Habakkuk 3:2

Bible in Basic English (1941)

O Lord, word of you has come to my ears; I have seen your work, O Lord; when the years come near make it clear; in wrath keep mercy in mind.

📖 Grammatical Analysis

Original Text

יְהוָ֗ה שָׁמַ֣עְתִּי שִׁמְעֲךָ֮ יָרֵאתִי֒ יְהוָ֗ה פָּֽעָלְךָ֙ בְּקֶ֤רֶב שָׁנִים֙ חַיֵּ֔יהוּ בְּקֶ֥רֶב שָׁנִ֖ים תּוֹדִ֑יעַ בְּרֹ֖גֶז רַחֵ֥ם תִּזְכּֽוֹר׃

Transliteration

YHWH, šāmaʿtî šimʿăḵā, yārēʾṯî. YHWH, pāʿolḵā in qereḇ šānîm ḥayyēhû, in qereḇ šānîm tôḏîaʿ; in rōḡez raḥēm tizḵôr

Grammar Details

• *YHWH*: divine name
• *šāmaʿtî*: qal perfect 1st person singular - I have heard
• *šimʿăḵā*: noun masculine singular with 2nd person masculine singular suffix - your report/fame
• *yārēʾṯî*: qal perfect 1st person singular - I feared/was afraid
• *pāʿolḵā*: noun masculine singular with 2nd person masculine singular suffix - your work/deed
• *qereḇ šānîm*: construct phrase - midst of years
• *ḥayyēhû*: piel imperative with 3rd person masculine singular suffix - revive/preserve it
• *tôḏîaʿ*: hiphil imperfect 2nd person masculine singular - you will make known
• *rōḡez*: noun masculine singular with preposition - in wrath/anger
• *raḥēm*: piel infinitive absolute - to have mercy/compassion
• *tizḵôr*: qal imperfect 2nd person masculine singular - you will remember

Word Meanings

• *qereḇ šānîm*: midst of years/within the years/during our lifetime
• *ḥayyēhû*: revive it/preserve it alive/renew it
• *raḥēm*: have mercy/show compassion

