The Daily Office · Advent
Yet I will rejoice
Habakkuk 3:17–19
17Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
18yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.
What's happening here
Habakkuk is a short book that asks large questions. The prophet stands on his watchtower demanding an answer to the violence he sees around him, and God's answer does not rescue his circumstances — the Chaldeans are still coming. Chapter 3 is the book's closing prayer, a song set to music. After two chapters of arguing with God, the prophet lands somewhere unexpected: a defiant rejoicing that does not require anything to change first. The verb he reaches for is stronger than English "rejoice."
The word that matters
Hebrew · to exult, to triumph — joy with defiance in it
Hebrew has more words for rejoicing than English, and they carry different flavors. Simcha is celebratory joy; gil is leaping joy; alaz is closer to triumph — the exulting a victor does after battle or a defendant does when the verdict breaks his way. Habakkuk is not in a position to exult by any visible measure: the crops have failed, the herds are gone, the fig tree has not bloomed. And he names the verb anyway. Yet I will alaz in the LORD. Joy as an act of defiance before reality is fixed.
Where else this shows up
Zephaniah 3:17
A rare reversal of direction: "the LORD your God will alaz over you with singing." God doing the exulting, of his people.
Philippians 4:4
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." Paul's Greek version of Habakkuk's move.
Romans 8:37
"In all these things we are more than conquerors." Exulting in the midst of, not after.