Scaling the Heights with God

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fall and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord;  I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; He makes me tread on my high places.” –Habakkuk 3:17-19 (ESV).

We know little about the prophet Habakkuk.  He does not mention the nation of Judah in his prophecy, nor does he give us a hint of the date when he wrote except that it is prior to the Babylonian invasion as noted in 1:6:  “For behold I am raising up the Chaldeans (another name for the Babylonians), that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own.”   Scholars place Habakkuk as a contemporary of Zephaniah and Jeremiah and some say of Ezekiel and Daniel.  The short book of Habakkuk is a dialogue between the prophet and God in two cycles with Habakkuk’s complaint or lamentation, followed by God’s response.  Then comes Habakkuk’s prayer.  The first cycle of the dialogues is in 1:2-11 with his lament stated in 1:2-4 and God’s answer in 11:5-11. The second dialogue gives Habakkuk’s lament in :12-2:1 and God’s response in 2:2-20.  Habakkuk’s prayer is all of chapter 3 and ends with the exalted words of our focus verses for today. To study Habakkuk and examine the prophet’s complaints and God’s responses shows us how very timely the book is for us today:  “Destruction and violence are before me…the wicked surround the righteous...justice goes forth perverted”(1:3, 4).  God answers the first complaint by saying to Habakkuk:  “I am doing a work in your day that you would not believe if told” (1:5). Habakkuk gets bolder in his second complain, and asks God: “Why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (v. 13).  Does this not address the age-old question:  “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?”  Within the answer to Habakkuk’s second complaint is the inimitable statement that sparked the Reformation and has stood as a beacon in every age:  “the righteous shall live by his faith” (v. 2:4), known to us better in the King James Versions as “the just shall live by faith.” 

Habakkuk 3:16 sees the prophet resigned to the nation’s fate, expecting the invasion by a foreign power that will come upon them.  In verse 17 he lists almost every calamity he can imagine that will transpire under invasion and captivity.  The prophet has come a long way in his faith and acceptance.  He began his complaints by seeking to tell God how to run his world.  He ends up by recognizing that God is in control.  Although calamities will befall the people, like crops in fruit orchards, vineyards and fields failing, and the flocks being cut off (all major means of staying  alive and thriving in his land), the prophet makes a victorious statement:  “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;  I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (3:18).  I recall Corrie ten Boon’s account of her life in the horrible concentration camp during Hitler’s period of persecution and take-over.  She was able to rejoice in what we would consider the grossest of circumstances, seeing God’s hand in the tribulations they bore.  “God the Lord is my strength” Habakkuk declared (v. 19).  Then the prophet gives the beautiful metaphor of God making his feet like the deer’s feet—sure-footed and confident in the most extreme circumstances.  We see an image of the deer—or hind—able to keep on climbing to the hard-to-scale precipice because he has spotted a grassy knoll on the heights of a formidable mountain.  We learn from Habakkuk to face our doubts and questions honestly. “Take them to the Lord in prayer” as the hymn advises us.  The noted English theologian G. Campbell Morgan wrote, “Our joy is in proportion to our trust.  Our trust is in proportion to our knowledge of God” (The Westminster Pulpit, London: Pickering and Inglis, 1970, vol. 6, p. 153).  God always equips us to meet circumstances.  Therein is faith and trust—and we become like the deer, sure-footed and confident in God’s power to provide.