Habakkuk 3:19

The Lord God is my strength - The prophet does not inwardly only exult and triumph in God, but he confesses also in words of praise, that in Him he hath all things, that He is All things in him. And as he had confessed the Father, under the Name whereby He revealed Himself to Moses, and the Son, “the Lord God of my salvation,” so he confesses God the Holy Ghost, who, in us, is our strength. “He is our strength,” so that through Him, we can do all things; “He is our strength,” so that without Him, we can do nothing; “He is our strength,” so that when we put forth strength, we put forth nothing of our own, we add nothing of our own, we use not our own strength, of which we have none, but we do use His; and we have It ever ready to use, as if it were our own. For it is not our own and it is our own; not our own, i. e., not from or of ourselves; but our own, since It is in us, yea “He the Lord our God is our strength,” not without us, for He is our strength, but in us.

And so he says further, how we can use it as our own. “He will make my feet like hinds,” which bound upward through His imparted strength, trod, when scared by alarms here below, flee tearless to their native reeks, spring from height to height, and at last shew themselves on some high peak, and standing on the Rock, look down on the whole world below their feet and upward on high. Even so when at the end of the world all shall fail, and the love of many shall wax cold, and the Church, which is likened to the fig tree the vine and the (Luke 13:6; Isaiah 5:1; 21:33; etc. Romans 11:17.) olive, shall yield no fruits, and sweetness shall be corrupted by vanities, and the oil of mercy shall be dried up, and lamps go out, and its promises shall fail and it shall lie, having “a show of goodness, but denying the power of it; in words confessing God, and in works denying Him;” and through their own negligences, or the carelessness of pastors, the sheep of Christ shall perish from His very fold, and they who should be strong to labor 1 Corinthians 9:9. shall cease, God’s elect shall joy in Him, “beholding His goodness, and loving Him in all things, and He will give them free affections, and fervid longings of holy love, whereby they shall not walk only, but run the way of His commandments and prevail over the enemies of their salvation.”

Yet though this strength is inward, and used by man, still God who gives it, Himself guides it. Not man shall “direct his own ways,” but “He will make me to walk (as on a plain way) upon my high place.” Steep and slippery places and crags of the reeks are but ways to the safe height above, to those whom God makes to walk on them; and since he has passed all things earthly, what are his high places, but the heavenly places, even his home, even while a pilgrim here, but now at the end, much more his home, when not in hope only, but in truth, he is “raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus?” Ephesians 2:6)

And now what remains then, but that this song of praise should be forever? And so it is not without meaning, nor was of old thought to be so that there stand here, at the end, words which elsewhere in the Psalms always stand at the beginning. Nor is it anywhere else, “upon my stringed instruments.”

To the chief singer on my stringed instruments - To Him to whom all praise is due, through whom we praise Himself, His Spirit pleading in us, for us, “upon my stringed instruments.” He Himself, providing, as it were, and teaching the prelude of the endless song, and by His spirit, breathing upon the instrument which He has attuned, and it giving back faithfully, in union with the heavenly choir with whom it is now blended, the angelic hymn, “Glory to God in the Highest.”