Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Habakkuk · About this commentary
Though the Fig Tree Does Not Blossom
Habakkuk 3:16-19
16 I heard, and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness enters into my bones, and I tremble in my place because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people who invade us. · WEB
The prophet never gets his explanation; he gets God, and decides that will do even if everything else fails.
I heard, and my body trembled. The vision has not comforted him. Lips quiver, rottenness enters the bones, and he shakes where he stands — and then he says why: because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble. He has accepted the answer of Habakkuk 2:3, and accepting it costs him this.
What follows is the most carefully built sentence in the prophets. Six failures are listed in order, and they are not disasters but absences: no fig blossom, no fruit on the vine, the olive crop failed, the fields yielding nothing, the flock cut off from the fold, no herd in the stalls. Together they are the entire agricultural economy — food, oil, wine, wool, everything a household lives on — removed one clause at a time.
Then the turn, on a single word: yet. I will rejoice in Yahweh; I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The joy is not that things will improve, and nothing in the verse promises they will.
The last line gives the reason. He makes my feet like a deer's, and enables me to go on high places — sure footing on ground where falling is the ordinary outcome. Then the psalm is handed to the music director, so a congregation could sing it while waiting.
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