Hab. iii. 2. O Lord, revive thy work !
THE ministry of the Prophet Habakkuk seems to have been contemporaneous with that of the Prophet Jeremiah. He foretells the judgments which should be executed on the Jewish nation by the Chaldeans; and the fearful recompence which should come on the heads of the Chaldeans by the instrumentality of the Medes and Persians. But he was not willing that his people should wait so long without a blessing, even the whole period of their threatened captivity ; and therefore, in a divine ode, an ode of peculiar sublimity, he implores of God the restoration of his favour towards them, and entreats him to blend his judgments with mercy : " O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years ; in the midst of the years (of their captivity) make known : in wrath remember mercy ! "
The petition here offered is highly proper to be presented to God, at all times :
I. For the Church at large —
It is proper,
1. For the Jewish Church —
[The captivity of that people in Babylon lasted only seventy years : but that to which they have been subjected, since their dispersion by the Romans, has lasted above seventeen hundred years : and in all this time there has been no mate- rial revival amongst them, in a way of humiliation, or of return to God. But now it seems as if God were about to return in mercy to them, and to restore them to himself : so that we are encouraged to cry unto him, " O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years ! " And certainly we have the same encouragement which the prophet had. He in all the subse- quent part of this chapter, reminds God of his former interpo- sitions for them, in Egypt, and in the wilderness ; and of the deliverances vouchsafed to them under circumstances of still greater difficulty than that with which they were encompassed in Babylon : and we may also well call those wonders to re- membrance, as an encouragement to plead for them, and to