Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 3:13

"Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, For the salvation of thine anointed; Thou woundest the head out of the house of the wicked man, Laying bare the foundation even unto the neck. Selah." — Habakkuk 3:13 (ASV)

You went forth - Even a Jew, Kimchi, says of this place: “The past is here used for the future; and this is frequent in the language of prophecy, for prophecy, although it is future, yet since it is, as it were, firmly fixed, they use the past concerning it.” The prophet speaks again in the past, perhaps to fix the mind on that significant going-forth when God destroyed Pharaoh, the first enemy who attempted to destroy the chosen line. This stands at the head of all those dispensations in which God put forth or will put forth His might to save His people or destroy their enemies.

All is with Him one everlasting purpose; the last events were, as it were, embodied in the first. If it were not for the last, the first would not have happened. Prophecy, in speaking of the first, has in mind all the rest, and above all, the ultimate end of all: the full salvation of His people through Jesus Christ our Lord. “You went forth,” that is, as Rupertus says: “You, the Unseen God, gave signs that can be seen of Your Presence or coming to men.” “You went forth,” not by change of place, for You are not bounded; You are without change; but by showing Your power and doing something new openly.

For the salvation of your people, even for salvation with Your anointed - The English Version is undoubtedly right. Aquila, although a Jew, also rendered it this way, as did the 5th Version. The 6th version, by a Christian, translated it as, “You went forth to save Your people through Jesus, Your Christ.” So also did the Vulgate and other old Jewish authorities.

Rachmon (in Martini, Pugio Fidei, f. 534) notes “that the word (את 'êth) means ‘with,’ as in Genesis 37:2; Genesis 39:2.” For although it might be used to mark the object only after a verbal noun, it is not likely that the construction would have been changed unless the meaning were different. If את ('êth) had only been the sign of the object, there would have been no reason to insert it at all. It would probably have been avoided, as it would only make the sentence ambiguous, given that it can more obviously be taken in the sense adopted by Aquila, the Vulgate, and the English version.

The Septuagint and two early heretics who disbelieved the divinity of our Lord (Theodotion and Symmachus) render it “to save Your Christs.” Moreover, the Septuagint is wrong in that “anointed” is never used of the people, but only of single persons who were shadows of the Christ. “Your anointed” is understood of one individual: “the king of Judah,” by A. E.; “Saul and David,” by Rashi; “Moses,” by Abarb.; “Hezekiah,” by Tanchum; but “Messiah Ben David,” by Kimchi Sal. b. Mel.

God, from the first, helped His people through single persons—Moses, Joshua, each of the Judges—accustoming them to receive deliverance by one, and to gather together all their hopes in One. To Moses He said, I will be with you (Exodus 3:12); and to Joshua, As I was with Moses, so I will be with you (Joshua 1:5); and to Cyrus, I will go before you (Isaiah 45:2), preparing His people to receive that nearer Presence with His Christ, of which our Lord says: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The Father that dwells in Me, He does the works (John 14:10).

Rupertus says: “The Son of God, God Invisible, became Man, visible; and with Him, so going forth, the Holy Spirit went forth to the salvation of His people, so as to give a visible sign of His Coming. For upon His Christ Himself, Him who was anointed with the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38), He descended in a bodily Shape, as a Dove. So He went forth to the Salvation of His people, that is, to save His people with His Christ, our Savior.”

And again, on the Day of Pentecost, when that other Comforter came, “whom,” He said, “I will send to you from the Father,” and in whose Presence His own promise was fulfilled, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. His Presence was manifested both in the remission of sins and the distribution of graces among all, and in the signs and wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 2:4), with which God bore witness to the apostles when (Mark 16:20) they went forth, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.

A going forth to judgment at the end of the world is foretold in a similar image of warfare (Revelation 17:14; Revelation 19:11 and following).

You wounded (crushed) the head out of the house of the wicked - One wicked stands opposite One anointed, as in Isaiah 11:4: He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked. David speaks of one (Psalms 110:6): He shall smite the head over a great land. And Paul speaks of that wicked, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming (1 Thessalonians 4:8). Him He shall destroy at once from above and below, overthrowing his kingdom from the foundation. From above, his head was crushed in pieces; from below, the house was razed from its very foundations. So Amos said (Amos 9:1), The Lord said, Smite the capital, and the lintel (threshold) strike, and wound them in the head, all of them; and with a different image (Amos 2:9): I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath.

First, the head is struck off, crushed; then the house from the foundations to its neck; then, as it were, the headless walls. The image of the neck may be particularly used to recall that, just as the house of God is built of living stones, so the kingdom of the evil one is made of the living dead, who shall never cease to exist in an undying death. The bruising of Satan, the head or prince of this evil world, is the deliverance of the world.

His head was bruised when, by the Death of our Lord, the Prince of this world was cast out. He is crushed out of the house of the wicked whenever he, the strong man, is bound and cast out, and “the soul of the sinner which had been his abode becomes the house of God, and righteousness dwells there and walks in her.”

Rupertus says: “You did not leave any error or vice in the world unshaken, either what was concealed, like the foundation of a house, or what was open, as the neck of the body is open”—to the neck, where the destruction from above ceased, so that nothing remained unsmitten.

Rupertus also says: “For they, being made fervent and strong, wise and eloquent by the fiery tongues which You showed outwardly, did not cease until they made known to all what folly was this world’s wisdom, what sacrilege its sacred worship.”

Dionysius states: “His secret counsels He laid bare, as the apostle says (2 Corinthians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 12:10). We are not ignorant of his devices; and, to another is given the discerning of spirits.”