What Does Habakkuk 3:6 Mean in the King James?
He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The mountains called everlasting are the very things that break apart, while God’s way spans the ages.
THE MEANING
God stands over the earth and brings the nations within measure. Even mountains and hills, the landscape’s oldest emblems of permanence, give way, while God’s ways keep moving through the ages. What looks immovable does not set the limit on what can change.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that whatever has lasted longest must be permanent: even ancient mountains scatter, while God’s way endures.
THE ROOT
עוֹלָם
ʿolam
GROWS FROM
ע־ל־ם
ʿ-l-m
An age or a span of extended duration, beyond ordinary reckoning.
“everlasting” in this verse is ʿolam. The same עוֹלָם describes both the hills’ apparent permanence and God’s ways, so even ancient landforms belong to an age that can end. The word carries ages-long duration; here, God’s way is the thing that continues through those ages.
ALSO GROWS
ʿolamim: Ages; long durations
עוֹלָמִים
The plural makes explicit the successive ages encompassed by the word used for God’s enduring ways.
meʿolam: From of old; from ancient time
מֵעוֹלָם
This form reaches backward across a long span, the kind of duration that makes hills seem permanent.
הֲלִיכוֹת
halikhot
GROWS FROM
ה־ל־ך
h-l-k
To walk or go; a course of movement.
English “ways” can sound like static rules, but הֲלִיכוֹת are goings or courses of walking. The enduring thing in the verse is not a frozen object like a mountain, but a path still in motion through the ages.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: To walk; to go
הָלַךְ
This verb is the root action inside the “ways” that continue through the ages.
mahalakh: Course; progression
מַהֲלָךְ
This related form makes the sense of an unfolding course visible in God’s enduring ways.
THE PATTERN
What appears immovable yields before God, while what comes from God endures through the ages.
The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.THE THREAD
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.Ecclesiastes uses the same Hebrew word עוֹלָם (ʿolam) that Habakkuk uses for the hills’ age-long duration and God’s ways; the KJV renders it “world” here. The shared word links the ages that outlast the hills with an awareness of the ages carried in the human heart, even while the whole work of God remains beyond view.
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