Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Special Note: We had trouble with recording and processing this week’s video. Apologies for the quality.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, the 3rd chapter, verses 2-16.
O Lord, I have heard of your renown,
and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.
In our own time revive it;
in our own time make it known;
in wrath may you remember mercy.
3 God came from Teman,
the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah
Their glory covered the heavens,
and the earth was full of God’s praise.
4 The brightness was like the sun;
rays came forth from God’s hand,
where their power lay hidden.
5 Before God went pestilence,
and plague followed close behind.
6 They stopped and shook the earth;
God looked and made the nations tremble.
The eternal mountains were shattered;
along their ancient pathways
the everlasting hills sank low.
7 I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction;
the tent curtains of the land of Midian trembled.
8 Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord,
or your anger against the rivers
or your rage against the sea,
when you drove your horses,
your chariots to victory?
9 You brandished your naked bow;
sated were the arrows at your command. Selah
You split the earth with rivers.
10 The mountains saw you and writhed;
a torrent of water swept by;
the deep gave forth its voice.
The sun raised high its hands;
11 the moon stood still in its exalted place,
at the light of your arrows speeding by,
at the gleam of your flashing spear.
12 In fury you marched on the earth;
in anger you trampled nations.
13 You came forth to save your people,
to save your anointed.
You crushed the head of the wicked house,
laying it bare from foundation to roof. Selah
14 You pierced with their own arrows the head of his warriors,
who came like a whirlwind to scatter us,
gloating as if ready to devour the poor who were in hiding.
15 You trampled the sea with your horses,
churning the mighty waters.
16 I hear, and I tremble within;
my lips quiver at the sound.
Rottenness enters into my bones,
and my steps tremble beneath me.
I wait quietly for the day of calamity
to come upon the people who attack us.
This is the word of God for the people of God.
A Different Kind of Prayer
Something changes the moment Chapter Three begins. For two chapters, Habakkuk has been arguing. He complained, God answered, Habakkuk complained again, and God answered again, this time with a list of woes aimed at everyone too proud to wait. That whole exchange reads like a dispute, like a debate between two orators with arguments flying back and forth. Chapter Three, however, reads like something else entirely.
The heading tells us so directly: “A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to Shigionoth.” Scholars are divided on what this word means. We know that “shigionoth” is the plural of the word “shiggaion,” but the plural only appears here in Habakkuk, and the singular form only appears at the very beginning of the Seventh Psalm. It’s likely a musical or liturgical note referring to a type of ecstatic state. In both Habakkuk 3 and Psalm 7, the respective writers are expecting enemies to soon arrive, and they and their people have been whipped up into a frenzy through a mixture of preparations for battle and anxiety about the enemy’s arrival. By saying that Habakkuk’s prayer is “according to Shigionoth,” the writer is saying that this prayer was made during an ecstatic state. Habakkuk has stopped arguing with God and started praying to God, in a form meant to be sung during a moment of emotion and frenzy.
That shift in genre matters for how we hear what follows. Where the first two chapters read like a transcript, back-and-forth arguments meant to be followed the way we’d follow any dispute, Chapter Three reads like something meant to be performed. A congregation gathered for worship wouldn’t have listened to this the way they listened to Habakkuk’s complaints. They would have sung it, or heard it sung, with instruments underneath it, the same way they’d have heard any psalm. That changes what the chapter is asking of its hearers. The first two chapters ask us to follow an argument. This one asks us to be moved by a vision.
Three times in this chapter, after verses three, nine, and thirteen, we find the word “Selah.” The precise meaning of this word for the ancient Hebrews has been lost, but “Selah” has become a popular name for churches, organizations, and even people who have interpreted it to mean “peace” or “calm.” However, “Selah” was a musical term for a pause or a break. The author was indicating an intentional break in the lyrics which didn’t necessarily conform to the pattern of pauses observed by punctuation. For Habakkuk, he’s letting his thoughts and his words wash over him and his audience in stages. He’s catching his breath between waves of emotions.
The prayer itself opens with the plea that gives us our first pause before the pauses even start: “O Lord, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy.” Notice what Habakkuk requests, and, just as tellingly, what he omits. He doesn’t ask God to explain the last two chapters. He doesn’t ask for the Chaldeans to be called off, or for the woes to land immediately. He doesn’t even ask for answers to the numerous questions he’s been asking.
Rather, Habakkuk asks God to renew God’s old work, to make that work known anew in his own time, and in that renewal, even in God’s wrath, that God would remember their mercy. That’s the crux of the next 14 verses: renewal, knowledge, and mercy. His prayer forms a vision of what might happen if God renewed, made known, and showed mercy through their work. Whether he knows it or not, Habakkuk is giving us a vision that will be fulfilled in Jesus.
His vision and the words he uses should seem familiar to us and they would have been immediately recognizable in his own time. Scholars call this kind of writing a “divine-warrior hymn,” or a “theophany,” meaning an appearance of God in visible, often terrifying power. This kind of writing echoes older poetry and songs including those of Moses and Miriam sing after crossing the sea. Think back to Exodus 15:1-3:
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my might,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him;
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The Lord is a warrior;
the Lord is his name.”
Or returning to Psalm 7:
“If one does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and strung his bow;
he has prepared his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness
and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High” (12-13; 17).
Habakkuk draws on that same well of imagery, calling on the shapes and pictures his listeners had heard before, to describe something happening to them in their own time.
The God Who Comes
The vision opens with an arrival: “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.” Both of those places sit in the wilderness south of Israel, in the same general region as the Sinai, where God appeared to Israel in fire, cloud, and covenant during the Exodus. Habakkuk is placing this vision in a specific geography; one soaked in memory. This isn’t the arrival of some strange, new god. This is the same God who came down at Mount Sinai. The God who has already been attested as the one who was, who is, and who always will be. This is the God who, speaking from a burning bush, told Moses that “I Am Who I Am.”
