Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 3:6

"He stood, and measured the earth; He beheld, and drove asunder the nations; And the eternal mountains were scattered; The everlasting hills did bow; His goings were [as] of old." — Habakkuk 3:6 (ASV)

He stood - It is “a metaphor of His giving victory to Israel,” Tanchum says.

And measured - So Kimchi, A. E., Rashi, Tanchum, and the Vulgate interpret it. This interpretation is supported by the Hithpolel form, meaning “extended himself” (1 Kings 17:21). By an interchange of dentals, מוד might be equivalent to מוט, and thus the Aramaic and the Septuagint translate it; however, in no other case do the two forms coexist in Hebrew.

The earth - Joshua, after he had conquered the land, meted it out and divided it among the people. He who was to come would measure out the earth in its length and breadth, that earth which His glory fills.

“He stood,” as Stephen saw Him, “standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Isaiah says, “The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people” (Isaiah 3:13). He did not need to go out; but, in the abode of His glory, “He stood” and beheld, and with His eye “measured the earth” as His own.

Before the cross, the earth lay under “the Prince of this world” (1 Corinthians 2:5), who had said, “it is delivered unto me, and unto whomsoever I will, I give it” (Luke 4:6). But Christ “measures it” and gave it to His apostles: “all power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Matthew 28:18; Mark 16:15). And so, “their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words into the ends of the world” (Psalms 19:4).

He measures it also, surveying and weighing all who dwell in it—their persons, qualities, and deeds, good or bad—to repay them as “Judge of quick and dead.” This is like David, who cast down Moab and measured them with a line, “to put to death and to keep alive” (2 Samuel 8:2).

He beheld, and drove asunder the nations - or, “made the nations to tremble.” When Israel came out of Egypt and God divided the Red Sea before them, they sang: “The people shall hear and be afraid; terror shall take hold of the inhabitants of Palestine; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold of them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away; fear and dread shall fall on them; by the greatness of Thy power they shall be still as a stone” (Exodus 15:15–16). Fear and awe were to be renewed. All nearness of God brings terror to sinful people.

When the news came through the wise men that they had “seen in the East the star of Him who was born, King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:1–3), not only was Herod the King troubled, but “all Jerusalem with him.”

Pilate “was afraid” (John 19:8) when he condemned Jesus. The high priests wondered “whereunto this should grow” (Acts 5:24) and expostulated, “ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28).

Paganism was like a besieged city, mastered by an ubiquitous Presence, which they did not know how to confront. “The state is beset: the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in their islands. Every sex, age, condition, and now even rank is going over to this sect.”

The fierceness of the persecutions was the measure of their fear. They exerted all human might to stamp out the spark, lest their gods, and the greatness of the empire which they ascribed to their gods, should fall before this unknown Power.

And the everlasting mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills bowed - All power, great or small, gave way before Him. All that withstood Him was scattered apart; all that in pride lifted itself up was brought low, although before the coming of the Saviour it had always gone with neck erect, and none could humble its pride. There is something so marvelous about those ancient mountains. They stood there before humans were on the earth; they are so solid, humans so slight. They have survived so many generations of people; they will long survive us. They seem as if they would stand forever; yet nothing could stand before the might of God.

What symbol could be more apt? To the greater pride the heavier lot is assigned: the mountains, lifted high above the earth and, as it were, looking down upon it, are scattered or dispersed, as when a stone flies in pieces under the stroke of the hammer. The “hills” are only bowed down; and this may represent human pride humbled under the yoke of Christ.

His ways are everlasting - “Everlasting” is contrasted with “everlasting.” The “everlasting” of the creature—that which had existed as long as creation itself, coexisting with its whole duration, its most enduring parts—is now like things past and gone. “The everlasting mountains, the hills of eternity,” have been scattered in pieces and bowed, and are no more. In contrast to these stands the ever-present eternity of God. “His ways are everlasting,” ordered everlastingly, existing everlastingly in the Divine Mind, and, when in action among us, involve no change in Him.

The prophet blends in these great words things seemingly contradictory: ways that imply progress, and eternity that is unchangeable: “God ever works, and ever rests; unchangeable, yet changing all; He changes His works, His purpose unchanged. For You are Most High, and are not changed, neither in You does today come to a close; yet in You it does come to a close; because all such things also are in You. For they had no way to pass away, unless You held them together. ‘And since Your years fail not,’ Your years are one Today. How many of ours and our fathers’ years have flowed away through Your today, and from it received the measure and the mould of such being as they had; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of being.

But You are still the Same; and all things of tomorrow, and all beyond, and all of yesterday, and all behind it, You will do in this today, You have done in this today.”

To these His goings, a highway is made by the breaking down of all that exalted itself, as Isaiah had said, “The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low and the Lord Alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:17); and, “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Isaiah 40:3).

Bernard, in Ps. Qui habitat, Serra. xi. 8, writes: “The Everlasting ways of the Everlasting God are Mercy and Truth. By these Ways the hills of the world and the proud demons, the princes of the darkness of this world, are bowed down, who did not know the way of mercy and truth nor remembered its paths. What does he have to do with truth, who is a liar and the father of it, and of whom it is written, ‘he abode not in the Truth’? But how far he is from Mercy, our misery, inflicted on us by him, witnesses.

When was he ever merciful, ‘who was a murderer from the beginning’? So then, those swelling hills were bowed down from the Everlasting Ways when, through their own crookedness, they sank away from the straight ways of the Lord and became not so much ways as precipices. How much more prudently and wisely are other hills bowed down and humbled by these Ways to salvation! For they were not bowed from them, as if parting from their straightness, but the Everlasting Ways themselves bowed down. May we not now see the hills of the world bowed down, when those who are high and mighty with devoted submission bow themselves before the Lord and worship at His Feet? Are they not bowed down when, from their own destructive loftiness of vanity and cruelty, they are turned to the humble way of mercy and truth?”