Audio  “What can miserable Christians sing?” That was the question that Carl Trueman posed a half-dozen years ago in an article that was later included in his book, The Wages of Spin. Trueman lamented the “diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns” that are so prevalent in worship services today, because it “inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party — a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals.” He says, “By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church … as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical.”[1]  If that is what we think, then we haven’t read our Bibles very well. The Psalms, for example, give voice to the entire range of human emotion set to the musical strains of worshipful song. Elsewhere we find God’s faithful people pouring out hurting hearts and suffering souls to Him in song. Habakkuk is an example of just such a believer, and the third chapter of his book is an example of just such a song. How did we get here? Let us remember that in Chapter 1, we found the prophet worrying and wondering. He was bewildered by the besetting sin of his own nation, and troubled even more by God’s seeming indifference and inactivity. He became even more troubled when God began to reveal what He was doing – raising up the godless Babylonians to bring judgment on Judah. This was, in Habakkuk’s mind, inconsistent with God’s own character. Coming to Chapter 2, we find Habakkuk watching and waiting. As God unfolded the answer to Habakkuk’s many questions and concerns, the prophet silenced himself before the Lord. Five woes were pronounced upon the Babylonians, even as God’s people were reminded of three promises: the just will live by faith (v4); the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as waters cover the sea (v14); and the Lord reigns from His sovereign throne in His holy temple (v20). Now we come to Chapter 3, and we find Habakkuk no longer worrying and wondering, no longer watching and waiting. Rather, he is now worshiping and witnessing. As Wiersbe puts it so well, “Habakkuk started in the valley, but he ended up on the mountaintop! He started with sighing and ended with singing. He started with perplexity, and he ended with praise.”[2] How do we know that the prophet now sings? The notations within the third chapter make it plain. Like so many of the Psalms, the hymns of the Hebrew people, we have technical notations at the very beginning and the very end of the third chapter, along with a threefold repetition of the word, “Selah,” in verses 3, 9, and 13. This precise meaning of this term is unknown, but it seems to be a word that introduces a meditative pause, perhaps where instrumental music would play between the verses of a song. The statement in the final verse, “For the choir director, on my stringed instruments,” makes it clear that the poem is to be set to music and sung publicly. The mysterious phrase, “on Shigionoth” in verse 1 is also very difficult to explain with certainty. That is why the English versions tend to just transliterate the Hebrew word instead of translating it. Psalm 7 is said to be a “Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord,” and the word shigionoth here in Habakkuk is likely a plural form of the same word. So it is obviously some sort of musical directive, referring perhaps to the instruments that would accompany the song, or the style in which it was to be played. It may also refer to the specific tune to which the song is set, similar to what we find in our own hymnals where the hymn title is found at the top of the page, and the name of the hymn tune is found at the bott