God arrives in all the wonder and amazement that we’d expect. “Their glory covered the heavens,” Habakkuk proclaims, “and the earth was full of God’s praise. The brightness was like the sun; rays came forth from God’s hand, where their power lay hidden.” Brightness and hiddenness, named in the same breath. But God’s power isn’t dimmed by being hidden. If anything, Habakkuk seems to be saying the opposite, that something can be so bright it conceals its own source, the way staring straight at a sunrise shows you light without ever quite letting you see the sun itself.
“Before God went pestilence, and plague followed close behind.” Whatever this is, it isn’t gentle, and it definitely can’t be contained within the categories Habakkuk would normally reach for to describe a coming army or a coming storm. It’s both, and neither, and something else besides.
Then the earth itself starts to respond. God stops, and simply by stopping, shakes the ground. God looks, and nations tremble at the look alone. Mountains that Habakkuk calls “eternal,” hills he calls “everlasting,” the oldest and most permanent features anyone in his world could imagine, shatter and sink low in front of God’s presence. This isn’t the God who peacefully walked in the Garden of Eden. God appears in the fullness of their might and power.
Following a moment marked by selah, one of those intentional pauses we discussed earlier, the vision widens. Habakkuk sees the tents of Cushan under distress, the tent-curtains of Midian trembling, whole peoples shaking at what’s approaching, whether or not it’s even aimed at them directly. While it might seem obvious that if cities and mountains are trembling before God, then tents would stand little chance, the regions, Cushan and Midian, are important. These are ancient places invoked in the earliest moments of the Biblical narrative. Cushan was associated with the origins of Abraham and Midian was the site of an ancient battle remembered by its notable reference in one of Isaiah’s clearest messianic prophecies in 9:4.
Then the poetry turns toward water, toward rivers and the sea, in language that would have struck Habakkuk’s listeners as familiar from an equally ancient register: “Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord, or your anger against the rivers or your rage against the sea, when you drove your horses, your chariots to victory?”
Ancient poetry across the whole region loved to describe gods doing battle with the chaos of the sea, the flood, and the deep. Habakkuk borrows that same battle, but he’s not describing some rival god of the waters losing to another god. He’s describing the sea as a representation of the untamed creation giving way before the God who made it in the first place. The Hebrew’s own collective and religious memory would have supplied the clearest picture available: a sea splitting open, chariots overtaken, a whole army swallowed by water that had, moments before, simply parted. Habakkuk doesn’t name that story here, but the shape of it is unmistakable, the same God, the same sea, the same reversal. The bow comes out. Arrows fly, more than enough for any target God chooses.
Then, just as the imagery and narrative hit a fever pitch. Selah. An intentional pause. If it feels unsettled, good; that’s Habakkuk’s point. It’s meant to be a chord that doesn’t resolve; a high-water mark that fades to black.
The next picks up with more frenzy, but in a different octave because we’ve paused. “You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed; a torrent of water swept by; the deep gave forth its voice. The sun raised high its hands; the moon stood still in its exalted place, at the light of your arrows speeding by, at the gleam of your flashing spear. In fury you marched on the earth; in anger you trampled nations.” This isn’t a light metaphor. Habakkuk’s describing the unmaking and remaking of the created order itself, mountains, seas, and sun and moon all responding to a presence too large for any of them to hold steady around.
And then, in the middle of all that overwhelming power, the purpose of God’s movement is revealed: “You came forth to save your people, to save your anointed.” All of this, the trembling mountains, the fleeing waters, the frozen sun and moon, exists for a reason. God crushes the head of a wicked house, laying it bare down to its foundation.
Selah. One more time, right in the middle of the action, at the pivot from terrifying power to salvation, we intentionally pause.
The vision closes its violent movement with a final image: God’s own arrows piercing the head of an enemy’s warriors, warriors who came like a whirlwind to scatter the Hebrews, gloating as if they could simply devour the poor and the hidden without consequence. God tramples the sea with horses, churning the mighty waters one last time. Every ounce of the power we’ve just watched unleashed across mountains, seas, and the sky turns out to have a target after all.
Trembling Within
Then Habakkuk tells us what all of that did to him. “I hear, and I tremble within; my lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones, and my steps tremble beneath me. I wait quietly for the day of calamity to come upon the people who attack us.” This isn’t artistic flourish. This is an embodied reaction to a vision that terrifies and blesses even the prophet who presents it to his people.
After two chapters of arguing with God, hearing answers far from the ones he wanted, and breaking in this frenzied prayer, Habakkuk is exhausted. He’s trembling before God, yes, but he’s also experiencing the torment of prophets and holy people before and after him, who, driven to earthly ecstasy, can barely keep themselves upright. The answer he has long sought has come now, in full, overwhelming force, and receiving it costs him something for which his resolve alone didn’t prepare him.
But he doesn’t run from trembling, and he doesn’t try to pretend it isn’t happening. He names it the same way he named his complaints in Chapter One. But the verse doesn’t end in terror alone. “I wait quietly for the day of calamity to come upon the people who attack us.” Even here, shaking, rotten-boned, Habakkuk returns to the posture he took at the start of Chapter Two. Climbing the rampart and the watch post once again, he waits.
That’s where we leave him tonight, still trembling, still waiting, having seen more of God’s glory than his body and his spirit are able to steadily hold. One more word is still coming, and next week, we’ll hear what Habakkuk does with all of this once the trembling finally settles.