Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 2:20

"But Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him." — Habakkuk 2:20 (ASV)

And now having declared the nothingness of all that is not God—the power of man or his gods—he answers his own question again by summoning all before the presence of the majesty of God.

But the Lord—He had, in condemning them, pictured the tumult of the world, the oppressions, the violence, bloodshed, covetousness, insolence, and self-aggrandizement of the world-empire of that time, and had denounced woe upon it. We see man framing his idols, praying to the lifeless stones; and God, of whom no one thought, where was He? These were people’s ways. “But the Lord,” he adds, as the complement and corrective of all this confusion.

The Lord is in His holy temple—awaiting, in His long-suffering, to judge. “The temple of God” is where God enshrines Himself, or allows Himself to be seen and adored. “God is wholly everywhere, the whole of Him nowhere.” There is no contrast between His temple on earth and His temple in heaven. He is not more locally present in heaven than on earth.

It would be as anthropomorphic but less pious to think of God as confined or localized in heaven as on earth, because it would be simply removing God away from humanity. Solomon knew, when he built the temple, that the heaven and heaven of heavens could not contain God (1 Kings 8:27). The “holy temple,” which could be destroyed (Psalms 79:1), toward which people were to pray (Psalms 5:7; Psalms 138:2; Jonah 2:4), was the visible temple (1 Kings 8:29–30, 35, 38, 42, 44, 48), where there were the symbols of God’s Presence and of the atoning Sacrifice.

But lest His presence be localized, Solomon’s repeated prayer is, hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place (1 Kings 8:30, 39, 43, 49, 32, 34, 36, 45); hear Thou in heaven. There is then no difference, as if in earlier books the “holy temple” meant that at Jerusalem, while in later books it meant “the heavens?”

In the confession at the offering of the “third year’s tithes,” the prayer is, look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven (Deuteronomy 27:15). David says, the Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven (Psalms 11:4). Also, He heard my voice out of His temple—He bowed the heavens also and came down (Psalms 18:6, 9); and, In His temple doth everyone say, Glory (Psalms 29:9).

The simple words are identical, though not in the same order, to those in which David—in the same contrast with the oppression of man—ushers in the judgment and final retribution to good and bad, by declaring the unseen presence of God upon His Throne in heaven, beholding and testing the sons of men.

In His Presence, all the mysteries of our being are solved.

The Lord is in His holy Temple—not as the idols in temples made with hands, but revealing Himself: in the visible temple (Jerome); “dwelling in the Son, by Nature and Union,” as He says, The Father who dwelleth in Me doeth the works (John 14:10); in each one of the bodies and souls of the saints by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19); in the Blessed, in glory; in the Heavens, by the more evident appearance of His Majesty and the workings of His Power; “everywhere by Essence, Presence, and Power, ‘for in Him we live, and move, and have our being’; nowhere as confined or enclosed.”

Since then God is in Heaven, beholding the deeds of people, Himself Unchangeable, Almighty, All-holy, let all the earth keep silence before Him. Literally, “hush before Him all the earth,” awaiting from Him, in hushed stillness, the issue of this tangled state of being. And to the hushed soul—hushed to itself and its own thought, hushed in awe of His Majesty and “His Presence, before His face”—God speaks.