Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 3:16

"I heard, and my body trembled, My lips quivered at the voice; Rottenness entereth 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 that invadeth us." — Habakkuk 3:16 (ASV)

When I heard -, or better, “I heard and...” The prophet sums up, resuming that same declaration with which he had begun, “I heard, I was afraid.” Only now he expresses far more strongly both his awe at God’s judgments and his hopes. He had just witnessed the image of the destruction of Pharaoh, the end of the brief triumph of the wicked and of the trials of God’s people. But as awful as all the judgments of God are on the enemies of His people, it was not this alone which was the object of his terror. This was deliverance. It was the whole course of God’s dispensations, which he had heard: God’s punishment of His people for their sins, and the excision of their oppressors, who, in His Providence, fulfilling their own evil end, executed His chastisements on them.

The deliverances, which foreshadowed the future, had their dark side, in that they were deliverances. The whole course of this world is one series of humanity’s unfaithfulness or sins, God’s chastisements for them carried out through their fellow-sinners, and His ultimate overthrow of the aggressors. Those first three centuries of glorious martyrdoms were, on one side, the malice and hatred of Satan and the world against the truth; on the other side, the prophets of those days told their people that these were the chastisements for their sins. Future deliverance implies previous chastisement for those delivered.

The prophet then, at the close, in view of all, for himself and all whose perplexities he represented and pleaded before God, chooses his and their portion: “Suffer here and rest forever!” “Endure here any terror, any failure of hopes, yet trust wholly in God, have rest in the day of trouble and sing the endless song!” Again he casts himself back amid all the troubles of this life.

I heard - (i.e., that speech of God uttering judgments to come) and my belly, the whole inward self, bodily and mental, all his hidden powers, trembled, vibrated as it were, Sin every fiber of his frame, at the wrath of God; my lips quivered at the voice of God, so that they almost refused their office and could hardly fulfill the prophetic duty and utter the terrors which he had heard. His very strongest parts, the bones, which keep the whole frame of man together, so that he is not a shapeless mass, and which remain unconsumed long after the rest has wasted away in the grave, rottenness entered into them, corruption and mouldering eating into them; and I trembled in myself (literally “under me”), so that he was a burden to himself and sank, unable to support himself, that I might rest in the day of trouble.

Everything up to this time was weariness and terror, and now at once all is repose. The prophet is carried, as it were, over the troubles of this life and the decay of the grave to the sweetness of everlasting rest. I, the same one, suffer these things: terror, quivering, rottenness in the very bones themselves. I (literally) who shall rest in the day of trouble. I who had no rest until then, will enter into rest then, in the very day of trouble to all who found their rest in the world and not in God—the day of judgment (Psalms 94:12–13). Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him in Thy law, that Thou mayest give him patience in time of adversity, until the pit be digged up for the ungodly.

“O my soul; had we daily to bear tortures, had we for a long time to endure hell itself, so that we might see Christ in His glory and be the companion of His saints, would it not be worth enduring all sorrow, so that we might be partakers of so great a good, such great glory?”

When he cometh up unto the people, he shall invade them with his troops - or, which is probably meant, “when he cometh up who shall invade them.” It is a filling out of the day of trouble. However near the trouble came, he, under the protection of God and in firm trust in Him, would be at rest in Him. The troubles of God’s prophets are not the outward troubles, but the sins of their people which bring those troubles: the offense against the majesty of God, and the loss of souls. Jeremiah was more at rest in the court of the prison than when all the people cursed him (Jeremiah 15:10) for telling them God’s truth.

He who fears God and His judgments early will rest in perfect tranquility when those judgments come. The immediate trouble was the fierce assault of the Chaldees, whose terror he had described; and this assault, picturing (as prophecy often does) all other judgments of God, even to the very last, when devils will contend about the souls of people, as Satan did about the body of Moses.