveying,” or “shaking” the “land/earth,” in every case, God is the one exercising control. The earth is not ultimate; God is!
In the second phrase, it doesn’t matter whether God “unleashed,” “drove asunder,” “startled,” or “shook” the “nations,” no matter how you translate it, God is running this show and judging the “nations” – not the other way around!
And God is not aloof to what’s going on in the “earth” among the “nations;” He is “standing” right there, “seeing” what’s going on, and He is doing something about it!
In the next phrases, the venerable age of the mountains and the hills is emphasized, but does that make them greater than God? No!
It’s true that Habakkuk uses words that can mean “forever/everlasting/eternal” in the phrases describing the “mountains” and the “hills,” but in Hebrew, the words ‘ad and ‘olem originally meant “time out of mind,” so it can mean “a long time” or it can mean “forever,” and you have to use the context to decide whether eternity or a long stretch of time is intended.
In this case, the whole structure of the verse points to the fact that the long-standing nature of “nations” and of the “earth” and its “mountains” and “hills,” does not compare to the even-more-longstanding, eternal nature of God’s “ways.7”
Habakkuk says in v.6 that even the “everlasting/perpetual/ancient/eternal/age-old” “mountains” and “hills” eventually “crumble,” “collapse,” and “sink,” or “are broken to bits” and “scattered.”
But what is the one thing that Habakkuk says remains unchanged “forever”? The “ways” of the LORD!
Habakkuk has already mentioned God being before all things in time, in chapter 1 v.12, “You've been around since long before8, Yahweh, my God, my Holy One, have You not? ...” (Hab. 1:12, NAW)
And long before Habakkuk, Moses observed this in Psalm 90:2, “Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” (NKJV)
“God possessed every power to subdue the earth to himself... [H]e could at His will destroy it, yea, dissolve mountains as well as nations.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD
Orienting your life around the “earth” or around a “nation” means organizing it around something that is eventually going to decay and disappear. Only the life that is oriented toward the “ways” of the Lord will experience justice and salvation “eternally.”
Now, are there specific events of judgment and salvation in the Bible to which Habakkuk is referring by these phrases?
Some see in God’s “standing,” “measuring,” “looking” and “scattering” the “nations” and the “hills” a reference to Joshua’s survey of the Promised Land, and the driving out of the ancient Canaanite nations, and the allotment of the land to the 12 tribes of Israel9.
And, while that fits neatly with the other historical events referenced (and with the theme of God’s sovereign justice), Habakkuk doesn’t use the same vocabulary that the book of Joshua uses, so I don’t think we can say that it is for sure about the events of God’s judgment upon the Canaanites in the book of Joshua.10
I don’t think the language of v.6 is specific enough to refer to any particular historical event, but it does fit generally with the many passages of scripture which describe God and His ways, for instance:
Micah 5:4 “Then he [the Anointed One] will stand and shepherd in the strength of Yahweh, in the majesty of the name of Yahweh His God, and they will /be returned\ because now He will be great unto the ends of the earth!” (NAW)
Micah 1:4-5 “Then the mountains will melt11 beneath Him… because of the rebellion of Jacob...” (NAW)
Revelation 5:6 “And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood12 a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (NKJV)
And He says in Hebrews 12:26 “Once more I myself am shaking [not only] the earth [but] also heaven.” (NAW)
And, as to “causing hills to sink low,” Isaiah wrote of the city of Jerusalem, which was built on an ancient “hill”: Isaiah 25:12 “[T]he high fortification of your walls He has brought down, laid low, and cast to the earth, until they are dust… 26:5 For He has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays her low, lays her low to the ground, casts her to the dust.” (NAW, cf. 29:4)
So, if God’s “ways” are “everlasting,” it is His ways we should be following, right?13
The Prophet Jeremiah wrote of the problem of people following their own ways instead of God’s ways, bringing down the wrath of God upon them: Jeremiah 18:15 “...My people have forgotten Me, They have burned incense to worthless idols. And they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways [דרך], From the ancient paths [שְׁבִילֵי], To walk in [by]ways [נתִיבוֹת] and not on a highway14” (NKJV, cf. 6:16, 50:5) The “ancient paths” and “raised-bed-highway” in Jeremiah 18:15 are the same as “everlasting ways of God” of which Habakkuk speaks.
If God’s “ways” are merciful toward those who “live by faith” in Him, as Habakkuk indicates, then it should be a no-brainer to seek God’s ways!
Habakkuk’s wording of the phrase “everlasting ways” is unique to the Old Testament, but Psalm 139 ends with another phrase that means essentially the same thing: “lead me in the way [דרך] everlasting” And, using the same synonym, Isaiah 64:5 says, “You interposed the one who is glad and does righteousness; in Your ways they will remember You. As for You, You were angry, and we sinned; but in them [that is, ‘in Your ways’] forever we will be saved.” (NAW)
This phrase15 is all over the Bible
Deuteronomy 8:6 "Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him… 28:9 The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways.” (NKJV, cf. 19:9, 26:17, 30:16)
1 Kings 2:3 “...keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways…” (NKJV, cf. 3:14, 11:33 &38)
Psalm 81:13 “Oh, that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways! ... 128:1 Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, Who walks in His ways.” (NKJV, cf. 119:3, Zech. 3:7)
Then in the New Testament, in John 1:23 John the Baptizer said: "I am 'THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS: "MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD," ' as the prophet Isaiah said." (NKJV) And what did John say characterized the “way of the Lord”? Repentance (Mark 1:15) from rebellion against God and believing (John 1:7) in the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
And because of this, Christianity was called “the Way” in the book of Acts16.
