Habakkuk 3:10

3:10 When the mountains see you, they shake.

The torrential downpour sweeps through. ¹ 

The great deep ²  shouts out;

it lifts its hands high. ³ 

Habakkuk 3:16

Habakkuk Declares His Confidence

3:16 I listened and my stomach churned; ⁴ 

the sound made my lips quiver.

My frame went limp, as if my bones were decaying, ⁵ 

and I shook as I tried to walk. ⁶ 

I long ⁷  for the day of distress

to come upon ⁸  the people who attack us.

Habakkuk 2:2

The Lord Assures Habakkuk

2:2 The Lord responded: ⁹ 

“Write down this message! ¹⁰  Record it legibly on tablets,

so the one who announces ¹¹  it may read it easily. ¹² 

[3:10]  ¹ tn Heb “a heavy rain of waters passes by.” Perhaps the flash floods produced by the downpour are in view here.

[3:10]  ² sn The great deep, which is to be equated with the sea (vv. 8, 15), is a symbol of chaos and represents the Lord’s enemies.

[3:10]  ³ sn Lifting the hands here suggests panic and is accompanied by a cry for mercy (see Ps 28:2; Lam 2:19). The forces of chaos cannot withstand the Lord’s power revealed in the storm.

[3:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “my insides trembled.”

[3:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “decay entered my bones.”

[3:16]  ⁶ tc Heb “beneath me I shook, which….” The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher) appears to be a relative pronoun, but a relative pronoun does not fit here. The translation assumes a reading אֲשֻׁרָי (’ashuray, “my steps”) as well as an emendation of the preceding verb to a third plural form.

[3:16]  ⁷ tn The translation assumes that אָנוּחַ (’anuakh) is from the otherwise unattested verb נָוָח (navakh, “sigh”; see HALOT 680 s.v. II נוח; so also NEB). Most take this verb as נוּחַ (nuakh, “to rest”) and translate, “I wait patiently” (cf. NIV).

[3:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “to come up toward.”

[2:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord answered and said.” The redundant expression “answered and said” has been simplified in the translation as “responded.”

[2:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “[the] vision.”

[2:2]  ⁹ tn Or “reads from.”

[2:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “might run,” which here probably means “run [through it quickly with one’s eyes],” that is, read it easily.