Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 3:2

"O Jehovah, I have heard the report of thee, and am afraid: O Jehovah, revive thy work in the midst of the years; In the midst of the years make it known; In wrath remember mercy." — Habakkuk 3:2 (ASV)

O Lord, I have heard - that is, with the inward ear of the heart, “Your speech” (or rather, as the English margin suggests, Your report, that is, the report of You), meaning what may be heard and known of God, or what he had himself heard. The word encompasses both what God had recently declared to the prophet—the judgments of God upon the wicked among the people, and upon those who, through their own injustice, had God's righteous judgments executed upon them—and also that the work of the Lord would be performed in His time for those who patiently wait for it. Furthermore, it more broadly includes what might be heard of God, even if, as it were, only a little whisper of His greatness and the majesty of His workings.

And was afraid - not “fearful” but “afraid in awe,” as a creature, and amazed at the surpassing wonder of the work of God. A person may well stand in awe “at the incarnation of the only-begotten Son, how earth could contain Him who is uncontained by space, how a body was prepared for Him from the virgin by the Holy Spirit, and all the works by which He will work the salvation of mankind: the cross, the death, resurrection, and ascension, uniting opposite things—a body with One who is incorporeal, death with life, resurrection with death, a body in heaven. All is full of wonder and awe.” Rupert says: “This is not a servile fear, but a holy fear which endures forever, not one which love casts out, but which it brings in, in which angels praise, dominions adore, powers stand in awe at the majesty of the Eternal God.”

O Lord, revive Your work - God’s Word often seems, as it were, dead and “come utterly to an end for evermore” (Psalms 77:8), while it is holding its own course, just as all nature seems dead for a while, but everything is laid up in store and ready to shoot forth, as by a kind of resurrection. Rupert says: “The prophet, prophesying, prays that it should come quickly, and praying, prophesies that it will so come.” All God’s dealings with His people, His Church, and each single soul, are part of one great work, which is perfect in itself (Deuteronomy 32:4) and characterized by glory and majesty (Psalms 140:3). It is a work on which the godly meditate (Psalms 77:3; Psalms 143:5), but which those preoccupied with their own plans do not consider (Isaiah 5:12). This work is manifested in great deeds for them or with them. For example, concerning the Exodus, the Psalmist says, “We have heard with our ears, yes, our fathers have told us what work You did in their days, in the times of old” (Psalms 44:2). He also says, “They proved Me and saw My work” (Psalms 95:9). With this work, He makes His own people glad (Psalms 92:3). After it has been withdrawn for a while, “He shows it to His servants” (Psalms 90:6). Ultimately, it issues in judgments on the ungodly, which people consider and declare.

The great work of God on earth, which includes all His works and is the end of all, is the salvation of man through Jesus Christ. This great work seemed, as it were, asleep or dead, like trees in winter, all through those 4,000 years, which gave no sign of His coming. Included in this great work is the special work of the Hand of God. Of this work alone it is said, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image after Our Likeness” (Genesis 1:26); and, “we are the clay and You our Potter, and we are all the work of Your Hands” (Isaiah 64:8); and “Your Hands have made me and fashioned me together round about” (Job 10:8). This refers to man, who, being dead as to the life of the soul through the malice of Satan, was revived by Christ through His dying and rising again.

He was “dead in trespasses and sins,” and like a carcass putrefying in them. This whole world was one great charnel-house, through man’s manifold corruptions, when Christ came to awaken the dead, and those who heard lived (John 5:25).

Again, the Center of this work, the special Work of God, that in which He made all things new, is the Human Body of our Lord—the Temple which was destroyed by death and within three days was raised up.

The answer to Habakkuk’s inquiry, “How long?” had two sides. It had given assurance about the end. The trial-time would not be prolonged for one moment longer than the counsel of God had fore-determined. The relief would “come, come; it would not be behind-hand.” But in the meantime? There was no comfort to be given, for God knew that deepening sin was drawing on deepening chastisement. But in that He was silent about the intervening time and pointed to patient expectation of a lingering future as their only comfort, He implies that the immediate future was heavy. Habakkuk then renews his prayer for the years that had to intervene and pass away.