In v.7, Habakkuk recalls two more times when God brought judgment against wicked oppressors, this time from the book of Judges.
In both cases, the living quarters of these wicked people are referred to as “tents” which were made out of “curtains,” In many parts of the world (especially among peoples who make their living herding cattle) they live in nice, tent-like dwellings that use heavy curtains for walls, so, in the case of Cushan, it could be referring to his home, but in the case of the Midianites, the Biblical specifically refers to their army living in “tents” when they came to attack Israel.
The kind of “affliction/distress/trouble” that Cushan was in, is an unusual use of the Hebrew word normally translated “iniquity/evil/wrongdoing;” here it is describing a consequence of Cushan’s “iniquity/wrongdoing,” not the “affliction/stress” of unjust oppression. This is describing a historical instance where God punished Cushan for doing wrong.
So who is Cushan? The only other time in the Hebrew Bible that this name appears is in Judges 3:7-11 “So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs. Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia [a region to the north of Israel]; and the children of Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim eight years. When the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer... Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the LORD delivered Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand… So the land had rest…” (NKJV)17
Habakkuk also recalls in v.7 the time when “the tent-curtains of Midian trembled”18.
Midian was Southeast of Israel.
Judges chapter 6 tells how Israel fell into idol-worship again after Othniel’s judgeship and was conquered by Midianites who took all of Israel’s animals and food, so the Israelites prayed once again for God to save them, and God raised up Gideon as Judge and Deliverer. Gideon destroyed an idol-worship site, then mobilized an Israelite army with only 300 men. God told Gideon that if he wanted to hear something encouraging, he should sneak into the army camp of the Midianites one night,
so in Judges 7:11-23 “...he went down with Purah his servant to the outpost of the armed men who were in the [Midianite army] camp. Now the Midianites and Amalekites, all the people of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude. And when Gideon had come, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. He said, ‘I have had a dream: To my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian; it came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned, and the tent collapsed.’ Then his companion answered and said, ‘This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel! Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp.’ And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel, and said, ‘Arise, for the LORD has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand.’ ... [So they came around the Midianite army camp that night and] When the three hundred blew the trumpets, the LORD set every man's sword against his companion throughout the whole camp; and the army fled... And the men of Israel gathered together from Naphtali, Asher, and all Manasseh, and pursued the Midianites...” and they killed the princes and kings of the Midianites. Judges 8:28 concludes, “Thus Midian was subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted their heads no more. And the country was quiet for forty years in the days of Gideon.” (NKJV)
The great 19th century Oxford commentator on the Minor Prophets, E. B. Pusey noted that “Tents and curtains are emblems of what shall pass away…” and that “Both the kingdom of [Cushan and of] Midian disappear from history after those great defeats… leaving their name[s] as a proverb for the utter destruction of those who sought to exterminate the people of God. ‘Do unto them as unto the Midianites’ [wrote Asaph in] Psalm 83:9 ... and Isaiah 9:4 ‘[You have broken... the rod of his oppressor] as in the day of Midian.’”
This history reminds us that God can easily dismantle any system of evil that threatens those who love Him, and destroy it so completely that it will never threaten you again.
“[T]he Prophet spoke of the king of Cushan and of the Midianites, in order to strengthen the minds of the godly, and to set before their eyes the continued aid of God, so that they might venture to feel assured that He would not act otherwise towards the Church, to the end of the world, than what He had done from the beginning… that they might know these to be so many proofs and pledges of God’s favor towards them, and that they might thus cheerfully look for His aid, and not succumb to temptation in their adversities.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD
Although there is no other verse in the Bible which combines any of these three words in verse 8 for “anger” with the word for “rivers,” the root of one of these three words in v.8 for “anger” (aph – which literally means “nostrils” and is related to how people tend to flare their nostrils when they get angry) is used in Exodus 15:8 and 2 Samuel 22:16 with the word for “sea” in their description of the “blast of breath from [God’s] nostrils” which parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to escape from slavery in Egypt.
Likewise, nowhere else in the Bible do we find “chariots” or “horses” related to “salvation/victoriousness,” yet all three words (plus the words for “sea” and the “nostril/anger” word) do show up together in the song that Moses and the Israelites sang after they escaped from Pharaoh’s army across the Red Sea in Exodus 15:1-10 “I will sing to the LORD, For He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea! The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him... Pharaoh's chariots and his army He has cast into the sea… And with the blast of Your nostrils The waters were gathered together; The floods stood upright like a heap… You blew with Your wind, The sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters.” (NKJV)
So I think Habakkuk is alluding to this passage of scripture and asking a thought-provoking question that lies at the heart of his message: “Was it because God was mad at the Red Sea that He blew against it and stopped it up?” The obvious answer is, “NO! It was because God was acting to save His people.”19 In other words, what may have looked like a scary act of judgment against the sea in the eyes of an Egyptian, when instead seen with the eyes of Israel’s faith, was actually a very encouraging event in history that reminds us that God loves His people and will intervene in world events to save them! And it is one of many events in which God expressed both judgment against wicked oppressors and simultaneously salvation and deliverance for the people who acknowledged Him as their God and lived by faith.
A similar situation happened at the Jordan River when Joshua crossed over into the Promised Land with the Israelites, so maybe that’s why Habakkuk throws the word for “river” in there too for good measure. Psalm 114 also mentions these two water crossings together20.
