Habakkuk 3:12

12. Through the land Better, through the earth; for Jehovah fought against more than one nation.

Thresh Literally, tread down (see on Amos 1:3; compare 2 Kings 13:7; Job 39:15). He spared no one.

In indignation,… in anger Because they had wronged his people.

Habakkuk 3:13 declares, at last, why Jehovah went forth.

Thou wentest forth To war on behalf of his people (Judges 5:4; Isaiah 42:13).

For the salvation To bring deliverance from all enemies. Of thy people,…

with thine anointed This is a literal reproduction of the original; but the expression “with thine anointed” creates difficulty. Who is this anointed one? It cannot be the expected Messiah, because the verse points to events in the past. R.V. renders “of thine anointed,” which produces a good parallelism and suggests that “thy people” and “thine anointed” are identical. In other passages also the term is applied to the nation, for anyone who has a special commission from Jehovah may be called “the anointed one.” In accordance with this principle the term is applied to Cyrus (Isaiah 45:1), to the high priest (Leviticus 4:3; Leviticus 4:5; Leviticus 4:16), to the king (1 Samuel 24:6), to the patriarchs (Psalms 105:15), to the godly in the nation (Psalms 132:10), and to the people Israel (Psalms 84:9; Psalms 89:38; Psalms 89:51). It must refer to the people, even if the translation of A.V. is retained; he went forth with his people for their salvation.

Thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked This might possibly mean that Jehovah smote the head of the chief of the evildoers, but with this translation the last clause becomes unintelligible; margin R.V.

gives better sense, “Thou didst smite off the head from the house of the wicked man.” To this may be joined the rest of the verse as translated in R.V., “laying bare the foundation even unto the neck.” The last clause indicates that, though the whole is figurative, within the figure “house” is to be understood literally; the “head” is the upper part, the roof, the “neck” is its central portion, the “foundation” the lowest part; the “wicked man” is the enemy of the “anointed one.” The whole is a picture of the utter destruction of this enemy of the people of Jehovah. Who this enemy is taken to be depends upon the interpretation of the poem as a whole. If the poet is describing the divine interference at the time of the Exodus, the enemy is Pharaoh or the Egyptian nation; if the poem contains a summary of all the divine manifestations of the past, he represents all the hostile nations ever encountered by Israel; if it points to the future, which is not likely, he is the Chaldean. The tone of the entire context suggests that the first view is to be preferred (compare Habakkuk 3:15). Laying bare (R.V.) Used here in the general sense of “destroy” (Micah 1:6; Psalms 137:7).

It must be admitted that the whole figure is a strange one; LXX. either read a different text or could not make anything out of the Hebrew; several recent commentators consider the text hopelessly corrupt.