The Conjunction
Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:18 NASB
Yet – Perhaps the most important word in this verse is the tiny consonant vav attached to ani (“I”). The NASB translates this single letter as “yet,” but the vav plays a mighty role in Hebrew. It can mean, “and, also, even, together, with, that is, as well as, both, so, so that, then, indeed,” and also “yet.” Context must determine which possibility makes the most sense. In this verse, the prophet’s exultation and rejoicing are set in opposition to the circumstances of judgment, so “yet” is probably the most appropriate. But far too often it seems we ignore the considerable impact of this tiny letter in our rush to arrive at exulting and rejoicing in salvation. We miss the impact on two points.
Why does Habakkuk exclaim his intention to rejoice in the God of salvation? Read the rest of the context. He rejoices in spite of the calamities surrounding him. His inner parts are trembling. His bones decay. The enemies are at the gate. The fruit trees have stopped producing. There are no more olives. The fields have no crops. The flocks are decimated. Famine. Starvation. Oppression. Destruction. Now the vav makes a huge difference. Now Habakkuk is in the role of Job.
It’s so easy for us to worship when things are wonderful. Oh, we exult in the Lord when we are fat and happy. We rejoice that we are included in His salvation as long as the roof doesn’t leak, the job pays well and our children love us. But what happens when life turns to rubble, when distress comes in the mail or when those we love betray us? If we serve the God who is always good, we are more than likely to blame Him for our traumas. After all, a good God wouldn’t let these things happen to me! We worship the entitlement God, the one who owes me a good life. There is a Hebrew word for this kind of thinking—idolatry!
Wake yourself up! God is not your servant. His plans and ways are not yours. He is the LORD, the supreme ruler of everything. What He does is according to His purposes and if that means your life is difficult, then so be it. Who are you to ask anything of Him? Ah, but of course, He does love us. He does care for us. He does shelter us, but not because we require it. We have lost our perspective about sovereignty. If we can exult on the edge of destruction, then we are singing Habakkuk’s tune.
What is the second misfire here? We often forget that we are not rejoicing in salvation. We are rejoicing in the God of our salvation. It isn’t the act that matters. It is the author of the act. God is God and worthy to be praised even if salvation doesn’t arrive today—or tomorrow. We exult in His character, and hope for His deeds.
But that’s that you always thought, right?
Topical Index: salvation, exult, rejoice, yet, va’ani, Habakkuk 3:18
Back in the early 80’s I lived in Oklahoma, with three small boys and an absent husband. When I first moved there I lived in a large fine home, very comfortable and warm. The only family was just us. This was before cell phones and the ability to communicate any time any where, at least for me.
After about a year my husband lost his job and we were forced to move to a house where we were able to pay our rent by taking care of cattle. I was raised in the city! When we left our nice big home and were put in the situation of living like I had never experienced I began to suffer with depression.
I had a group of ladies that I had a bible study and prayer time with on Thursdays that actually saved my life. One of my friends said to me, “well it was easy to live a life of worship when you were surrounded by niceties, how about now, can you worship and live a life glorifying Him now?”
Yeah eye opening and life changing, how about if? Can I only serve Him when all appears to be my way?
I think one thing that’s challenging to me is that on one hand, I know G-d loves me. But on the other hand, it seems like I am insignificant to Him compared to the grandeur of His purposes. I have a hard time reconciling that. I mean, if I consider my children, I love them and much of what I do is to provide for them and teach them and bring them joy. Maybe it’s more like a teacher – I have things to teach, and you may not like it, but it’s good for you in the long term?
“What He does is according to His purposes and if that means your life is difficult, then so be it. Who are you to ask anything of Him? Ah, but of course, He does love us. He does care for us. He does shelter us, but not because we require it. We have lost our perspective about sovereignty.”
I guess maybe I don’t know G-d well enough. I have a hard time understanding how sovereignty and “if my life is difficult, so be it” work together with his love for me/us. Am I missing something? I know He is sovereign, and I know He loves me/us; I’ve just always struggled with whether I should relate to Him as a more personal, close Father (which was easier before I started thinking and learning more about the depth and detail I’d missed in Torah) or relate to Him as a more impersonal, giant, unknowable Sovereign (which is kind of what He feels like now).
Just being transparent. 🙂 Maybe this is just another step in the journey?
Hi Amanda, just an encouragement.