Habakkuk’s reference to the LORD “riding” “chariots” is a way of helping us realize that God is really on-the-move and has easy access to us21:
Psalm 104:3b “...He makes the clouds His chariot, Who walks on the wings of the wind,” (NKJV)
Psalm 68:17 “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, Even thousands of thousands; The Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the Holy Place.” (NKJV, cf. 2 Kings 6:15)
Deuteronomy 33:26 “There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, Who rides the heavens to help you, And in His excellency on the clouds.” (NKJV)
“God's chariots are not so much chariots of state to Himself as chariots of salvation to His people; it is His glory to be Israel's Saviour.” ~M. Henry, 1714 AD
You may look around you now and feel like God is far away from you and He never does anything to help you, that things are going from bad to worse and God doesn’t even care, but those are all lies from Satan.
It is not true that God doesn’t care and that He’s not going to do anything for you or that you should despair.
The Bible everywhere presents God as an active person who loves and cares for His people, Who acts to save those who believe on Him, and Who punishes evil. That’s the truth!
But it takes discipline to ‘live by faith’ and believe what Scripture says instead of what your eyes see.
“God’s dealings with His former people were as much ensamples of what should be with us (1 Cor. 1:11) as the visions shewn to the prophets… God’s purpose therein aforetime was not as to the sea or the rivers, but for the salvation of His elect; so shall it be to the end.” ~E. B. Pusey, 1880 AD
In Habakkuk 2:4, the great maxim was set out that “the just will live by faith.”
Here in chapter 3, Habakkuk demonstrates that one of the ways we live by faith is by remembering the works of judgment and salvation which God has done in the past in order to sharpen our faith that God will bring justice and salvation in His perfect timing in the future, despite the tumult of present-day events.
As an Old Testament believer, all Habakkuk had to look back on historically was judgments like the 10 Plagues on Egypt, Joshua’s conquering of the unspeakably-wicked Canaanites, and the victories of the Judges and Kings of Israel.
We, who live thousands of years later, have even more instances of God’s judgment against evil that we can recall from history:
things like the Babylonian captivity imposed on the Jews for their idolatry shortly after Habakkuk’s time,
the Roman destruction of Jerusalem for rejecting the Messiah in 70 AD,
and other more-recent events in the histories of our modern nations,
as well as the cataclysmic judgments prophecied in the book of Revelation,
and more individual judgments that God did for the benefit of the New Testament church, in the book of Acts, like
making King Herod be eaten by parasitic worms for encouraging people to worship him as a god (12:23),
making Ananias and Saphira “fall down and breathe their last” for telling lies in church (5:1-10),
and striking Elymas blind for trying to distract a governor in Cyprus from listening to the gospel (13:6-11).
If we can remember these instances of God’s judgment against the enemies of the New Testament church, we can reassure ourselves that God will not neglect to bring justice against our enemies too, as we trust Him.
But we also must remember the crowing event of God’s judgment against sin which was also the crowning event of God’s salvation in history, namely, the crucifixion of Jesus around 30AD, when, in order to accomplish the salvation of the sinful humans God loved, God the Father placed on His Son all the guilt of our iniquity (Isaiah 53:6ff) and punished Jesus with unimaginable eternal death while He was on the cross.
Listen to the example of the Apostle Paul in his letter to Titus 2:11-14. Notice how he remembers the crucifixion of Jesus in order to strengthen His confidence in God’s coming judgment and salvation: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (KJV) Part of ‘living soberly’ and ‘denying ungodliness’ in the tumultuous events of our present day is the mental discipline of recalling to mind God’s acts of judgment and salvation in the past, just as Paul and Habakkuk and the other Apostles and Prophets did, in order to trust Jesus to save you and to trust Jesus to establish justice in His perfect timing.
So remember God’s acts of judgment in the past and hold fast to your hope in the Lord!
DouayB
|
LXXC |
BrentonD
|
KJVE |
NAW |
Masoretic HebrewF |
3
God will come from the south,
and the holy one from mount Pharan: X
His glory
covered the heavens, and the earth |
3 ὁ θεὸς ἐκ ΘαιμανG ἥξει, καὶ ὁ ἅγιος ἐξ ὄρους κατασκίου [δασέος]H. διάψαλμα. ἐκάλυψεν οὐρανοὺς ἡ ἀρετὴI αὐτοῦ, καὶ αἰνέσεως αὐτοῦ πλήρης ἡ γῆJ. |
3
God shall come from Thaeman, and the Holy
One from the [dark
shady] mount
Pharan.
Pause. 4 His excellence
covered
the heavens, and the earth |
3
God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah.
His glory covered the
heavens, and the earth |
3
God comes from Teman – even the Holy One from Mount Paran.
