Habakkuk 3:1 - Meaning and Application

This chapter is called a prayer of Habakkuk. It is a time of meditation and also an intercession, a prayer on behalf of God’s people. The prophets were praying men, and this prophet was one of them, as God said, “He is a prophet, and he will pray for you” (Genesis 20:7). At times they even prayed for the very people they had warned with strong words.

People who know God’s mind about future events often know better than others how to pray. They can see trouble coming, so they store up prayers that will be useful then. In that way, they keep serving the church even after their public speaking is done. Habakkuk had already found God ready to answer his earlier complaints and requests, so he comes to God again. Because God has listened to us before, we should decide to keep calling on him as long as we live.

The prophet first admits that he has received God’s answer to his earlier complaint, and that it deeply affected him. “Lord, I have heard your message,” or, as some read it, “your hearing,” meaning what God wanted him to hear, the decree that said his people would be afflicted. “I received your message, and it is still before me.” Those who want to speak rightly to God must first pay close attention to what God says to them and keep it in mind. Habakkuk had said earlier, “I will watch to see what he will say” (Habakkuk 2:1), and now he says, “Lord, I have heard your message.” If we shut our ears to God’s word, we should not expect him to hear our prayers (Proverbs 28:9).

“I heard it, and I was afraid.” Messages that come straight from heaven often struck even the best and boldest men with fear. Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel all trembled greatly. Here, too, the prophet was afraid, not only because the message came with such authority, but because of what it meant. He heard how low God’s people would be brought under the crushing power of the Chaldeans, the Babylonian people, and how long they would remain under that power. He feared that their spirits would fail, and that the church might be torn down completely and lost after being kept so low for so long.

So he earnestly asks that, for the sake of God’s chosen people, these days of trouble would be shortened, or at least eased, and that God’s people would be upheld and comforted in them. The prophet thinks it is a very long wait until the end of the years, perhaps the seventy years of captivity. So he prays, “Lord, do something for us in the middle of the years, in these years of distress.” Even if they are not yet freed and their oppressors are not yet destroyed, let them not be abandoned.

He asks, first, that God would do something for his own cause. “Revive your work,” he says, meaning your church, the work of your own hands, formed by you and for you. Let it live again, even while it walks in trouble (Psalm 138:7, Psalm 138:8). Give your people a little fresh strength in their bondage (Ezra 9:8; Psalm 85:6). Some read it, “Keep your work alive.” Even if the church is disciplined, let it not be destroyed. Even if it does not have freedom, let it keep its life. Save a remnant alive, a seed for the next generation. Revive the work of your grace in us by making this trouble holy to us and by supporting us through it, even before the appointed time of deliverance arrives. Whatever happens to us, even if we seem like dry bones, Lord, let your work be revived. Do not let it sink, go backward, and come to nothing.

He asks, next, that God would do something for his own honor. “In the midst of the years make yourself known,” he says. God is now, as Isaiah said, “a God who hides himself” (Isaiah 45:15). So let him show his power, his pity, his promises, and his care in the government of the world, for the safety and good of his church. Even if we are buried in obscurity, Lord, make yourself known. Whatever happens to Israel, let the God of Israel not be forgotten in the world. Show yourself even in the middle of these dark years, before anyone expects you to appear. When God later honored the three young men in the fiery furnace and humbled Nebuchadnezzar, this prayer was answered.

Finally, he asks that God would do something for his people’s comfort. “In wrath remember mercy,” and make that mercy known. “Show us your mercy, O Lord” (Psalm 85:7). The people see God’s displeasure in their troubles, and that makes those troubles much harder to bear. There is wrath in the bitter cup, and that is what they plead to have removed. They know God is merciful, and they come to him as people who need mercy. Even those who are under signs of God’s anger must not give up hope in his mercy. Pure mercy is what we must run to for safety, and it is our only plea. Habakkuk does not say, “Remember our worth,” but, “Lord, remember your own mercy.”