Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 2:4

"Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him; but the righteous shall live by his faith." — Habakkuk 2:4 (ASV)

Behold, his soul which is lifted up - literally, swollen

Is not upright in him - The construction is probably that of a condition expressed absolutely. Look, it is swollen; his soul is not upright in him. We would say, “His soul, if it is swollen, puffed up, is not upright in him.” The source of all sin was and is pride. It is especially the sin of all oppressors, of the Chaldean, of antichrists, and will be of the Antichrist. It is the parent of all heresy, and of all corruption and rejection of the gospel.

It stands therefore as the type of all opposed to it. He says of it that it is in its very inmost core (“in him”) lacking in uprightness. It can have no good in it, because it denies God, and God denies it His grace. And having nothing upright in it, being corrupt in its very inmost being, it cannot stand or abide. God gives it no power to stand. The words stand in contrast with the following, the one speaking of the cause of death, the other of life. The soul, being swollen with pride, shuts out faith, and with it the Presence of God. It is all crooked in its very inner self or being. Paul gives the result (Hebrews 10:39), “if any man draw back, my soul hath no pleasure in him.” The prophet’s words describe the proud man who stands aloof from God, in himself; Paul, as he is in the Eyes of God.

As that which is swollen in nature cannot be straight, it is utterly contrary that the soul should be swollen with pride and yet upright. Its moral life being destroyed in its very inmost heart, it must perish.

Alb.: “Plato says that what is properly straight, which being applied to what is straight, touches and is touched everywhere. But God is upright, whom the upright soul touches and is touched everywhere; but what is not upright is bent away from God (Psalms 73:1). “God is good unto Israel, the upright in heart;” (Song of Solomon 1:4), “The upright love thee;” (Isaiah 26:7), “The way of the just is uprightness, Thou, most Upright, doth weigh the path of the just.””

But the just shall live by his faith - The accents emphasize the words, “The just, by his faith he will live.” They do not point to a union of the words, “the just by his faith.” Isaiah says that Christ should “justify” many by the knowledge of Himself,” but the expression, “just by his faith,” does not occur either in the Old or New Testament. In fact, to speak of one really righteous as being “righteous by his faith” would imply that people could be righteous in some other way. “Without faith,” Paul says at the commencement of his Old Testament pictures of giant faith (Hebrews 11:6), “it is impossible to please God.” Faith, in the creature that does not yet see God, has one and the same principle: a trustful, relying belief in its Creator.

This was the characteristic of Abraham their father: unshaken, unswerving belief in God who called him, whether in leaving his own land and going where he did not know, for an end that he was never to see; or in believing the promise of the son through whom the Seed was to be, in whom all the nations of the world would be blessed; or in the crowning act of offering that son to God, knowing that he would receive him back, even from the dead.

In all, it was one and the same principle. According to Genesis 15:6, “His belief was counted to him for righteousness,” though the immediate instance of that faith was not directly spiritual.

In this was the good and bad of Israel. (Exodus 4:31): “the people believed.” (Exodus 14:31): “they believed the Lord and His servant Moses.” (Psalms 106:12): “then believed they His word, they sang His praise.”

Conversely, this was their blame: (Deuteronomy 1:32): “In this ye did not believe the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 9:23): “ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and believed Him not, nor hearkened to His voice.” (Psalms 106:21, 24): “they forgat God their Saviour; they despised the pleasant land, they believed not His word.”

And God asks (Numbers 14:11), “How long will it be, ere this people believe Me, for all the signs which I have shown among them?” (Psalms 78:21–22): “anger came upon Israel, because they believed not in God, and in His salvation trusted not.”

(Psalms 78:32): “for all this they sinned still, and believed not His wondrous works.” Even for Moses and Aaron, God assigns this as the reason why they would not bring His people into the land which He gave them (Numbers 20:20), “Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel” (at Meribah). This was the watchword of Jehoshaphat’s victory (2 Chronicles 20:20), “Believe in the Lord your God and ye shall be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.” This continued to be one central saying of Isaiah.

It was his own commission to his people (Isaiah 6:9), “Go and say to this people; hear ye on, and understand not; see ye on and perceive not.” In sight of the rejection of faith, he spoke prominently of the loss upon unbelief (Isaiah 7:9), “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established;” and (Isaiah 53:1), “Who hath believed our report?” he presents as the attitude of his people toward Him—Jesus, the Center of all faith. Yet still, as to the blessings of faith, having spoken of Him (Isaiah 28:16), “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone,” he adds, “he that believeth in Him shall not make haste.”