SELAH |
(ג) אֱלוֹהַK מִתֵּימָןL יָבוֹא וְקָדוֹשׁ מֵהַר פָּארָןM סֶלָהN כִּסָּה שָׁמַיִם הוֹדוֹ וּתְהִלָּתוֹ מָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ. |
4
X His
brightness
shall be as the light: horns are |
4
καὶ φέγγος
αὐτοῦ ὡς φῶς ἔσται, κέρατα |
And
his brightness
shall be as light; there were horns |
4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of [his] power. |
4 Indeed, rays from His hand become bright as light for Him, yet a hiding of strength is there. |
(ד) וְנֹגַהּ כָּאוֹרP תִּהְיֶהQ קַרְנַיִםR מִיָּדוֹ לוֹS וְשָׁםT חֶבְיוֹןU עֻזֹּה. |
5
Death
shall go before his face. And the |
5
πρὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ πορεύσεται
|
5
Before his face shall go a |
5 Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. |
5 Before His face goes disease, and fever goes forth at His feet. |
|
6
He stood and measured
the earth. He beheld, and melted
the nations: and the ancient
mountains were
crushed to pieces. The hills of
the world |
6 ἔστη, καὶ ἐσαλεύθη ἡ γῆ· ἐπέβλεψεν, καὶ διετάκη ἔθνη. διεθρύβη τὰ ὄρη βίᾳ, ἐτάκησαν βουνοὶ αἰώνιοι. 7 πορείας αἰωνίας αὐτοῦ |
6 the earth X stood … and trembled: he beheld, and the nations melted away: the X mountains were violently burst through, the everlasting hills melted at his everlasting going forth. |
6 He 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. |
6 He stood and measured the earth. He looked and undid nations. Even the longstanding mountains were broken to bits; the everlasting hills sagged low. The ways that are everlasting belong to Him. |
(ו) עָמַד וַיְמֹדֶדAA אֶרֶץ רָאָה וַיַּתֵּרAB גּוֹיִם וַיִּתְפֹּצְצוּAC הַרְרֵי עַדAD שַׁחוּ גִּבְעוֹת עוֹלָםAE הֲלִיכוֹתAF עוֹלָם לוֹ. |
7 I saw the tents of Ethiopia for [their] iniquity, the curtains of the land of Madian shall [be] troubled. |
ἀντὶ κόπων εἶδον· σκηνώματα Αἰθιόπων πτοηθήσονται [καὶ] αἱ σκηναὶ γῆς Μαδιαμ. |
7 Because of trouble[s] I looked upon the tents of the Ethiopians: the tabernacles [also] of the land of Madiam shall [be] dismayed. |
7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. |
7 I saw the tents of Cushan in trouble; the tent-curtains of the land of Midian trembled. |
(ז) תַּחַת אָוֶןAG רָאִיתִי אָהֳלֵי כוּשָׁןAH יִרְגְּזוּןAI יְרִיעוֹת אֶרֶץ מִדְיָן. |
8 Wast thou angry, O Lord, with the rivers? or was thy wrath upon the rivers? or thy indignation in the sea? Who will ride upon thy horses: [and] thy chariots are salvation. |
8 μὴ ἐν ποταμοῖς ὠργίσθης, κύριε, ἢ ἐν ποταμοῖς ὁ θυμός σου, ἢ ἐν θαλάσσῃ τὸ ὅρμημά σου; ὅτι ἐπιβήσῃ ἐπὶ τοὺς ἵππους σου, [καὶ] ἡ ἱππασία σου σωτηρία. |
8 Wast thou angry, O Lord, with the rivers? or was thy wrath against the rivers, or thine anger against the sea? for thou wilt mount on thine horses, [and] thy chariots are salvation. |
8
Was the LORD displeased
against the rivers? |
8 Was it with the rivers that Yahweh was incensed - whether Your anger was at the rivers, or whether Your venting was at the sea - when You rode Your vehicles of salvation on Your horses? |
(ח)הֲבִנְהָרִים חָרָה יְהוָה אִםAJ בַּנְּהָרִים אַפֶּךָ אִם בַּיָּםAK עֶבְרָתֶךָAL כִּיAM תִרְכַּב עַלAN סוּסֶיךָ AO מַרְכְּבֹתֶיךָ יְשׁוּעָהAP. |
1Rabbi Joseph Kimchi thought it alluded to the Israelites who died in the wilderness, but the focus here is not on God punishing His own people. Ibn Ezra thought it referred to the conquering of the Canaanites, but Joshua’s conquests are not referred to anywhere else in the Bible in terms of disease epidemiology. Calvin agreed with me that “this is to be referred to the Egyptians.” So did M. Henry: “Before Him went the pestilence, which slew all the first-born of Egypt in one night; and burning coals went forth at His feet, when, in the plague of hail, there was fire mingled with hail...”
2Firth’s suggestion that they could refer to deities is unbelievable in a text written to glorify Yahweh and extol His miracles.
3Lev. 26:23-26 “If, even by these, y'all are not disciplined back to me and y'all keep walking defiantly in relation to me, then I – yes I – will walk defiantly in relation to y'all, and I – even I – will strike y'all sevenfold because of y'all's sins, and I will cause a sword to come upon y'all avenging the vengeance of the covenant, and though y'all may be gathered into your cities even then I will send a plague into the midst of y'all, and y'all will be given into the hand of the enemy.” (NAW, Cf. Deut. 28:21, Num. 14:12)
4See also Numbers 16:46 “... wrath has gone out from the LORD. The plague [נגף] has begun.” (NKJV)
5Πληγαὶ - although there is clear correlation throughout the Bible between plagues and God’s judgments, it is hard to correlate this word in Rev. 18:8 with the Greek translation of Hab. 3:5 because the LXX is confused, containing the words λόγος (“word” – a translation of a homonym of Habakkuk’s Hebrew word for “disease”) and πεδίλοις (“in sandals” – which is based on switching the last two letters of Habakkuk’s Hebrew word). The Salkinson-Ginsberg Hebrew NT uses the word תַּחֲלֻאֶי in Rev. 18:8 (and מַגֵּפוֹת to speak of the plagues in Rev. 15:1ff), whereas Habakkuk’s words were דָּבֶר and רֶשֶׁף.
6Lehrman: “Its theme is the infinite might of God which provided assurance that His will must prevail… it signifies the certain doom of tyrannical Babylon.”
7Pusey: “‘Everlasting’ is set over against ‘everlasting,’ The ‘everlasting’ of the creature, that which had been as long as creation had been… over against these stands the ever-present eternity of God… ‘God ever worketh, and ever resteth; unchangeable, yet changing all; He changeth His works, His purpose unchanged.’[quoting Augustine, Confessions 1.4]”
8מִקֶּדֶם – compare with the synonym used in Hab. 3:7 (and in Psalm 90:2) - עוֹלָם.
