Habakkuk's questions and complaints have finally settled into something new, a prayer marked "according to Shigionoth," probably a musical direction for music that wanders freely and does not march in a fixed pattern, matching the sweep of what is about to be described. 2"O LORD, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear." This is the reverent fear of someone who has been told what this God can do and has taken the report seriously.
The central request is startlingly simple for what follows it. 2"In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy." Habakkuk has accepted that the Chaldeans are coming and that discipline is deserved, so he does not ask God to cancel the judgment. He asks for one thing inside it, mercy, remembered even in the middle of deserved wrath. He is holding God to his own oldest self-description at Sinai, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, forgiving iniquity, and yet not clearing the guilty (Exodus 34:6-7). It is the request every honest believer eventually learns to pray, a plea that consequence not be the whole story, with no thought of escape from it.
What follows is a vivid appearance of God, and he comes as a warrior marching to battle. 3"God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran," the wilderness region where God first gave Israel the law, and now this same God arrives again. Every image piles on the last. Brightness like light, plague and pestilence marching ahead of him like an advance guard, mountains scattered, everlasting hills brought low. Resheph, the Hebrew word for plague, was also the name of a Canaanite god, and here it is reduced to a servant at God's heels. The sun and moon stand still at the light of his arrows, language that deliberately recalls Joshua's battle at Gibeon, when the sun did stand still for Israel (Joshua 10:12-13). This is the God who has always fought for his people, doing it again on a scale that shakes creation.
The purpose of all this overwhelming power is stated plainly. 13"You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed." The Hebrew word for salvation is the root behind the name Jesus, Yeshua, "the LORD saves." The whole cosmic battle, mountains writhing, seas trampled, and the sun standing still, exists for one purpose, rescue, aimed at God's people and his anointed one. The warrior imagery, fierce as it is, was always in service of deliverance.
The enemy who threatened God's people is decisively defeated, and the warriors who came like a whirlwind to scatter Habakkuk's people are undone by their own weapons. This is the vision Habakkuk asked to see from his watchtower, and it is larger, stranger, and more violent than any simple explanation could have been. But it answers the question under every complaint this book has voiced. God has been marching the whole time toward the salvation of exactly the people who felt most abandoned.
Bring your own request the way Habakkuk did, asking for mercy to be remembered inside what is hard. And trust that God has been on the march for you longer than you have been afraid.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a splendor that covers the heavens and still bends down, in wrath, to remember mercy. When your work in our days feels slow or frightening, let us hear the report of what you have already done and trust the outcome before we can see it. Ride out, as you always have, for the salvation of your people and your anointed. In Jesus' name, amen.