So it had been the keynote of Habakkuk to his people, “Ye will not believe when it is declared unto you.” Here he is told to declare, on the contrary, the blessing on belief: “The just shall live by his faith.” The faith, then, of which Habakkuk speaks, is faith in itself, but a real, true, confiding faith. It is the one relation of the creature to the Creator: unshaken trust. The faith may vary in character, according as God reveals more or less of Himself, but itself is one, a loving trust in Him, just as He reveals Himself.

Lap. : “By this faith in God, each righteous person begins to live piously, righteously, holily, peacefully and divinely, and advances in it, since in every tribulation and misery, by this faith and hope in God he sustains, strengthens, and increases this life of the soul.

He says then, ‘the just lives by faith,’ that is, the unbelieving and unrighteous person displeases God, and consequently will not live by the true, right, peaceful, and happy life of grace, present righteousness, and future glory, because God is displeased with him, and he places his hopes and fears not in God, but in human beings and human help and in created things. But the righteous who believes in God will live a right, sweet, quiet, happy, holy, untroubled life, because, fixed by faith and hope in God who is the true Life, and in God’s promises, he is dear to God and the object of His care.

This sentence, ‘the just shall live by faith,’ is universal, belonging to both Jews and Christians, to sinners who are first being justified, as also to those who are already justified. For the spiritual life of each of these begins, is maintained, and grows through faith. So when it is said, ‘the just shall live by his faith,’ this word, ‘his,’ marks the cause, which both begins and preserves life. The just, believing and hoping in God, begins to live spiritually, to have a soul right within him, by which he pleases God; and again, advancing and making progress in this his faith and hope in God, with it he advances and makes progress in the spiritual life, in rightness and righteousness of soul, in the grace and friendship of God, so as more and more to please God.”

Most even of the Jewish interpreters have seen this to be the literal meaning of the words. It stands in contrast with, illustrates, and is illustrated by the first words, “his soul is swollen, is not upright in him.” Pride and independence of God are the center of the lack of rightness; a steadfast cleaving to God, by which “the heart” (as Abraham’s) “was stayed on God,” is the center and cause of the life of the righteous.

But since this steadfastness of faith is in everything the source of the life of the righteous, then the pride, which issues in a lack of rightness of the inmost soul, must be a state of death. Pride estranges the soul from God, makes it self-sufficing, so that it does not need God, with the result that he who is proud cannot come to God to be made righteous by Him.

So conversely, since by his faith the righteous lives, this must be equally true whether he is just made righteous from unrighteousness, or whether that righteousness is growing, maturing, being perfected in him.

This life begins in grace, lives on in glory. It is begun, in that God freely justifies the ungodly, accounting and making him righteous for and through the blood of Christ; it is continued in “faith which worketh by love;” it is perfected when faith and hope are swallowed up in love, beholding God. In the Epistles to the Romans (Romans 1:17) and the Galatians (Galatians 3:11), Paul applies these words to the first beginning of life, when those who had before been dead in sin began to live by faith in Christ Jesus who gave them life and made them righteous. And in this sense, he is called “just,” although before he comes to the faith he is unjust and unrighteous, being unjustified. For Paul uses the word not of what he was before the faith, but what he is when he lives by faith.

Before, not having faith, he had neither righteousness nor life; having faith, he at once has both; he is at once “just” and “lives by his faith.” These are inseparable. The faith by which he lives is a living faith (Galatians 5:6), “faith which worketh by love.” In the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 10:38), Paul is speaking of their endurance in the faith, once received, whose faith is not shaken by the trial of their patience. Those who look on beyond things present, and fix their minds steadfastly on the Coming of Christ, will not suffer shipwreck of their faith through any troubles of this time.

Faith is the foundation of all good, the beginning of the spiritual building, by which it rests on The Foundation, Christ. “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” and so the proud cannot please Him. Through it is union with Christ and thereby a divine life in the soul, even a life (Galatians 2:20), “through faith in the Son of God,” holy, peaceful, self-possessed (Luke 21:19), enduring to the end, being “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).