Referenced Verses

• Ps 85:6 : 6 Will you not give us life again, so that your people may be glad in you?
• Hab 3:16 : 16 Hearing it, my inner parts were moved, and my lips were shaking at the sound; my bones became feeble, and my steps were uncertain under me: I gave sounds of grief in the day of trouble, when his forces came up against the people in bands.
• Ps 119:120 : 120 My flesh is moved for fear of you; I give honour to your decisions.
• Lam 3:32 : 32 For though he sends grief, still he will have pity in the full measure of his love.
• Hos 6:2-3 : 2 After two days he will give us life, and on the third day he will make us get up, and we will be living before him. 3 And let us have knowledge, let us go after the knowledge of the Lord; his going out is certain as the dawn, his decisions go out like the light; he will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.
• Hab 1:5-9 : 5 See among the nations, and take note, and be full of wonder: for in your days I am doing a work in which you will have no belief, even if news of it is given to you. 6 For see, I am sending the Chaldaeans, that bitter and quick-moving nation; who go through the wide spaces of the earth to get for themselves living-places which are not theirs. 7 They are greatly to be feared: their right comes from themselves. 8 And their horses are quicker than leopards and their horsemen more cruel than evening wolves; they come from far away, like an eagle in flight rushing on its food. 9 They are coming all of them with force; the direction of their faces is forward, the number of their prisoners is like the sands of the sea. 10 He makes little of kings, rulers are a sport to him; all the strong places are to be laughed at; for he makes earthworks and takes them.
• Dan 9:2 : 2 In the first year of his rule, I, Daniel, saw clearly from the books the number of years given by the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, in which the making waste of Jerusalem was to be complete, that is, seventy years.
• Rev 15:4 : 4 What man is there who will not have fear before you, O Lord, and give glory to your name? because you only are holy; for all the nations will come and give worship before you; for your righteousness has been made clear.
• Ps 90:13-17 : 13 Come back, O Lord; how long? let your purpose for your servants be changed. 14 In the morning give us your mercy in full measure; so that we may have joy and delight all our days. 15 Make us glad in reward for the days of our sorrow, and for the years in which we have seen evil. 16 Make your work clear to your servants, and your glory to their children. 17 Let the pleasure of the Lord our God be on us: O Lord, give strength to the work of our hands.
• Zech 1:12 : 12 Then the angel of the Lord, answering, said, O Lord of armies, how long will it be before you have mercy on Jerusalem and on the towns of Judah against which your wrath has been burning for seventy years?
• John 10:10 : 10 The thief comes only to take the sheep and to put them to death: he comes for their destruction: I have come so that they may have life and have it in greater measure.
• Rom 10:16 : 16 But they have not all given ear to the good news. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has had faith in our word?
• Phil 1:6 : 6 For I am certain of this very thing, that he by whom the good work was started in you will make it complete till the day of Jesus Christ:
• Ps 138:7-8 : 7 Even when trouble is round me, you will give me life; your hand will be stretched out against the wrath of my haters, and your right hand will be my salvation. 8 The Lord will make all things complete for me: O Lord, your mercy is eternal; do not give up the works of your hands.
• Isa 51:9-9 : 9 Awake! awake! put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake! as in the old days, in the generations long past. Was it not by you that Rahab was cut in two, and the dragon Wounded? 10 Did you not make the sea dry, the waters of the great deep? did you not make the deep waters of the sea a way for the Lord's people to go through? 11 Those whom the Lord has made free will come back with songs to Zion; and on their heads will be eternal joy: delight and joy will be theirs, and sorrow and sounds of grief will be gone for ever.
• Isa 53:1 : 1 Who would have had faith in the word which has come to our ears, and to whom had the arm of the Lord been unveiled?
• Isa 54:8 : 8 In overflowing wrath my face was veiled from you for a minute, but I will have pity on you for ever, says the Lord who takes up your cause.
• Isa 63:15-64:4 : 15 Let your eyes be looking down from heaven, from your holy and beautiful house: where is your deep feeling, the working of your power? do not keep back the moving of your pity and your mercies: 16 For you are our father, though Abraham has no knowledge of us, and Israel gives no thought to us: you, O Lord, are our father; from the earliest days you have taken up our cause. 17 O Lord, why do you send us wandering from your ways, making our hearts hard, so that we have no fear of you? Come back, because of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. 18 Why have evil men gone over your holy place, so that it has been crushed under the feet of our haters? 19 We have become as those who were never ruled by you, on whom your name was not named. 1 O let the heavens be broken open and come down, so that the mountains may be shaking before you, As when fire puts the brushwood in flames, or as when water is boiling from the heat of the fire: to make your name feared by your haters, so that the nations may be shaking before you; 2 While you do acts of power for which we are not looking, and which have not come to the ears of men in the past. 3 The ear has not had news of, or the eye seen, ... any God but you, working for the man who is waiting for him. 4 Will you not have mercy on him who takes pleasure in doing righteousness, even on those who keep in mind your ways? Truly you were angry, and we went on doing evil, and sinning against you in the past.
