On reading the whole chapter which is written as an ode (like most of the Psalms), I had the impression that the Lord Himself (Jesus, the Lamb that opens the six seals in Rev. 6) would step upon the earth in righteous anger bringing these judgments. Many Christians believe they can simply pray away all that will befall us. Yes, I am not saying we must not pray as God can mitigate the effects for and on behalf of His children (Joel 2:32). And He will do just that for His own, in miraculous ways. But we cannot stop the judgments that God Himself is bringing upon mankind!
Vs 4 describes His brilliant light…God is clothed in light. In other words, the brilliance (that of sunlight rays) of His light hides and covers His glory and power! It is so blinding what we will not be able to gaze upon Him even for a millisecond! So, in a sense even though He Himself will come to earth, He will not be seen as His light will be too bright to look upon and will hide Him. When He does appear before men, He has to use extreme and deep darkness to absorb His light (Exod. 19:16; Ps. 18:9, 11) for in our human form we are not able to survive it.
Vs 5 is the beginning of the judgments. “Before Him went the pestilence [as in Egypt Exod. 7:2-4].” This is the FIRST judgment, which comes before He steps on earth…it is the courier and warning sign that the others will shortly follow! Whew now a frightening thought…could this pestilence be referring to the novel Coronavirus pandemic that the world has been suffering from since December 2019? Then it continues… “and burning plague followed His feet [as in II Kings 19:32-35]. This is what astounded me because for the first time I saw that this was saying there are TWO different “plagues”. The second one comes after He steps on earth and is far more deadly and vicious and could possibly be the bubonic or black plague?
Vs 6-11 then describes all the following calamities…earthquakes, rivers flooding, vs 10 describes a tsunami (interesting to note Habakkuk would not have known what a tsunami was as he lived in the Middle East) and he is terrified to the core by its roaring sound (vs 16).
Vs 11 is also very interesting it says… “The sun and moon stood back [as before Joshua, Josh. 10:12-13]” Now I want to make an audacious statement here…in Joshua’s time they had no idea the earth rotated on an axis so it is feasible to state that, God actually stopped the rotation of the earth for a day, which made it appear that the sun and moon were fixed in their position? It continues… “in their habitation at the light of Your arrows as they sped, at the flash of Your glittering spear.” Now for another shocking statement…in other parts of scripture when the word arrows are used (Deut. 32:23; Ps. 18:14) I believe it is referring to God using His arrows which could be meteors and maybe “spear” which is used here could refer to a larger asteroid? And notice they come fast and with glittering, flashing, brilliant light! When a meteor enters into our atmosphere because of the extreme heat they ignite and become “blazing balls of fire” and smoke. Could it be possible that what it is saying here is that a larger asteroid, accompanied by many smaller meteors, hitting the earth, could actually stop the earth from rotating (for possibly three days)? Depending where it hits and at what time – it would mean half of the planet will stay in darkness and the other half will have light for those three days? And the sun and moon will appear to “stand still”. It is interesting to note that the nineth plague in the Exodus (Exod.10:21-22) was three days of darkness.
As I mentioned at the beginning this judgment will be mainly for Western nations, the U.S. and Europe, so it will be that side of the planet that will have the darkness. And it will be because of this darkness (as many bodies will be left to decompose) that will bring in the second plague; the black plague.
Vs 15-16 suggests more tsunamis? And vs 17 great famine and shortages! It’s obvious that after an asteroid impact, that is large enough to stop the earth from rotating, that this will cause catastrophic and cataclysmic upheavals from earthquakes, tsunamis and great flooding which in turn will cause worldwide chaos, shortages and famine!
Whew this is all extremely terrifying to say the least but notice how Habakkuk ends. It ends in exaltation proclaiming that God is more than able to protect and provide for His children and that He will give us “hinds’ feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering or responsibility]!” (vs 19 and see Ps. 18:33).
Yes, these will be desperate times but if our trust and faith is in the One who holds the universe in His hands, we have nothing to fear as His power and glory will support and surround us at all times! His anointing will protect us. In fact, we will witness the power of God as a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit will be upon the earth at this time! There is nothing to fear if you put your hope and trust in Jesus, the ark of our salvation! The greatest revival and harvest of souls will be seen, unprecedented miracles witnessed. In all of human history nothing else can compare to this…the prophets of old saw this and longed to be in our time! S.J.
Scripture quotations above are taken from the Amplified Bible.