“In the midst of the years,” before that “time appointed,” when His promise should have its full fulfillment, before those years should come to their close, he prays, “revive Your work.” The years include all the long period of waiting for our Lord’s first coming before He came in the Flesh, and now for His second coming and the “restitution of all things.” In this long period, at times God seems to be absent, as when our Lord was asleep in the boat while the tempest was raging; at times He bids “the storm to cease and there is a great calm.”

This, in those long intervals when God seems to be absent, to leave all things to time and chance, when love grows cold, and graces seem rare, is the prayer of Habakkuk, of prophets and Psalmists, of the Church: “Return, we beseech You, O God of hosts, look down from heaven, behold and visit this vine” (Psalms 80:14). “O God, why have You cast us off forever?” (Psalms 74:1). “Why do You withdraw Your hand, Your right hand? ... For God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth” (Psalms 74:11–12). “Awake, awake, put on strength, You Arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Are You not It which struck Rahab, wounded the dragon? Are You not It which dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, which made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” (Isaiah 51:9–10).

“Stir up Your might and come, save us” (Psalms 80:3). “Renew our days, as of old” (Lamentations 5:21). So our Lord taught His Church to pray continually, whenever she prayed, “Your kingdom come,” longing not only for His final coming, but also for the increase of His glory, the greater dominion of His grace, and His enthronement in the hearts of people, even before its complete and final coming. “In the midst of the years revive Your work,” is the Church’s continual cry.

In the midst of the years make known - literally, “You will make known: in wrath You will remember mercy;” and so (as we use the word “will”) the prophet at once foretells, expresses his faith, and prays. God had made known His work and His power in the days of old. In times of trouble He seems “like a God who hides Himself.” Now, he prays Him to shine forth and help: make known Your work, before You fulfill it, to revive the drooping hopes of man, and that all may see that “Your word is truth.” Make Yourself known in Your work, so that when the time comes to “make an end of sin” (Daniel 9:24) by the Death of Your Son, Your Awful Holiness, and the love with which You have “so loved the world” (John 3:16), may be more known and adored.

In wrath You will remember mercy - So David prayed (Psalms 25:6), “Remember Your tender-mercies and Your loving-kindnesses; for they are from old.” “You will remember” that counsel for man’s redemption which has been from the foundation of the world, for we seem in our own minds to be forgotten by God when He delays to help us. God remembers mercy (Luke 1:54; Luke 1:72) in anger, in that in this life He never chastens without purposes of mercy, and His mercy ever softens His judgments.

His promise of mercy, that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head, went before the sentence of displeasure (Genesis 3:19): “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Jerome says: “He reveals His wrath that He may scare us from sin and so may not inflict it; and when at last He inflicts it, He has mercy on the remnant who flee to His Mercy, so that we may not be like Sodom and Gomorrah.” (Romans 5:8), “while we were yet sinners,” and God was angry, “Christ died for us.” And (Titus 3:5), “He saved us, not for works which we had done, but out of His great Mercy,” taking away sin and restoring us to life and incorruption.

God had already promised by Micah (Micah 7:15), “According to the days of your coming out of the land of Egypt, I will show him marvelous things.”

Isaiah had often used the great events of that deliverance as symbols of the future. So now Habakkuk, in one vast panorama, as it were, without distinction of time or series of events, exhibits the future in pictures of the past. In the description itself which follows, he speaks sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. In these instances, the future might be portrayed as a vivid present, and the past as a prophetic past.

As a key to the whole, he says, “God shall come,” indicating that all that follows, however spoken, was a part of that future. In no other way was it an answer to that prayer, “Revive Your work.” To foretell future deliverances in plain words would have been a comfort; it would have promised a continuance of that work.

The unity and revival of the work is expressed in that the past is made, as it was, the image of the future. That future was to be wondrous and superhuman; elsewhere, the past miracles had been no image of it. It was to be no mere repetition of the future; and to mark this, the images are exhibited out of their historical order.