• Isa 66:2 : 2 For all these things my hand has made, and they are mine, says the Lord; but to this man only will I give attention, to him who is poor and broken in spirit, fearing my word.
• Jer 10:24 : 24 O Lord, put me right, but with wise purpose; not in your wrath, or you will make me small.
• Jer 25:11-12 : 11 All this land will be a waste and a cause of wonder; and these nations will be the servants of the king of Babylon for seventy years. 12 And it will come about, after seventy years are ended, that I will send punishment on the king of Babylon, and on that nation, says the Lord, for their evil-doing, and on the land of the Chaldaeans; and I will make it a waste for ever.
• Jer 29:10 : 10 For this is what the Lord has said: When seventy years are ended for Babylon, I will have pity on you and give effect to my good purpose for you, causing you to come back to this place.
• Jer 36:21-24 : 21 So the king sent Jehudi to get the book, and he took it from the room of Elishama the scribe. And Jehudi gave a reading of it in the hearing of the king and all the rulers who were by the king's side. 22 Now the king was seated in the winter house, and a fire was burning in the fireplace in front of him. 23 And it came about that whenever Jehudi, in his reading, had got through three or four divisions, the king, cutting them with his penknife, put them into the fire, till all the book was burned up in the fire which was burning in the fireplace. 24 But they had no fear and gave no signs of grief, not the king or any of his servants, after hearing all these words.
• Jer 52:31-34 : 31 And in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had been taken prisoner, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the first year after he became king, took Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison. 32 And he said kind words to him and put his seat higher than the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 33 And his prison clothing was changed, and he was a guest at the king's table every day for the rest of his life. 34 And for his food, the king gave him a regular amount every day till the day of his death, for the rest of his life.
• Exod 9:20-21 : 20 Then everyone among the servants of Pharaoh who had the fear of the Lord, made his servants and his cattle come quickly into the house: 21 And he who gave no attention to the word of the Lord, kept his servants and his cattle in the field.
• Exod 32:10-12 : 10 Now do not get in my way, for my wrath is burning against them; I will send destruction on them, but of you I will make a great nation. 11 But Moses made prayer to God, saying, Lord, why is your wrath burning against your people whom you took out of the land of Egypt, with great power and with the strength of your hand? 12 Why let the Egyptians say, He took them out to an evil fate, to put them to death on the mountains, cutting them off from the earth? Let your wrath be turned away from them, and send not this evil on your people.
• Num 14:10-23 : 10 But all the people said they were to be stoned. Then the glory of the Lord was seen in the Tent of meeting, before the eyes of all the children of Israel. 11 And the Lord said to Moses, How long will this people have no respect for me? how long will they be without faith, in the face of all the signs I have done among them? 12 I will send disease on them for their destruction, and take away their heritage, and I will make of you a nation greater and stronger than they. 13 And Moses said to the Lord, Then it will come to the ears of the Egyptians; for by your power you took this people out from among them; 14 And they will give the news to the people of this land: they have had word that you, Lord, are present with this people, letting yourself be seen face to face, and that your cloud is resting over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. 15 Now if you put to death all this people as one man, then the nations who have had word of your glory will say, 16 Because the Lord was not able to take this people into the land which he made an oath to give them, he sent destruction on them in the waste land. 17 So now, may my prayer come before you, and let the power of the Lord be great, as you said: 18 The Lord is slow to wrath and great in mercy, overlooking wrongdoing and evil, and will not let wrongdoers go free; sending punishment on children for the sins of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation. 19 May the sin of this people have forgiveness, in the measure of your great mercy, as you have had mercy on them from Egypt up till now. 20 And the Lord said, I have had mercy, as you say: 21 But truly, as I am living, and as all the earth will be full of the glory of the Lord; 22 Because all these men, having seen my glory and the signs which I have done in Egypt and in the waste land, still have put me to the test ten times, and have not given ear to my voice; 23 They will not see the land about which I made an oath to their fathers; not one of these by whom I have not been honoured will see it.
