Habakkuk 3:12

Heathen - People; nations; non-Jews.

Indignation - Wrath; anger.

Thou didst march through the land - This refers to the conquest of Canaan. God is represented as going at the head of his people as general-in-chief; and leading them on from conquest to conquest - which was the fact.

Thou didst thresh the heathen in anger - Thou didst tread them down, as the oxen do the sheaves on the threshing-floor.

Thou didst march the earth in indignation - The word "tread" is used of very solemn manifestations of God, (Judges 5:4; Psalm 68:8; of the procession of the ark, 2 Samuel 6:13. It is denied as to the idols, Jeremiah 10:5.) of His going to give to His own victory over their enemies Not the land only, as of old, but the earth is the scene of His judgments; the earth which was "full of His praise," which He "meted out" Habakkuk 3:3, Habakkuk 3:6 which contained the nations whom He chastened, the whole earth.

Thou dost thresh the heathen in anger - Not then only, but at all times unto the end, distress of nations and perplexity are among the shoots of the fig tree, which betoken that the everlasting, Luke 21:25-31, "summer is nigh at hand." Jerusalem, when it had slain the Prince of Life, was given over to desolation and counted like the pagan. It became the synagogue, not the Church; and so in the destruction of Jerusalem (as it is an image of the destruction of the world) was that again fulfilled, "Thou dost march through the earth in indignation, Thou dost thresh the heathen in anger."