Habakkuk 3:19
“Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.”
Where this sits
The last line of Habakkuk, written after the prophet has been told the Babylonians are coming and there is no reprieve. The verse before it lists the failure of every crop and herd.
Reflection
You have to read the verse before this one for the last line to land.
Habakkuk has just imagined total agricultural collapse — no figs, no grapes, no olives, no crop in the field, no flock in the fold, no herd in the stall. In an economy like his that is not hardship; it is the end. And having pictured it in full, he says he will rejoice anyway, and then this: Yahweh is my strength, and he makes my feet like deer's feet.
The deer image is precise. A deer's feet are not built for speed on flat ground; they are built for grip on rock, for moving surely along a slope where a misplaced step is fatal. It is an animal designed for terrain that would kill something else.
So the promise is not removal from the high places. It is footing on them. Habakkuk is not told the Babylonians will turn back. He is told he will be able to walk the ground he is actually standing on.
And then the strangest detail in the book: for the music director, on my stringed instruments. Habakkuk hands this to the choir. Having foreseen the destruction of his country, he writes the whole thing up as a piece of music for public worship — which means the congregation was expected to sing it together, in advance, before any of it happened.
- Theme:
- Strength
- Book:
- Habakkuk