I think your right about the “another step in the journey” thingy, we’re all there in one way or another. Hold on, much of what we wrestle with doesn’t become relevant until later, when the bigger picture begins to take shape. Just a thought; maybe that ” impersonal, giant, unknowable Sovereign” is showing up because what we first thought concerning Him is so far off base that He seems foreign to us. Maybe, He’s correcting that so we can move forward. Ya gotta know the addition and subtraction before you get into multiplication and division. 🙂 Keep walking, or rowing.
YHWH bless you and keep you………
I often wonder if God as we know Him isn’t really just a reflection of our own traumas. That makes me wonder if I ever really knew Him as He is, or did I just make Him fit the inner battles I have always been fighting? If God is the distant other to me, is that because I am distant from myself? I don’t know me, or at least I don’t want to know the real me. I put up barricades to keep away all the dysfunctional stuff I inherited and made up so that no one, not even God, can actually know me for real. Why? Because I am afraid of being known. So then I end up with a God who can’t be known. He just reflects my unwillingness to be known.
What if I actually asked God to show me who He really is? I wonder if I could handle the revelation that He is not like I thought. But that’s true for just about everyone. Do I really know you? Do you really let me see you? Do I show myself to you? How can I expect to know God if I won’t even let myself know you. Because if I did let myself know you, then I would have to be known by you.
Heschel said that our objective is to be known by Him, to become a concern of His. But that takes a lot more than simply asking. It takes being vulnerable to whatever He finds.
I agree with that, not just for the sake of agreement but because I (and I’m sure everyone else) have experienced that with others. An example, I suppose, is that I’ve been accused of “sucking up” to someone who is my superior because I was “pleasant” to someone with an otherwise “sandpaperish” personality. Although that had never crossed my mind, I understood that it was said because the only time they would have been “nice” to that person is if they needed something, therefore they assume that’s the reason I’m doing it. I know that’s a bit of a childish example, but it brings home the point that we’re limited in our understanding because of our choices that we make and the activities we engage ourselves in. I also am beginning to wonder just what that “unknown” part of God is that we have yet to grasp ahold of and I’m thinkin’ it might have something to do with grief. I’ve envisioned God in a lot of different capacities, power, judgment, perfection, love and grace, just to name a few, but behind all that there is an aspect of almost overwhelming grief that in my VERY limited experience have brushed against and it takes my breath away. And it scares me. If the neglect of widows and orphans shakes the foundations of the world, what does intentional harm for self gain accomplish?
But, maybe that’s just me.
YHWH bless you and keep you…….
It seems to me that Heschel’s insight into the prophets is correct. The prophets were allows to experience the grief of God–and it always resulted in their deaths. We have this fixation on the God of love, but what about the brokenhearted of God, the grief He feels over what Man has done. Where do we experience that? And if we don’t, can we say that we really know Him?
I think all these are good points. I know that, for me, it’s always been a struggle because I want people to like me. 🙂 So, I tend to (even unknowingly) present what I want known. But, as my husband will attest, sometimes I just let all the junk air out so that if someone’s going to walk away, they do it before I get hurt. And, maybe I AM afraid that if I am devastatingly transparent with G-d that He will be angry at me for being hurt/angry/selfish/etc. It would make lots of sense that some of this struggle probably stems from hurts and traumas of a childhood sent fighting for approval and dodging angry outbursts, even amidst the joys and kindnesses.
And, I suppose He can be both King and Father, and maybe part of my journey is figuring out how to love Him intimately and closely, while honoring Him and obeying Him in His immensity. And maybe remembering that if He notices the sparrows, then surely He notices me (which I know He does because I can look back and see so many different ways that He has touched, steered, and blessed my life – through others like you and this community, and by protecting me from my own stupidity, and by holding me when I hurt the most).
Thanks for the wise words, and for the encouragement, both you and Robert. 🙂
Thank you!
Maybe the box is too small if we think He has to be one or the other. Maybe both – and we relate to Him differently in those roles. If your father were the king, would he not be king AND father, and would you not related to him as king and as father”
Maybe the box is too small if we think He has to be one or the other. Maybe both – and we relate to Him differently in those roles. If your father were the king, would he not be king AND father, and would you not relate to him as king and as father”
Could it be that we are still blind to the fact that our motives are still self centered? Could it be that in order to come to the promised land we need to learn to be patient in the wilderness so that All Israel may be saved and not just the people I’m concerned about? Is it possible that we don’t realize that the psychology of our culture has all but ruined us to the fact that our dada is also the King? Is it not good enough that He wakes us up and kisses us good morning before He goes off to work in the throne room? Or should He just let the whole world go to hell in a hand basket and cater to our selfish desire for Him to stay in our bedroom and read us stories all day long? Hasn’t He set the seventh day apart for that? Do we take advantage of that day and relish each moment of it or do we go play with our friends instead? This isn’t the culture I grew up in. How do we turn this overloaded glutton train around?