9Viz. Calvin and Henry. Firth, on the other hand, saw it only as a picture of the “insignificance” and powerlessness of the created order before Yahweh.
10Cf. Pusey: “Habakkuk, in one vast panorama, as it were, without distinction of time or series of events, exhibits the future in pictures of the past…. Habakkuk renews the imagery in the Song of Moses, in Deborah’s Song, and in David...”
11The LXX of this verse uses the same Greek verb concerning the mountains that the LXX of Habakkuk 3:6 did, but it is a different Hebrew word מסס (compare with פצץ in Hab. 3:6).
12Steven also mentions Jesus “standing” in heaven in Acts 7:56.
13Calvin reasonably interpreted and applied this as God’s “ways” by which He saves His people rather than the ways of His character which His people follow: “the wonderful means which God is wont to adopt for the defense of His Church... in opposition to those means which are known and usual... God has... means unknown to us by which He can deliver us from death, whenever it may please him.” M. Henry agreed, writing, “[A]ll the motions of His providence are according to His eternal counsels; and He is the same for ever, that which He was yesterday and today. His covenant is unchangeable, and His mercy endures for ever.” Owen of Thrussington, on the other hand, applied it primarily to God’s work at Creation because of the words that emphasize antiquity.
14The Hebrew word סְלוּלָה is different from Habakkuk’s word הֲלִיכוֹת, but the LXX word in both passages is the same.
15with derekim instead of haliykot
16Acts 9:2, 18:25, 19:9 & 23, and 24:14 & 22.
17About half of the commentators I consulted interpreted it differently to indicate a people group living on the Sinai Peninsula at the time of the Exodus, but I find that unlikely. Further details in Endnotes.
18So had Asaph (Ps. 83:9) and Isaiah (9:4, 10:26) before him.
19cf. Jerome (c. 400 AD): “Thou didst dry up the Jordan and the Red Sea fighting for us, for Thou wert not wroth with the rivers or the sea, nor could things without sense offend Thee, so now mounting Thy chariots and taking Thy bow, Thou wilt give salvation to Thy people…” (translated from Latin by Pusey?) and Calvin: “Who can imagine God to be so unreasonable as to disturb the sea and to change the nature of things, when a certain order has been established by His own command? Why should He dry the sea, except He had something in view, even the deliverance of his Church?” (translated from French by John Owen of Thrussington) Most commentators seem to agree with this interpretation.
20Psalm 114:3-5 “The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back… What ails you, O sea, that you fled? O Jordan, that you turned back?" (NKJV)
21I
am struck by the similarity of the late Brian Wilson’s boast with
the Beach Boys song, “I Get Around,” to the reality of God’s
mobility extolled in these verses. It would be an interesting study
to consider mobility as a divine attribute which man emulates
in his quest to replace God.
On another level, Pusey followed
Jerome in correlating Christian evangelists with the “chariots of
God,” as carriers of God’s good news, bringing “salvation”
to the lost. While reasonable from a N.T. standpoint, it doesn’t
seem likely that Habakkuk intended this meaning in his context.
AMy
original chart includes the following copyrighted English versions:
NASB, NIV, ESV, Bauscher’s English translation of the Peshitta,
and Cathcart’s English translation of the Targums, but I remove
these columns from my public, non-copyrighted edition of this chart
so as not to infringe on their copyrights. NAW is my translation.
When a translation adds words not in the Hebrew text, but does not
indicate it has done so by the use of italics or greyed-out text, I
put the added words in [square brackets]. When one version chooses a
wording which is different from all the other translations, I
underline it. When a version chooses a translation which, in
my opinion, either departs too far from the root meaning of the
Hebrew word or departs too far from the grammar form of the original
text, I use strikeout. And when a version omits a
word which is in the original text, I insert an X. I also place an X
at the end of a word if the original word is plural but the English
translation is singular. I occasionally use colors to help the
reader see correlations between the various editions and versions
when there are more than two different translations of a given word.
The only known Dead Sea Scrolls containing Habakkuk 3 are the Nahal
Hever Greek scroll (containing parts of vs. 8-15 and dated
around 25BC), and the Wadi Muraba’at Scroll (containing parts of
verses 1-19 and dated around 135 AD). Where the DSS is legible and
in agreement with the MT, the MT is colored purple.
Where the DSS, LXX, Vulgate, Peshitta, and Targums show significant
agreement in diverging from the MT, I have highlighted
them
with yellow, along
with their translations into English, and where I have accepted that
into my NAW translation, I have marked it with /forward and backward
slashes\.
BDouay Old Testament first published by the English College at Douay, A.D. 1609, Revised and Diligently Compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner, Published in 1582, 1609, 1752. As published on E-Sword.
C“Septuagint” Greek Old Testament, edited by Alfred Rahlfs. Published in 1935. As published on E-Sword.
DEnglish translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, 1851, “based upon the text of the Vaticanus” but not identical to the Vaticanus. As published electronically by E-Sword.
E1769 King James Version of the Holy Bible; public domain. As published electronically by E-Sword.
FFrom
the Wiki Hebrew Bible
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%94_%D7%90/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA.
DSS text comes from https://downloads.thewaytoyahuweh.com
GAmong the 2nd C. Greek translators, Aquila, Symmachus, & E support “Teman,” while Theodotian supported “south.”
HAll the 2nd Century Greek versions read instead with the proper name “Pharan.” As is often the case with an uncertainty in translation, the LXX set two words out to translate the name “Pharan.”
IAquila and Theodotian translated with the synonym ευπρεπειαν (“beauty”).
JAq. & Theod. translated with the synonym οικουμενη (“habitable world”).
