The Army of Jehovah Text: Habakkuk 3:3-15
Introduction: The Right Kind of Fear
We live in an age that has domesticated God. Our modern sensibilities prefer a God who is safe, manageable, and above all, nice. He is a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine, a cosmic grandpa who would never hurt a fly. But this God is an idol, carved out of the sentimentalism of our effeminate age. He is a god who cannot save, because he is a god who cannot judge. The God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a consuming fire. He is a man of war. And if you are His child, this is the most comforting truth in the universe. If you are His enemy, it is the most terrifying.
Habakkuk has been wrestling with God. He has complained about the injustice in Judah, and God's answer was the Chaldeans, which seemed to Habakkuk to be no answer at all, like treating a disease with a worse disease. God then assured him that the proud Chaldeans would also face their day of reckoning, and that in the meantime, the just must live by faith. But faith in what? Faith in whom? Faith is not a leap in the dark; it is a firm standing on the character of God. And so, in this third chapter, which is a prayer set to music, God gives Habakkuk a vision. It is a staggering, poetic, terrifying vision of who He is when He comes to save His people and to judge His enemies.
This is not a dry, systematic theology. This is a theophany, a manifestation of God, rendered in poetic language designed to ignite the imagination. The right kind of poetic imagination is, in fact, the fear of God. We are meant to see this, to feel the mountains tremble, to see the sun and moon stand still. This is the God in whom Habakkuk is called to trust. This is the God who commands the armies of Jehovah, and this army is the ultimate answer to the army of Babylon. This is the God who rides to war for the salvation of His people.
The Text
God comes from Teman, And the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His splendor covers the heavens, And the earth is full of His praise. His brightness is like the sunlight; He has rays flashing from His hand, And there is the hiding of His strength. Before Him goes pestilence, And plague comes after Him. He stood and measured out the earth; He looked and startled the nations. So the perpetual mountains were shattered; The ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan under wickedness; The tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. Did Yahweh’s fury burn against the rivers, Or was Your anger against the rivers, Or was Your wrath against the sea, That You rode on Your horses, On Your chariots of salvation? Your bow was made bare; Rods were sworn unto battle by word. Selah. You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw You and writhed; The downpour of waters passed by. The deep gave forth its voice; It lifted high its hands. Sun and moon stood in their lofty places; They went away at the light of Your arrows, At the brightness of Your flashing spear. In indignation You marched through the earth; In anger You trampled the nations. You went forth for the salvation of Your people, For salvation with Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked To lay him bare from thigh to neck. Selah. You pierced with his own sharpened rods The head of his throngs. They stormed in to scatter us; Their exultation was like those Who devour the afflicted in secret. You tread on the sea with Your horses, On the surge of many waters.
(Habakkuk 3:3-15 LSB)
The Divine Warrior on the March (vv. 3-7)
The prayer begins with a recollection of God's mighty historical acts, particularly the Exodus and the giving of the Law at Sinai.
"God comes from Teman, And the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His splendor covers the heavens, And the earth is full of His praise. His brightness is like the sunlight; He has rays flashing from His hand, And there is the hiding of His strength. Before Him goes pestilence, And plague comes after Him. He stood and measured out the earth; He looked and startled the nations. So the perpetual mountains were shattered; The ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan under wickedness; The tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling." (Habakkuk 3:3-7)
Teman and Paran are in the region of Sinai and Edom. Habakkuk is reaching back into Israel's history, to the time when God revealed His glory and established His covenant (Deut. 33:2). This is not some abstract deity; this is the God who acts in history, in real time and space. When He appears, His glory is not contained. It covers the heavens, and His praise fills the earth. This is the baseline reality. God's glory is the ultimate fact of the universe.
The description of His appearance is blinding. He is like sunlight, with rays, or "horns," flashing from His hand. This is raw, untamed power. Picture God taking the sun in His fist and squeezing it, and the corona flaring out between His fingers. And yet, even in this brilliant display, there is "the hiding of His strength." What we see, as overwhelming as it is, is only a glimpse. The full measure of His power is concealed, because if it were fully revealed, the universe would be unmade. What we can perceive is but the fringe of His garment.
And He does not march alone. He has His vanguard and His rear guard. "Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him." These are His officers, His forward troops. In the deliverance from Egypt, God used these very weapons to dismantle an empire. This is a God who wields creation as His arsenal. When He stands, the earth is measured, surveyed for His purposes. When He looks, the nations are startled, sent into a panic. The most stable things we can imagine, the "perpetual mountains" and "ancient hills," are shattered and collapse before Him. Our greatest securities are like dust. But amidst all this upheaval, one thing is constant: "His ways are everlasting." God's character and purposes do not change. He is the one fixed point in a quaking cosmos.
This display of power has its intended effect. The enemies of God's people, Cushan and Midian, historic foes of Israel, are seen trembling in their tents. Their curtains, their flimsy homes, shake with terror. This is what happens when God arises. The wicked are undone not by human might, but by the sheer presence of the Holy One.
