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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Habakkuk 3:10 - 3:10
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“The mountains see Thee, they writhe: a shower of waters passes along: the abyss lifts up its voice, it lifts up its hands on high. Hab 3:11. Sun, moon, enter into their habitation at the light of Thine arrows which shoot by, at the shining of the lightning of Thy spear.” The effect of the coming of God upon the mountains was already referred to in Hab 3:6. There they crumbled into ruins, here they writhe with terror. This difference is to be explained from the fact that there (Hab 3:6) the general effect of the omnipotence of God upon nature was intended, whereas here (Hab 3:10, Hab 3:11) the special effect is described, which is produced upon nature by the judgment about to be executed by God upon the nations. The perfects in the description represent this effect as following immediately upon the coming of God. But in the first clause of Hab 3:10 the perfect רָאוּךָ is followed by the imperfect יָחִילוּ, because the writhing is a lasting condition. The force of the description is heightened by the omission of the copula before the clauses and the particular objects. The two verbs of the first clause stand in the relation of cause and effect to one another: when the mountains have seen Thee, they writhe with terror. The further description is not founded upon the idea of a terrible storm; for there is no reference to thunder, nor even to lightnings, but only to the arrows (Hab 3:11), which may be explained from the idea of God, as a warlike hero, making bare His bow. The colours and different features of the description are borrowed from the judgment of the flood. Hab 3:10 (a and b) points to this divine judgment of the olden time, both the coming of the showers of water (geshem as in Gen 7:12 and Gen 8:2, and strengthened by mayim, analogous to hammabbūl hâyâh mayim in Gen 7:6; ‛âbhar as in Nah 3:19; Psa 48:5), and also the nâthan tehōm qōlō, the raging outburst of the abyss. Tehōm is the mass of water in the abyss, not merely that of the ocean, but that of the subterranean waters also (Gen 49:25; Deu 33:13), the “great deep” (tehōm rabbâh), whose fountains were broken up at the flood (Gen 7:11); and not the ocean of heaven, as Hitzig erroneously infers from Gen 7:11; Gen 8:2, and Pro 8:27. To this mass of water, which is called tehōm from its roaring depth, the prophet attributes a voice, which it utters, to express the loud, mighty roaring of the waters as they rush forth from the bursting earth. As at the time of the flood, which was a type of the last judgment (Isa 24:18), the windows of heaven and the fountains of the deep were opened, so that the upper and lower waters, which are divided by the firmament, rushed together again, and the earth returned, as it were, to its condition before the second day of creation; so here also the rivers of the earth and rain-showers of heaven come together, so that the abyss roars up with a loud noise (Delitzsch). This roaring outburst of the mass of waters from the heart of the earth is then represented as a lifting up of the hands to heaven, with reference to the fact that the waves are thrown up. Rōm = rūm (Pro 25:3; Pro 21:4) is an accusative of direction, like mârōm in 2Ki 19:22. יָדֵיהוּ, for יָדָיו, a full-sounding and more extended form, possibly to express by the rhythm the greatness of the prodigy, how magna vi brachii tollunt (Delitzsch). The lifting up of the hands is not a gesture denoting either an oath or rebellion; but it is an involuntary utterance of terror, of restlessness, of anguish, as it were, with a prayer for help (Delitzsch).