The Strength of the Hills

As we studied Habakkuk last week, we came across the passage in chapter 1 about being held guilty when "your strength is your god" (also translated in some versions as "ascribing power to their god"). I wondered then if that was the same thing Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 12 when God told him, "My strength is sufficient for you" and when Paul explained "for when I am weak, then am I strong." Turned out that those are different words, though.

Then, as we sang the Venite today, I noticed "the strength of the hills is His also." So it's not just us who are weak. Even the mountains have their strength only in what God gives and what He has made them to be. But when I looked up that one in the original languages, the word is really referring to the heights of the mountains.

But ... as I was looking it up, I discovered all the places where that one word for power/strength/might is used. It's the word used when God tells Cain that the earth would no longer yield up its strength when he farmed. It's the word used in Habakkuk (the passage I started with) to show that strength cannot be our god (that is, what we rely on or trust in). It's the word used in Revelation when we see heaven: "Blessing and honor and glory and might be to God and the Lamb forever!" In several passages we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul and all our strength. Because of sin, our strength fails, but the Lord is our strength and our song, and He has become our salvation.

Even if Psalm 95 isn't referring to the hills' strength but is talking about "from the depths of the sea to the heights of the mountains," there are other passages that indicate that the earth's strength, the angels' strength, man's strength, even Christ's strength, comes only from the Lord.