Creation in Tumult (vv. 8-11)
Habakkuk continues, using a series of rhetorical questions to emphasize the purpose of God's cosmic warfare. It is not against creation itself, but for His people.
"Did Yahweh’s fury burn against the rivers, Or was Your anger against the rivers, Or was Your wrath against the sea, That You rode on Your horses, On Your chariots of salvation? Your bow was made bare... You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw You and writhed... The deep gave forth its voice; It lifted high its hands. Sun and moon stood in their lofty places; They went away at the light of Your arrows, At the brightness of Your flashing spear." (Habakkuk 3:8-11)
When God split the Red Sea and the Jordan River, was He angry at the water? Of course not. The question is designed to make the answer obvious. God's war is not with inanimate nature. He was riding His "chariots of salvation." His purpose was deliverance. He bends creation to His redemptive will. The sea is not an obstacle; it is a tool. The river is not a barrier; it is pavement for His people and a watery grave for His enemies.
His "bow was made bare," meaning it was drawn from its case, ready for action. He is a warrior prepared for battle. The whole of creation responds to His coming. The mountains see Him and writhe in agony, like a woman in labor. The deep, the primordial sea, roars and lifts its "hands" high, as if in surrender or praise. This is high poetry, personifying creation as being utterly terrified and subservient before its Creator.
Even the celestial bodies are arrested. The "sun and moon stood in their lofty places." This is a clear reference to Joshua's long day, when God stopped the cosmos to give His people victory (Joshua 10). The sun and moon, worshipped as gods by the pagans, are shown to be mere servants, stopping in their tracks at the command of Yahweh. They flee from the greater light of His arrows and flashing spear. The light that glints off the tips of the spears of Jehovah's army outshines the sun. This is the God who is not bound by the laws of nature because He wrote them.
Salvation for His Anointed (vv. 12-15)
Here the prophet brings the purpose of this whole terrifying display into sharp focus. It is all for His people.
"In indignation You marched through the earth; In anger You trampled the nations. You went forth for the salvation of Your people, For salvation with Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked To lay him bare from thigh to neck. Selah. You pierced with his own sharpened rods The head of his throngs... You tread on the sea with Your horses, On the surge of many waters." (Habakkuk 3:12-15)
God's march is one of "indignation" and "anger." He is not dispassionate. He hates evil. He tramples the nations like a vintner stomping grapes in a winepress. But this wrath is not arbitrary. It has a specific, redemptive goal: "You went forth for the salvation of Your people, for salvation with Your anointed."
This is the heart of the matter. God's judgment on the wicked is the flip side of His salvation for His people. You cannot have one without the other. To save the sheep, you must deal with the wolves. And notice who He saves: "Your people" and "Your anointed." In the immediate context, this refers to the nation of Israel and its king. But this points forward, as all Scripture does, to the ultimate Anointed One, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and to us, His people, who are anointed in Him.
The result of this divine warfare is the total destruction of the enemy. He "crushed the head of the house of the wicked." This language echoes the first gospel promise in Genesis 3:15, where the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. God's historical acts of judgment are installments of that final victory. The enemy is laid bare, completely exposed and dismantled. He is pierced with his own weapons, a beautiful irony of judgment. The very tools of his rebellion become the instruments of his demise, just as Haman was hanged on his own gallows.
The enemies of God's people are depicted as a ravenous horde, storming in to scatter the faithful, exulting as though they were devouring the poor in secret. This is the nature of wickedness: it is predatory and cowardly. But God intervenes. The vision ends as it began, with God on the march, treading the sea with His horses, mastering the chaos of the "many waters." He is the Lord of the storm, the King over the flood.
Conclusion: Faith in a Warrior God
So what is the point of all this? The point is for Habakkuk, and for us, to have our imaginations recalibrated. We are to stop looking at the size of the Chaldean army and start looking at the staggering power of Jehovah's army. The God who shattered mountains and stopped the sun is the God who has promised to save us. The problems we face, whether it is a hostile culture, personal trials, or the threat of tyrannical empires, are nothing to Him. They are less than the ancient hills, less than the raging sea.
This vision is the foundation for the quiet trust Habakkuk expresses at the end of the chapter. He can rejoice when the fig tree does not blossom precisely because he knows the God who commands the sun. Our faith is not in our circumstances. Our faith is in the God who tramples nations for the sake of His anointed.
This warrior God is our Father. The one whose spear outshines the moon is the one who went to the cross for us in the person of His Son. The cross was the ultimate act of divine warfare. There, Christ crushed the head of the house of the wicked. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it (Col. 2:15). He used the enemy's own weapon, death, to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil (Heb. 2:14).
Therefore, we do not need to tremble before the Cushans and Midianites of our day. We are to fear God, which means we are not to fear man. The God of Habakkuk 3 is on the move. He is riding forth on His chariots of salvation. And He is coming for the salvation of His people, and for salvation with His Anointed, our Lord Jesus. And because His ways are everlasting, His victory is certain.