• Num 16:46-47 : 46 And Moses said to Aaron, Take your vessel and put in it fire from the altar, and sweet spices, and take it quickly into the meeting of the people, and make them free from sin: for wrath has gone out from the Lord, and the disease is starting. 47 And at the words of Moses, Aaron took his vessel, and went running among the people; and even then the disease had made a start among them; and he put spices in his vessel to take away the sin of the people.
• 2 Sam 24:10-17 : 10 And after the people had been numbered, David's heart was troubled. And David said to the Lord, Great has been my sin in doing this; but now, O Lord, be pleased to take away the sin of your servant, for I have done very foolishly 11 And David got up in the morning; now the word of the Lord had come to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, 12 Go and say to David, The Lord says, Three things are offered to you: say which of them you will have, and I will do it to you. 13 So Gad came to David, and gave him word of this and said to him, Are there to be three years when there is not enough food in your land? or will you go in flight from your haters for three months, while they go after you? or will you have three days of violent disease in your land? take thought and say what answer I am to give to him who sent me. 14 And David said to Gad, This is a hard decision for me to make: let us come into the hands of the Lord, for great are his mercies: let me not come into the hands of men. 15 So David made selection of the disease; and the time was the days of the grain-cutting, when the disease came among the people, causing the death of seventy thousand men from Dan as far as Beer-sheba. 16 And when the hand of the angel was stretched out in the direction of Jerusalem, for its destruction, the Lord had regret for the evil, and said to the angel who was sending destruction on the people, It is enough; do no more. And the angel of the Lord was by the grain-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 17 And when David saw the angel who was causing the destruction of the people, he said to the Lord, Truly, the sin is mine; I have done wrong: but these are only sheep; what have they done? let your hand be against me and against my family.
• 2 Chr 34:27-28 : 27 And your heart was soft, and you made yourself low before God, on hearing his words about this place and its people, and with weeping and signs of grief have made yourself low before me, I have given ear to you, says the Lord God. 28 See, I will let you go to your fathers, and be put in your last resting-place in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will send on this place and on its people. So they took this news back to the king.
• Ezra 9:8 : 8 And now for a little time grace has come to us from the Lord our God, to let a small band of us get free and to give us a nail in his holy place, so that our God may give light to our eyes and a measure of new life in our prison chains.
• Job 4:12-21 : 12 A word was given to me secretly, and the low sound of it came to my ears. 13 In troubled thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep comes on men, 14 Fear came on me and shaking, and my bones were full of trouble; 15 And a breath was moving over my face; the hair of my flesh became stiff: 16 Something was present before me, but I was not able to see it clearly; there was a form before my eyes: a quiet voice came to my ears, saying: 17 May a man be upright before God? or a man be clean before his Maker? 18 Truly, he puts no faith in his servants, and he sees error in his angels; 19 How much more those living in houses of earth, whose bases are in the dust! They are crushed more quickly than an insect; 20 Between morning and evening they are completely broken; they come to an end for ever, and no one takes note. 21 If their tent-cord is pulled up, do they not come to an end, and without wisdom?
• Ps 6:1-2 : 1 <To the chief music-maker on corded instruments, on the Sheminith. A Psalm. Of David.> O Lord, do not be bitter with me in your wrath; do not send punishment on me in the heat of your passion. 2 Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am wasted away: make me well, for even my bones are troubled.
• Ps 38:1 : 1 <A Psalm. Of David. To keep in memory.> O Lord, be not bitter with me in your wrath; let not your hand be on me in the heat of your passion.
• Ps 44:1 : 1 <To the chief music-maker. Of the sons of Korah Maschil.> It has come to our ears, O God, our fathers have given us the story, of the works which you did in their days, in the old times,
• Ps 78:38 : 38 But he, being full of pity, has forgiveness for sin, and does not put an end to man: frequently turning back his wrath, and not being violently angry.
• Heb 11:7 : 7 By faith Noah, being moved by the fear of God, made ready an ark for the salvation of his family, because God had given him news of things which were not seen at the time; and through it the world was judged by him, and he got for his heritage the righteousness which is by faith.
• Heb 12:21 : 21 And the vision was so overpowering that even Moses said, I am shaking and full of fear.
• Dan 8:17 : 17 So he came and took his place near where I was; and when he came, I was full of fear and went down on my face: but he said to me, Let it be clear to you, O son of man; for the vision has to do with the time of the end.