What does "the righteous will live by faith" mean in Habakkuk 2:4 and Romans 1:17?

Key facts

• Habakkuk 2:4 contrasts the proud, whose desires are not upright, with the righteous person who will live be'emunato, "by his faithfulness". [Habakkuk 2:4; BDB, s.v. אֱמוּנָה]
• Emunah (אֱמוּנָה) means firmness, steadfastness or faithfulness, from the root aman, "to be firm". [BDB, s.v. אֱמוּנָה; Strong's H530]
• The verse is God's answer to the prophet's complaint about violence and about the rise of the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. [Habakkuk 1:2–4, 1:6; 2:1–3]
• The Greek Old Testament reads ek pisteōs mou, "by my faithfulness", referring the faithfulness to God. [Septuagint, Habakkuk 2:4]
• Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11 quote the line without "his" or "my": ho dikaios ek pisteōs zēsetai. [NA28]
• Hebrews 10:38 attaches the pronoun to "righteous": ho dikaios mou ek pisteōs zēsetai, "my righteous one". [NA28]
• Two of the three New Testament quotations are in Paul's letters. Hebrews is anonymous, and its Pauline authorship is widely doubted. [NA28; standard New Testament introductions]
• In Galatians 3:11 Paul sets the verse against reliance on the law: no one is justified before God by the law. [Galatians 3:11, NA28]
• Translations divide on Romans 1:17: most attach "by faith" to "will live"; the RSV attaches it to "righteous". [RSV, NIV, Romans 1:17]
• Luther, in his 1545 preface to his Latin writings, described his new understanding of Romans 1:17 as like entering paradise through open gates. [Luther, Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Writings, 1545]

Key terms

emunah אֱמוּנָה

firmness, steadfastness, faithfulness; in Habakkuk 2:4, be'emunato, "by his faithfulness"

tsaddiq צַדִּיק

righteous; a person in the right

chayah חָיָה

to live; to stay alive, to be preserved

pistis πίστις

trust, faith, faithfulness; the Greek word used in all three New Testament quotations

ek pisteōs ἐκ πίστεως

"by faith" or "out of faith"

dikaios δίκαιος

righteous, just; the Greek for tsaddiq

Explanation

Habakkuk's question

Habakkuk is a dialogue between a prophet and God. The prophet complains that violence and injustice go unchecked (1:2–4). God answers that he is raising up the Babylonians (1:6), which only sharpens the complaint: how can God use a nation worse than those it punishes? In chapter 2 the prophet stations himself to wait for an answer. God tells him to write the vision down, because it will come at its appointed time; even if it seems slow, wait for it (2:2–3).

Verse 4 follows. The proud are puffed up; "the righteous person will live by his faithfulness" (NIV). In context, "live" means to come through and survive, and emunah is the steady trust that keeps waiting on God's word when events say otherwise. The book closes with the prophet resolving to rejoice in God even if the fig tree does not blossom and the fields yield no food (3:17–19).

"His" faithfulness or "my" faithfulness?

The Hebrew says "by his faithfulness", the righteous person's own steadiness. The Greek Old Testament says "by my faithfulness", God's. Paul, in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11, drops the pronoun and simply says "by faith". Hebrews 10:38 moves the pronoun to "my righteous one". The variations matter less than they first seem, because the Hebrew word holds both sides: emunah is firmness, and the righteous person's firmness is reliance on the God who is firm. N. T. Wright's work on Paul explores how pistis language carries this note of covenant faithfulness.

Paul's use: righteousness through trust

Romans 1:16–17 states the theme of Paul's letter: in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, and "The righteous will live by faith" (NIV). In Galatians 3:11 Paul applies the verse directly: no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. For Paul, Habakkuk's line confirms what Genesis 15:6 already showed with Abraham (see What does "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" mean? (Genesis 15:6)): standing with God rests on trust in God, not on performance.

The Greek phrase ek pisteōs can be read with "righteous" ("the one who is righteous by faith will live") or with "will live" ("the righteous will live by faith"). Most English versions take the second. The RSV took the first.

Hebrews: faith that keeps going

Hebrews 10:36–39 uses the verse in a sense close to Habakkuk's own. Its readers need endurance; the one who is coming will not delay; God's righteous one will live by faith and will not shrink back. The next verse is Hebrews 11:1, the chapter on faith (see What does Hebrews 11:1 mean? (hypostasis and elegchos)). Here faith is perseverance: trust that lasts until the promise arrives.

Luther and the Reformation

Luther wrote, near the end of his life, that his breakthrough came when he understood the righteousness of God in Romans 1:17 as a gift received by faith rather than a standard that condemned him. The line became a watchword of the Reformation. The Weight of God (Ch. 5) honours that recovery, saying the Reformers "were right about grace", but argues that by then "faith" had already narrowed to assent.

Common misunderstandings

• "Living by faith means believing the right doctrines." Correction: emunah is steadiness and faithfulness. In Habakkuk it is trust that holds while waiting for God.
• "The verse is a New Testament idea." Correction: it is from Habakkuk, written in the face of the Babylonian threat, and the New Testament quotes it.
• "Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4 three times." Correction: Paul quotes it twice (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). The third quotation is in Hebrews, whose author is unnamed.
• "Faith here is the opposite of faithfulness." Correction: the Hebrew emunah means faithfulness, and the Greek pistis covers both trust and faithfulness.
• "'Live by faith' means faith is a once-off decision." Correction: the verb "live" describes a continuing life, and Hebrews applies the verse to endurance.

What the book argues

The Weight of God: How to Believe (Matthew Wong, 2026), Chapter 4, treats emunah as the lasting form of trust: "Emunah is loyalty. Weight that lasts." It renders Habakkuk 2:4 as "The righteous person will live by sustained structural reliance on God" (Scripture Restored), adding: "Not a feeling. A posture that lasts." The book argues that the line is Paul's thesis: "Paul quotes Habakkuk three times because he builds his entire theological message on it." Strictly, Paul quotes it twice and Hebrews once (see What are the Hebrew words for trust and faith? (batach, aman, emunah)). The book's point stands on the observation that every New Testament quotation renders emunah with pistis, and it uses this to argue that one Greek word had to carry the full Hebrew vocabulary of trust (see What does pistis mean in the New Testament?). In Chapter 5 it argues that the Reformers recovered grace but not the full meaning of pistis. The lexical meaning of emunah is standard; the weight reading is the book's own.

In the book: Chapter 4: Childlike Faith; Chapter 5: The Drift.

Sources

1. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. Entries for אֱמוּנָה, צַדִּיק.
2. Strong, James. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1890. H530, H6662.
3. Arndt, William F., F. Wilbur Gingrich, Frederick W. Danker and Walter Bauer. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edn (BDAG). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Entries for πίστις, δίκαιος.
4. Rahlfs, Alfred, and Robert Hanhart, eds. Septuaginta, rev. edn. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006. Habakkuk 2:4.
5. Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28th edn (NA28).
6. Wright, N. T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.
7. Luther, Martin. Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Writings (1545).
8. Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). Biblica, 2011. Revised Standard Version (RSV).
9. Wong, Matthew. The Weight of God: How to Believe. Australia, 2026. ISBN 978-1-7646297-3-7. Chapters 4 and 5; Scripture Restored.