Habakkuk 3

¹ A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, set to victorious music.

² LORD, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD. Renew your work in the middle of the years. In the middle of the years make it known. In wrath, you remember mercy.

³ God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.

⁴ His splendor is like the sunrise. Rays shine from his hand, where his power is hidden.

⁵ Plague went before him, and pestilence followed his feet.

⁶ He stood, and shook the earth. He looked, and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains were crumbled. The age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.

⁷ I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction. The dwellings of the land of Midian trembled.

⁸ Was the LORD displeased with the rivers? Was your anger against the rivers, or your wrath against the sea, that you rode on your horses, on your chariots of salvation?

⁹ You uncovered your bow. You called for your sworn arrows. Selah. You split the earth with rivers.

¹⁰ The mountains saw you, and were afraid. The storm of waters passed by. The deep roared and lifted up its hands on high.

¹¹ The sun and moon stood still in the sky at the light of your arrows as they went, at the shining of your glittering spear.

¹² You marched through the land in wrath. You threshed the nations in anger.

¹³ You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the land of wickedness. You stripped them head to foot. Selah.

¹⁴ You pierced the heads of his warriors with their own spears. They came as a whirlwind to scatter me, gloating as if to devour the wretched in secret.

¹⁵ You trampled the sea with your horses, churning mighty waters.

¹⁶ I heard, and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness enters into my bones, and I tremble in my place because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people who invade us.

¹⁷ For even though the fig tree doesn’t flourish, nor fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive fails, the fields yield no food, the flocks are cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls,

¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!

¹⁹ GOD, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.

Around Habakkuk 3

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Habakkuk as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

Habakkuk does not begin with praise. He begins with a complaint. “LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear?” Violence, strife and injustice are all around him, and the law is paralyzed.

God answers, and the answer is worse than the silence. He is raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, a nation swift and fierce. Habakkuk protests. How can the God whose eyes are too pure to look on evil use a nation more wicked than the one it punishes?

Then the prophet does something unusual: “I will stand at my watch and set myself on the ramparts,” he says, and waits for the reply. It comes: the vision is for an appointed time, so wait for it. The proud will fall, and “the righteous will live by his faith.”

The book ends not with an answer to every question but with a prayer. Even if the fig tree does not flourish, even if the fields yield no food: “yet I will rejoice in the LORD.”

Background

The book belongs to the late seventh century before Christ, as Babylon was rising to power and shortly before it conquered Judah. That is the world in which a prophet asks God how long, and is told that something large is already on its way. The opening line calls him only Habakkuk the prophet.

How Christians read it

The line about the righteous living by faith (2:4) is quoted three times in the New Testament, in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, and it stood at the center of the Reformation. The book also shows that bringing hard questions to God is itself an act of faith: Habakkuk argues with God, waits for him, and ends in trust. The book gives room to the question and to the waiting.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 21 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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