O LORD, I have heard your speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.
All Commentaries on Habakkuk 3:2 Go To Habakkuk 3
Caesarius of Arles
AD 542
When the sacred lesson was read just now, we heard that at the time when the twelve spies were sent to view the land of promise, two of them brought back on a lever to the children of Israel a bunch of grapes of wonderful size. Those two men can be understood in many ways, dearly beloved, for they are not unfittingly believed to have signified both the two Testaments and the two precepts whereby God and the neighbor are loved. They can, likewise, be understood both historically and allegorically. That they were a type of the two Testaments we know definitely from the fact that the grapes are read to have been brought between those two men, just as Christ our Lord is clearly recognized in the middle of the two Testaments. According to what is written, “In the middle of the two animals you will be known,” that is, between the Old and New Testaments. When we read “in the middle,” we are not to understand that Christ was between the New and Old Testaments in such a way that he was contained in neither one. This is not true, beloved brothers, but when it says, “In the middle of the two animals you will be known,” we must realize that he is in the midst of the Old and New Testaments, that is, within in an interior and spiritual sense. This is not according to the letter, … but according to the spirit that vivifies all Christians who have spiritual understanding. Therefore “in the middle of the two animals you will be known” means in the inner sense of the New or Old Testaments.
