Habakkuk 3:2

3:2 Lord, I have heard the report of what you did; ¹ 

I am awed, ²  Lord, by what you accomplished. ³ 

In our time ⁴  repeat those deeds; ⁵ 

in our time reveal them again. ⁶ 

But when you cause turmoil, remember to show us mercy! ⁷ 

Habakkuk 2:19

2:19 The one who says to wood, ‘Wake up!’ is as good as dead ⁸  –

he who says ⁹  to speechless stone, ‘Awake!’

Can it give reliable guidance? ¹⁰ 

It is overlaid with gold and silver;

it has no life’s breath inside it.

[3:2]  ¹ tn Heb “your report,” that is, “the report concerning you.”

[3:2]  ² tn Heb “I fear.” Some prefer to read, “I saw, Lord, what you accomplished” (cf. NEB).

[3:2]  ³ tn Heb “your work.”

[3:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the midst of years.” The meaning of the phrase, which occurs only here in the OT, is uncertain (cf. NIV “in our day”; NEB, NASB “in the midst of the years”).

[3:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “revive it” (i.e., “your work”).

[3:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “make known.” The implied object is “your deeds”; the pronoun “them,” referring to “deeds” in the previous line, was employed in the translation to avoid redundancy. The suffix on the form חַיֵּיהוּ (khayyehu, “revive it”) does double duty in the parallelism.

[3:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “in turmoil remember [to show] compassion.”

[2:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who says.” On the term הוֹי (hoy) see the note on the word “dead” in v. 6.

[2:19]  ⁹ tn The words “he who says” in the translation are supplied from the previous parallel line.

[2:19]  ¹⁰ tn Though the Hebrew text has no formal interrogative marker here, the context indicates that the statement should be taken as a rhetorical question anticipating the answer, “Of course not!” (so also NIV, NRSV).