KIn Deut. 33:2, the word is YHWH; here it is an unusual, singular form of “God.” Pusey raised the point that the singular sometimes refers to “Godhead,” but he dismissed any particular significance by declaring it “mostly a peculiarity of the book of Job; the other 16 cases are sporadic and in no one sense.”
LThe Aramaic and Latin versions translated this word “south,” which is its meaning in all but 10 verses in the Bible: it is the name of one of Esau’s sons in Genesis and Chronicles, and it is a city in Edom named after that prince in a quartet of prophecies against Edom by Amos (1:12), Jeremiah (49:7-22), Obadiah (1:9), and Ezekiel (25:12-14).
MMt. Paran is an ancient name for Mt. Sinai. The Sinai Peninsula is called the Wilderness of Paran in the book of Genesis (21:21). In Numbers (13:3,26) and Deuteronomy (1:1), it is the name of the area the Israelites went through to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, specifically past the wilderness of Sinai (Num. 10:12) and past Sinaitic Hazeroth (12:16). In Deut. 33:2, it is in parallel with Sinai and Seir (roughly the wilderness territory between Sinai and Edom, according to Easton’s Bible Dictionary). Pusey suggested it could instead be Mt. Serbal or Jebel Magrah, closer to the south of Israel, but then wrote, “Teman and Mount Paran are named probably, as the two opposed boundaries of the journeyings of Israel through the desert.” (They might be more precisely called the penultimate terminals on both sides of the journey.) Keil directly contradicted him by equating the two locations: “‘[F]rom Teman’ and ‘from the mountain of Paran’ are expressions denoting, not two starting-points, but simply two localities of one single starting-point for His appearance...”
NHere’s
what commentators said about the SELAH when it first occurred in
Psalm 3:
• Patrick: “…cannot be certainly known…
omit this word”
• Calvin: “…denotes the lifting up
of the voice in harmony...”
• Venema: elevation of the
voice in singing the Psalm. (cf. Rabbi Kimchi)
• Wocher,
Coxe: sursum corda — “up, my soul!”
• Altrug:
repetition of the word immediately preceding.
•
Mathewson: musical notation - perhaps “repeat.”
•
Targums, Mishna, Aquila, Syriac: “forever”
•
Augustine: “interval of silence”
• Ibn Ezra, Cohen:
“pause”
• Alexander: “a pause in the sense as well
as the performance"
• Luther: “silence”
• Herder: “change of note”
• Spurgeon: “re-tune
the harps”
• Gesenius, Delitzsch: “Let the
instruments play and the singers stop”
• Sommor:
“trumpet blast” accompanies “appeal/summons to Jehovah”
• Plumer: “designed to fix the minds of the godly on the
matter which has just been spoken of…
as well as to
regulate the singing in such a manner as to make the music
correspond to the … sentiment.”
OSecond Century Greek versions are more like the MT tradition with some form of the verb for “hiding” (-κρυπτ-) followed by the word for “strength” (‘ισχυ-). Here is an odd case where the meaning of the one Hebrew word for “strength” was not in question, but the LXX rendered it two different ways.
PPusey considered this to be the “brightness... wherein God dwelleth… in inapproachable light.”
QNET Bible’s translation, “He is as brilliant as…,” is faulty because “is” is feminine, not masculine.
RUsually translated “horns,” this word is not translated “rays” anywhere else in English translations, but it makes sense. Calvin suggested it meant “power,” but his English translator disagreed, citing Drusius, Marckius, Newcome, and Henderson [and I might add Keil] in support of “rays.” Pusey refuted Keil’s (and Delitzsch’s) suggestion that “from His hand” could be interpreted “at His side.”
SThere is a major disjunctive punctuation here in the MT. The question is, to what does “[belonging] to him” attach? All the English versions attach it to the first word in this verse (even though there are four intervening words) and translate it “His brightness/radiance/splendor.” NET added the word “coming” and NASB, NIV, & ESV added the word “flashing” – neither of these added words are in the original text.
TLXX and Peshitta interpreted as though this were the verb “to put,” which is a possibility in the original unpointed Hebrew text. Vulgate and Targums (followed by English versions) interpreted it according to the MT pointing as “there.”
UHapex Legomenon; its verb form חבה appears in Josh. 2:16, 1Ki. 22:25, 2Ki. 7:12, Isa. 26:20, and Jer. 49:10, where it is consistently translated “hide.” LXX reads as though there were an aleph prefixed to the Hebrew word, changing it to “love.”
VThe Hebrew word (before the 9th century Masoretic pointing) can mean “word/message,” but here, the 2nd C. Greek versions are more like the MT tradition than the LXX - “pestilence” (Aquila = λοιμος) and “death” (Theod. & E = θανατος).
WSecond Century Greek versions are more like the MT tradition with πτεινον (“winged bird”?).
XAll the ancient versions except for the LXX and Aquila rendered this word as “death.” It is used in Exodus 9:3 to refer to one of the 10 plagues of Egypt upon the livestock, and in Lev., Num., & Deut. to refer to one of the most-advanced covenant curses. This curse actually came about during David’s reign in 2 Sam. 24:15 (cf. Psalm 78:50), and again when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem (Jer. 21:6-9, etc.). In Jeremiah and Ezekiel it is repeatedly paired with the “sword” and “famine” in the prophecies concerning the overthrow of Jerusalem, so it seems to be common to war.
