Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 3:18

"Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation." — Habakkuk 3:18 (ASV)

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:18) - The words are very impressive, as they stand in the Hebrew.

“For,” he says, “the fig tree shall not blossom, and there is no fruit in the vines, the labor of the olive has failed;” (the prophet does not merely observe these things, but in his mind stands in their midst; they are done, and he is among them, feeling their effects) “and the field has yielded no food; the flock has been cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stall; and I.” (Habakkuk 3:17).

He relates it as the result of all that had gone before. Such was the state of fruit trees, vintage, harvest, flocks, and herds. Such was the aspect of all nature, living or inanimate: all was barren, disappointing; all had failed and was gone.

Then at last he comes to himself, and the “I” from the prophecy. What is he doing, when all nature and every seeming hope is dead? This is how it is with them; and yet, “I will rejoice.”

He almost uses the expression regarding the exultation of the enemy, adopting the same word only in a softer form. “Their exulting joy was” concentrated in this, “as to devour the poor secretly;” he too had “exulting joy.” There is a joy against joy—a joy of theirs in the possession of all that their rapacity covets, in the possession of all things; a joy of his amid the privation of all things.

He contrasts the two joys, as David had of old (Psalms 17:13, Psalms 17:15): “the men of the world, whose portion is in this life, whose belly Thou fillest with Thy hid treasure; they are sated of children and leave their substance to their babes: I,” he adds, “I shall behold Thy Presence in righteousness, I shall be sated, in the awakening, with Thine image.”

So Habakkuk declares, “I will not rejoice only, but shout for joy;” and not so only, but “I will bound for joy.” And this not for a time only; both words express a drawing, a yearning of the soul, and this yet more and more: “I will shout for joy and would shout on; I will bound for joy and would bound on.”

But from where is the source of this measureless, unutterable joy? In the Lord, the Unchangeable God, “who is and was and is to come,” (Revelation 1:8) “I am” (Exodus 3:14) (it is the incommunicable Name); in the God of my salvation. It is almost the Name of Jesus, for Jesus is salvation, and the Name means “the Lord is Salvation.” This is why the words are here rendered even by a Jew as “in God the Author of my redemption,” and yet more sweetly by a father. (Augustine, City of God 18.32, says: “To me what some manuscripts have, ‘I will rejoice in God my Jesus,’ seems better than what they have, who have not set the Name itself (but ‘saving’) which to us it is more loving and sweeter to name.”). “In God my Jesus.”

In Him his joy begins; to Him and in Him it flows back and on. Before he ventures, amid all the desolation, to speak of joy, he names the Name of God and, as it were, stays himself in God, is enveloped and wrapped around in God. And I (the words stand in this order for emphasis) declare, “and I in the Lord would shout for joy.”

He comes, as it were, and places himself very close to God, so that nothing, not even his joy, should be between himself and God: “and I in the Lord.” All creation, as it had failed, ceases to be; all that is apart from God. He speaks of nothing but himself and God, or rather himself in God. And as He, God, comes before his joy as its source, so in Him does he lose himself, with joy that cannot be contained, nor expressed, nor find rest, but utters itself in the glad motions of untiring love. “I would bound for joy in my Saving God.” Truly all our joy is to be in Him in whom is all Good, who is all Goodness and all Love.