Taking then his stand within the patient temper, but especially upon the conscience of his great order, the prophet waits for his answer and the healing of his trouble. The answer comes to him in the promise of _a Vision_, which, though it seem to linger, will not be later than the time fixed by God. _A Vision_ is something realised, experienced—something that will be as actual and present to the waiting prophet as the cruelty which now fills his sight. Obviously some series of historical events is meant, by which, in the course of time, the unjust oppressor of the nations shall be overthrown and the righteous vindicated. Upon the re-arrangement of the text proposed by Budde,[380] this series of events is the rise of the Chaldeans, and it is an argument in favour of his proposal that the promise of _a Vision_ requires some such historical picture to follow it as we find in the description of the Chaldeans—chap. i. 5-11. This, too, is explicitly introduced by terms of vision: _See among the nations and look round.... Yea, behold I am about to raise up the Kasdim._ But before this Vision is given,[381] and for the uncertain interval of waiting ere the facts come to pass, the Lord enforces upon His watching servant the great moral principle that arrogance and tyranny cannot, from the nature of them, last, and that if the righteous be only patient he will survive them:— _Lo, swollen, not level, is his soul within him; But the righteous shall live by his faithfulness._ We have already seen[382] that the text of the first line of this couplet is uncertain. Yet the meaning is obvious, partly in the words themselves, and partly by their implied contrast with the second line. The soul of the wicked is a radically morbid thing: _inflated_, _swollen_ (unless we should read _perverted_, which more plainly means the same thing[383]), not _level_, not natural and normal. In the nature of things it cannot endure. _But the righteous shall live by his faithfulness._ This word, wrongly translated _faith_ by the Greek and other versions, is concentrated by Paul in his repeated quotation from the Greek[384] upon that single act of faith by which the sinner secures forgiveness and justification. With Habakkuk it is a wider term. _’Emunah_,[385] from a verb meaning originally to be firm, is used in the Old Testament in the physical sense of steadfastness. So it is applied to the arms of Moses held up by Aaron and Hur over the battle with Amalek: _they were steadiness till the going down of the sun_.[386] It is also used of the faithful discharge of public office,[387] and of fidelity as between man and wife.[388] It is also faithful testimony,[389] equity in judgment,[390] truth in speech,[391] and sincerity or honest dealing.[392] Of course it has faith in God as its secret—the verb from which it is derived is the regular Hebrew term to believe—but it is rather the temper which faith produces of endurance, steadfastness, integrity.