YRare word with a root meaning of “burning” (thus Targums “flame” and KJV “coals”), used in only two other places to describe sickness (Deut. 32:24 – covenant curses, and Psalm 78:48 – Plague on Egyptian cattle). The other instances in the HOT are Job 5:7 (“sparks”), Ps. 76:4 (“arrows”), and Cant. 8:6 (“flame”). Peshitta was way off with “bird of prey,” as was the LXX, which transposed the last two letters of the Hebrew word to get “treading,” ESV followed NASB with “plague,” NIV rendered “pestilence,” Calvin correlated it with the “lightening” on Mt. Sinai, but that is a different word. I prefer the rendering of Pusey, Keil, and NKJV = “fever.”
ZLiterally “to his feet” (the only other instance of this noun with the same preposition is Job 18:11 “Terrors frighten him on every side, And drive him to his feet.” ~NKJV) Pusey, Keil, NASB, NIV, and ESV interpret figuratively as “following,” but Calvin commented, “By ‘God’s feet,’ he then means His going forth or His presence; for I do not approve of what some have said, that ignited coals followed, when pestilence had preceded; for both clauses are given in the same way,” and M. Henry agreed, “...at His feet, that is, at His coming, for they are at His command...”
AAVulgate, Peshitta, Rashi, Kimchi, Calvin, Geneva, KJV, and ESV interpreted it as from the Hebrew word “to measure” (thus the NASB “surveyed”), but NIV, AJV, NET, and NLT followed Keil, Delitzsch, Gesenius, the Targums, and LXX which invented a meaning “to shake” (perhaps based on an adaptation of מעד) found nowhere else in the Bible (and surprisingly accepted in the BDB and Holladay lexicons as a hapex legomenon – but Davidson expressed skepticism of that theory in his lexicon). Isaiah 40:12 has the same consonantal spelling (but different Masoretic pointing) for this verb, plus three more key words found in this passage, so it is worth considering for comparison, and there the concept of measurement is central. (Isaiah 40:12 “Who has spanned[measured] the waters with His palm, and with the arm measured [תִּכֵּן] the heavens, held in a bucket the dust of the earth; and weighed the mountains in the scale and the hills in balances?” ~NAW) “Shaking” however, is supported by other passages of scripture and would be more parallel to the idea of “springing/dislodging” nations. Calvin criticized the Jewish tradition that this refers to the “standing” of the Ark of the Covenant in Gilead and the subsequent survey of Canaan that resulted in the allocation of land for the 12 tribes. He noted instead that “measuring” land in order to allot it to national parties was the prerogative of a sovereign king, and that eretz here must mean the whole “earth,” not just the “land” of Israel. Keil’s objection to “measured” due to there being “no thought of any measuring of the earth and it cannot be shown that madad is used in the sense of measuring with the eye” seems weak to me.
ABTargums
= “flooded” (Cathcart), Bauschner’s rendering of Peshitta was
“falsified,” but Lamsa’s rendering of Peshitta was “drove
asunder” (suspiciously identical to the KJV). Vulgate and LXX,
however rendered it “melted.” Contemporary versions translated
it “shook/made tremble/startled.” It is in the Hiphil stem here,
as it is in all but two of the other occurrences of this word in the
Bible: Lev. 11:21 (“feet to leap” Piel), 2 Sam. 22:33
(“makes perfect”), Job 6:9 (“let loose his
hand”), 37:1 (“heart leaps” Qal), Ps. 105:20
(“released” ), 146:7 (“free the prisoners”),
Isa. 58:6 (“spring the yoke”).
Note Hab. 1:5 has
both “see” and “nations.” Ibn Ezra envisioned the “nations”
as being the “hills” which “leap in terror” at a mere
“glance” from God.
ACThis word only occurs two other places in the HOT: Job 16:12 (where Job says God grabbed him by the neck and shook him to pieces) and Jeremiah 23:29 (“Is not My word like a fire?” says the LORD, “And like a hammer that breaks the rock [סָלַע] in pieces?” ~NKJV) Westminster Morphology labels this as being in the Qal Passive stem.
ADNowhere else in the HOT are “mountains” described as eternal (neither עַד nor עוֹלָם).
AEThe
only other place that these “perpetual hills” show up in the HOT
is in the blessings of Jacob and of Moses upon Joseph and his tribe
in Gen. 49:26 and Deut. 33:15.
Pusey’s suggestion, following
St. Bern, that these “hills” were penitent nations which “bow...
under the yoke of Christ” instead of being “shattered” like
the “mountains” seems unlikely, considering the nature of Hebrew
parallelism which would normally equate the “mountains” with the
“hills.”
AFThis word for “goings” only occurs a few other places in the HOT besides here: Job 6:19 (“travelers from Sheba”), Ps. 68:25 (“sanctuary procession” – which Keil made much of), Prov. 31:27 (“the ways of her house”), and Nah. 2:6 (“nobles stumble on their way [to battle]”), so it is not a technical term with any particular established meaning in the Bible (the LXX translation does not occur in the NT either).
AGI normally translate this Hebrew word “iniquity” (and Calvin actually did here). This instance is one of only 3 times that the KJV translates it “affliction” (71 of the 79 times this word appears in the Hebrew O.T., it is translated “iniquity/wickedness/mischief/unrighteous/vanity/idol” in the KJV). For comparison, the NASB translated it “distress,” but this is the only time it does so out of 77 occurrences of the word in the HOT (69 times the NASB translates it “iniquity/wickedness/unrighteous/idol/vanity/evil/wrong”). It is important to realize that this kind of “distress/trouble” is the consequence of “iniquity” and therefore a form of justice, and not the “affliction/stress” of unjust oppression. Incidentally, these are the same words for “see/show” and “iniquity/injustice” found in Hab. 1:3.
