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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Habakkuk 3:4 - 3:4
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A splendour shines or arises like the light. תִּהְיֶה does not point back to תְּהִלָּתוֹ, “splendour like the sun will His glory be” (Hitzig); but it is the predicate to nōgah in the sense of to become, or to arise. הָאוֹר is the light of the sun. Like this light, or like the rising sun, when the Lord comes, there arises (spreads) a brilliant light, from which the rays emanate on its two sides. קַרְנַיִם, according to קָרַן in Exo 34:29-30, is to be taken in the sense of rays; and this meaning has developed itself from a comparison of the first rays of the rising sun, which shoot out above the horizon, to the horns or antlers of the gazelle, which is met with in the Arabian poets. מִיָּדוֹ, from His hand, i.e., since the hand is by the side, “at His side” (after the analogy of מִימִינוֹ and מִשְּׂמֹאלוֹ), and indeed “His hand” in a general sense, as signifying the hand generally, and not one single hand, equivalent therefore to “on both sides” (Delitzsch). As the disc of the sun is surrounded by a splendid radiance, so the coming of God is enclosed by rays on both sides. לֹו refers to God. “Such a radiant splendour (קַרְנַיִם) surrounding God is presupposed when it is affirmed of Moses, that on coming from the presence of Jehovah his face was radiant, or emitted rays” (קָרַן, Exo 34:29-30). This interpretation of the words is established beyond all doubt, not only by the מִימִינוֹ of the original passage in Deu 33:2, but also by the expressions which follow in Hab 3:5, viz., לְפָנָיו (before him) and לְרַגְלָויו (behind him); and consequently the interpretation “rays (emanating) from His hand are to Him,” with the idea that we are to think of flashes of lightning darting out of God's hand (Schnur., Ros., Hitzig, Maurer, etc.), is proved to be untenable. According to Hebrew notions, flashes of lightning do not proceed from the hand of God (in Psa 18:9, which has been appealed to in support of this explanation, we have מִמֶּנּוּ); and קַרְנַיִם does not occur either in Arabic or the later Hebrew in the sense of flashes of lightning, but only in the sense of the sun's rays. וְשָׁם חֶבְיוֹן עֻזֹּה, and there - namely, in the sun-like splendour, with the rays emanating from it - is the hiding of His omnipotence, i.e., the place where His omnipotence hides itself; in actual fact, the splendour forms the covering of the Almighty God at His coming, the manifestation of the essentially invisible God. The cloudy darkness is generally represented as the covering of the glory of God (Exo 20:21; 1Ki 8:12), not merely when His coming is depicted under the earthly substratum of a storm (Psa 18:12-13), but also when God was manifested in the pillar of cloud and fire (Exo 13:21) on the journey of the Israelites through the desert, where it was only by night that the cloud had the appearance of fire (Num 9:15-16). Here, on the contrary, the idea of the splendour of the rising sun predominates, according to which light is the garment in which God clothes Himself (Psa 104:2, cf. 1Ti 6:16), answering to His coming as the Holy One (Hab 3:3). For the sun-light, in its self-illumining splendour, is the most suitable earthly element to serve as a symbol of the spotless purity of the Holy One, in whom there is no variation of light and darkness (Jam 1:17; see at Exo 19:6). The alteration of וְשָׁם into וְשָׂם (he provides or contrives the concealment of His power), which Hitzig proposes after the lxx (Aq., Symm., and Syr.), must be rejected, inasmuch as in that case the object, which he makes into the covering (cf. Psa 18:12), could not be omitted; and this thought is by no means suitable here, and has merely been brought into the text on the assumption that God appears in a storm. As the Holy One, God comes to judgment upon the unholy world (Hab 3:5). Before Him goes debher, plague, and after His feet, i.e., behind Him, resheph, lit., burning heat, or a blaze (Son 8:6), here the burning heat of the pestilence, fever-heat, as in Deu 32:24. Plague and pestilence, as proceeding from God, are personified and represented as satellites; the former going before Him, as it were, as a shield-bearer (1Sa 17:7), or courier (2Sa 15:1); the latter coming after Him as a servant (1Sa 25:42). This verse prepares the way for the description, which commences with Hab 3:6, of the impression produced by the coming of God upon the world and its inhabitants.