13 You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed.
You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. Selah
14 You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter me,
rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret.
15 You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters.
16 I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.
To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.
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The message of Habakkuk is a double edged sword. Yes, God emphatically asserts, the Chaldeans will be made to pay for their destructive greed and blood lust. Good news for Judah, right? Unfortunately no, for the other edge, God says, is that the Chaldeans will first be the instrument by which judgment is rendered on Judah for its faithlessness. Sadly, the reforms that arose from the ministry of Zephaniah have melted away and as God foretold, time was up. Habakkuk’s reflections on the mighty power of God and the knowledge that this power will be unleashed against Judah and Babylon has rightly left him trembling as he “quietly waits” for the day of trouble. Yet, is he all that quiet for he immediately writes a stirring hymn of praise to God? We should pause and understand that “quietly wait” is better rendered “to settle down” so that we would not receive Habakkuk’s song as one of resignation.
Beloved, we live in challenging times, times that often leave us quite disquieted, and we would do well to make our song that of Habakkuk as a means to settle us down that we might thrive in the midst of uncertainty and challenge. You see, Habakkuk’s hymn opens with a slow stripping away of the things in which we place great value. First go the figs, symbolizing the delicacies of life, followed by the fruit of the vine, which was the means by which they had daily drink for their water sources were often unclean, then there goes olives and their ability to aid in cooking and as a source of light. Here we might say enough, but Habakkuk continues and tells us there is no food and zero wealth, as the herd in the stalls was the way in which they established wealth. I can hear you thinking now, that leaves nothing! Well, not quite.
Habakkuk gently reminds us that when we have lost seemingly everything, we still have God. God, who is the source of our salvation, and though we may be withering away because we have not food nor drink, delicacy or even light, God remains our strength and so we sing. We sing with full throated vigor and joy because God remains when all else passes away. Pythagorus had his theorem, a2+ b2= c2, how to determine the length of a right triangle’s hypotenuse and transformed mathematics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, E = mc2, birthed the modern age, and Habakkuk’s theory of settled quiet in the midst of unprecedented turmoil would serve us well to recognize. And what is that theory? Nothing + God = Joy and Abundant Life. As the nights continue to lengthen and the world rushes head long toward destruction, can we memorize and employ Habakkuk’s theory in our lives that we may find rest? More importantly, will we share it, which is the implication of Habakkuk’s final instruction to the choirmaster, that others may find settled rest as well and join us in singing praises to God?