AHAlthough the Vulgate and LXX (followed by Tanchum, Gesenius, Keil, Hailey, and Firth) interpreted this word as Ethiopia (“Cush” without the nun ending, which Calvin said was “strained and contrary to the rules of grammar”), the DSS and Aramaic versions support the MT with “Cushan.” The only other time “Cushan” is mentioned in the Bible is as the name of a king in Mesopotamia who oppressed Israel (and who was called “doubly-wicked” רשׁעתים using a synonym of the word Habakkuk used for his “distress/trouble”) and was put down by Othniel at the end of Judges 3. Nevertheless, Lehman favorably cited Daath Mikra’s hypothesis (followed by Henderson, Ewald, Keil, Hailey, and others) that it refers to a people group on the Sinai Peninsula who were terrified by the Israelites, and it seems that Matthew Henry was also of that opinion, as he did not seem to think it necessarily referred to the events of the book of Judges but generally interpreted it as the surrounding nations living in fear of the Israelites, an interpretation that I don’t think is consistent with the character of Habakkuk as a Bible-centered scholar. Targums, Talmud, Kimchi, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Abarbanel, Calvin, Pusey, and others, however, saw this as a reference to the king of Mesopotamia in Judges 3. The article on Cushan in Smith’s Bible Dictionary suggested that Cushan as king of Aram-Naharaim (North Mesopotamia) was in a military alliance with Midian, thus forming a connection between the two kingdoms mentioned by Habakkuk here, but the fact that these kingdoms are mentioned in Judges 3 and 6 is quite enough of a connection to explain Habakkuk’s choice of examples.
AINot only does Midian “shake/tremble/shudder,” Habakkuk himself does also in v. 16.
AJNASB followed the LXX, Vulgate, and Targums in interpreting this Hebrew particle as a conjunction (“or”), but this is not a primary meaning of this particle. (It is usually translated “if” or “indeed,” and sometimes “whether.”) KJV, NIV, and ESV followed the Peshitta in dropping this word out entirely, but the one legible DSS supports the MT (W.M. supports the second ‘im explicitly, and the first ‘im implicitly in an illegible spot which is just the right size for this word). Cathcart suggested “indeed,” but it seems most unlikely that God’s anger was ever actually directed against His own inanimate creation. How one interprets this word is related to how one interprets the ki later in the verse – whether temporally (“when”) or causatively (“that/because”).
AKAlthough there is no other verse in the HOT which combines any of these three words for “anger” with the word for “rivers,” the root of one of these three words for “anger” – aph (which literally means “nostrils”) – is used in Exod. 15:8 and 2 Sam. 22:16 with the word for “sea” in a description of the “blast of breath from [God’s] nostrils” which parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to escape from slavery in Egypt. Likewise, nowhere else in the HOT do we find “chariots” or “horses” related to “salvation,” yet all three words, plus the words for “sea” and the “nostril/anger” word do show up together in the beginning of the triumph song that Moses and the Israelites sang after they escaped from Pharoah’s army across the Red Sea (Ex. 15:1-10). This suggests that the answer to Habakkuk’s question is, “No, it wasn’t because God was mad at the Red Sea that He blew against it and stopped it up, it was because He was acting to save His people.” In other words, what may have looked like a scary act of judgment, when seen with the eyes of faith, is actually a very encouraging event in history that reminds us that God loves His people and will intervene in history to save them. Keil’s assertion that this was not referring to the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan but “is merely a poetical turn given to a lively composition which expects no answer and is simply introduced to set for the the greatness of the wrath of God… generally… as the Judge of the world,” while good in application, is ridiculous exegetically. Even he had to agree with the overwhelming majority of commentators, saying, “this description rests upon the two facts of the miraculous dividing of the Red Sea and of the Jordan.”
ALBased on the verb for “pass over,” this noun pictures anger as an “overflowing” movement.
AMIgnoring the Vulgate (“Who?”) and the Peshitta (which dropped out this Hebrew word), the debate over how to translate it is mostly between those who interpret it as a causative (KJV & NASB following the LXX “that” – cf. Keil “explaining and assigning the reason for the previous question”) and those who interpret it as a temporal (“when” – NIV, ESV, Cathcart), but the meaning is not very different since both view the event as an actual past one.
ANWhile this Hebrew preposition would normally be translated “upon,” the presence of the “chariots” indicates that they were drawn by the “horses” and that God was in His “chariots of salvation,” not that He was “riding” on multiple “horses” as they were pulling empty “chariots” behind them. The NIV seems to have translated the preposition best “rode with your horses.” Cf. Keil: “The riding upon horses is not actual riding, but driving in chariots with horses harnessed to them...”
AOKJV & NIV follow the LXX and Vulgate, inserting a conjunction (“and”), while NASB and ESV follow the Aramaic, inserting a preposition (“on/upon”). The Targums and DSS support the MT, containing neither of these extra words. Calvin and Pusey followed the Vulgate & LXX interpretation of “salvation” being a predicate nominative of “chariots” (“chariots are salvation”) but all the other commentators I read vouched for interpreting it as a genitive (“chariots of salvation”). Henderson noted that “… ‘horses’ and ‘chariots’ ... are… merely figurative expressions, designed to carry out the metaphor adopted from military operations.” Cf. v.15.
AP“Yeshū‛âh signifies salvation, even in this case, and not victory, - a meaning which it never has, and which is all the more inapplicable here, because yeshū‛âh is interpreted in 3:13 by לְיֵשַׁע. By describing the ‘chariots of God’ as ‘chariots of salvation,’ the prophet points at the outset to the fact, that the riding of God has for its object the salvation or deliverance of His people.” ~C. F. Keil (Nevertheless, the NIV translated it “victorious.”)