Oh, that’s a great question you asked, Amanda!
I know my life is different than yours, and I had different questions I needed answers to, but I think my problem was that I equated my understanding of what love was with security. When all the props in my life that looked like things were going to ‘turn out ok’, or were ‘going my way’, or were providing just a little place where I felt ‘safe’, or, later, as it all got worse, I would have settled for anything just even being ‘possible’, or ‘right for those I loved’ got destroyed, I realized that I was looking for just one safe place where I felt loved at all. That would have been enough, I felt, in a world gone twisted sideways, but the perfect storm that was my life was relentless. Every last thing I equated with ‘love’ got shredded. I at last realized that I was treading water in a whirlpool that was circling my own drain, and that I could see no way out. My lights were going out. I had tried my very level best to hold a steady rudder in the maelstrom, and it had not gotten me anywhere. Yes, I was angry at the Author of that love stuff! There seemed to be none for me!
It took that much for me to get to the end of what I perceived as ‘my own resources’: my own definitions, efforts, needs, wants and desires, and understanding of reality. The storm tore it all apart. I found myself in a place I would never, never willingly have put myself, because I was so full of fear. Only after I had been forced to confront all my fears did I start to realize that fear does not tell the truth: fear does not define reality. Fear, in fact, is a great way to waste your energy. I now think fear is like a self-inflicted horror movie we do to ourselves.
When I believe what fear tells me, I, like Job, can say that “what I feared most came upon me”. By looking at what happened to Job, then, I can see what he must have feared, because he said it all came true! Job was not “made perfect in love”, because he apparently, according to his particular disaster, feared the loss of progeny, wealth, prestige, health, and the trust of his wife. He had to lose it all to realize that fear of losing those things kept him from the only fear he should have had, which is the fear of losing his relationship with his Maker. At the end of all things, beyond all fears of the flesh, was the only safe place for that relationship. We worship what we fear. Job was worshiping the fruits instead of the Vine. When he saw his idolatry, he “repented in dust and ashes”.
So I am now doing the same. I was wrong: my fears were not the Truth! Whew! Best news ever! Halleluah!
When I stop equating my definition of ‘security’ (salvation), with what I THINK He represents (which invariably is some version of what I am believing will make me ‘safe’), then I can start with His definition of that salvation, which is that we are safest when we are, in true trust and faith, making choices that reflect our trust in HIM, like Skip says, and not in what we want Him to do. I agree. As long as I am being shoved around by fear, I am going to be investing my worship (desire) in what that fear is telling me. Not a safe place at all!
Oh, so good! Thank you! Yes, fear is something I’ve recognized over and over as a point of struggle. I think your last paragraph makes an especially powerful point:
“When I stop equating my definition of ‘security’ (salvation), with what I THINK He represents (which invariably is some version of what I am believing will make me ‘safe’), then I can start with His definition of that salvation, which is that we are safest when we are, in true trust and faith, making choices that reflect our trust in HIM, like Skip says, and not in what we want Him to do.”
It’s making the choice to be obedient, not out of fear but out of trust. Like the rabbis said – learning to accept the things He brings. And being obedient may not always bring warm fuzzies to me, but maybe it brings Him warm fuzzies. 🙂
When I worship the entitlement god I am really worshipping me am I not? How I have battled lately thinking I got a raw deal, or things should be more fair, or just “why?” Once again “acceptance” is the key. I am so blind at really, truly seeing myself. Makes me wonder where I gained such arrogance in thinking I understood His ways. If I can’t see me, how can I see Him? I repent
“What He does is according to His purposes and if that means your life is difficult, then so be it.”
Yes this TW is definitely the lesson to be learned and appreciated especially in South Africa where big regions in the country are experiencing drought. Our farm, crops,cattle and wildlife are right in the center of the worse drought in 70 years. But we know and trust YHVH knows best – always. He is definitely the only Author of rain.
“We often fail in trying to understand Him, not because we do not know how to extend our concepts far enough, but because we do not know how to begin close enough.
We think of Him in the likeness of things( or experience) as if He were a thing among things, a being among beings.
To think of God is not to find Him as an object in our minds, but to find ourselves in Him.Religion begins where experience ends.
Thinking of God is made possible by His being the subject and by our being the object and to expose ourselves to him.
Man’s knowledge of Him comprehends only what God asks of man ” Man is not alone ,Abraham Heschel
“God is God and worthy to be praised even if salvation doesn’t arrive today—or tomorrow. We exult in His character, and hope for His deeds.” These words drove me to think again about something I have thought a lot about. Would we follow Yeshua or would we bother with Christianity, if there was no promise of eternal reward? Are the gospels and the teachings of Yeshua, just a nice backstory to get to Paul’s teachings? Would we be Christians without a promised reward? Are Yeshua’s teaching and message enough to make us care about the poor and disadvantaged? Are we so focused on our personal salvation, getting out of here and getting to Heaven, that we have completely missed the purpose of the Messiah’s mission? Should the church’s mission be focused on saving “souls” or on the Kingdom work that Jeshua began? NT Wright has written that salvation is important, but it is not the most important thing we need to be focused on. Maybe we need to rethink the purpose of the church and the New Testament teachings on just what salvation is. To my knowledge, Jeshua said almost nothing about Heaven and an awful lot about what we need to be doing here on planet earth. Without the promise of “eternal life” would you bother with Jeshua’s work at all? So, what’s in your wallet? If it’s just “a fire insurance card”, maybe you need to check and see if your “carrier” is still around or ever was in business.
Twenty-one years ago my young son and I had a head-on collision with an 18-wheel big truck traveling at freeway speeds. The last thing I remember is my surprise at seeing the cab of an enormous truck breaking through the tiny barrier of plants that “protected” the median between the north and southbound lanes. I immediately knew the impact was inevitable, and my last thought was simply, “I trust you, Lord.”
My son, in the back seat, was miraculously unhurt. I was not so lucky. Physical limitations had never before been a concern but for the next year, I wore full body braces, endured multiple spinal blocks and learned techniques to manage pain. Unfortunately, after multiple surgeries and too few years of respite, today I learned the consequences are not over. The pain of the last year is coming from the remaining damaged discs, and medical interventions must be resumed.
Now I’m faced with a choice: I can rail against what happened, or I can thank G-d – not for the accident – but because He didn’t abandon me all the times before when I had deserved abandonment. If I had left a little earlier that day or even a little later, perhaps the driver of the truck would have missed me entirely. Or maybe he would have decided that 29 hours of driving was enough, and he needed to get some rest. I don’t know what circumstances propelled his choice that day. I do know it affected many people: the family the trucker left behind when he died in the accident; the people in the two cars behind me involved in the impact; and my parents who used some of their retirement savings to help care for me. The point is – this accident occurred because of choices – ALL of our choices. Every one of us involved in that collision made CHOICES that caused us to be in that place at that time.
Does that mean God was not sovereign or that He wasn’t watching over us? Does it mean He doesn’t love us – after all, what parent would choose such a thing for their child? I don’t believe it means any of those things. God created us with the ability to choose. With choices come consequences, sometimes good and sometimes bad. It doesn’t mean God doesn’t care. It doesn’t mean He caused the outcome. It means that’s the way He designed life. My life is affected by the choices of those who went before me. The choices I make today will affect the lives of those who follow me – and sadly, not all the outcomes will be good. Some of my ancestors’ choices brought me calamity — those choices were generally expedient. At the same, some ancestral choices brought me great blessing; the choice to come to this continent when the prospect of doing so was grim, gave me the opportunity to grow up in America. The expedient choice would have been to stay where they were, but the hard choice involved significant risk. Hard choices always look to the future. Choices made from expedience rarely do the same.
We all begin our lives with someone else’s choices. Was Habakkuk responsible for the choices made before his declaration of trust? Of course not – at least not directly. Each of us is handed a mixed bag every day. We can’t blame G-d for the makeup of our bag, but we must thank Him that He lets us choose anything at all. Don’t dwell on the things in your bag which are horrid – we all have ugliness in our bags. We can live in the ugly or we can thank G-d for what is less ugly. Sometimes we may only see the blessing that we have another breath. But remember, we have that breath because G-d didn’t abandon us. Did any of us do anything to deserve that?
Thank you, Suzanne, for this. You are a blessing to me, and even more so now that I know some more of your story.
Thank you Suzanne. There is so much to be thankful for in our lives. Life is incomprehensibly beautiful.
Every day is a gift from the hand of my Father in heaven. I think that one of the most honoring things we can do is to appreciate each of them purposefully and treat them respectfully. They are so precious and so few.
Thank you. This is so encouraging. Thank you for your story and for your courage and that powerful reminder that even our breath is a gift and an example of how He notices us.