Habakkuk 2:5 - 20

5-11 12-20

5-8

5

Verses 6-20 form a five part taunt or proverb each with three verses that decry woe out to a different type of evil doer, but before God’s woes are given he sums up the entire nation of Chaldea from the king to the people in verse 5. In general 5 is summing them all up as a proud or arrogant nation who like death and hell itself are never satisfied with what they have and always want more, including captives from all other nations. They are like someone who is utterly drunk on much wine, one who has no moderation. One who has forgotten all reason and shame in their drunkenness and has no reason left in them acting like a brute animal with no morals of right or wrong.

6

After summing the Chaldeans up God hands out His mocking woes, the first woe against them is of their extortion of other nations, much like the Assyrians were so the Chaldeans are also. With fear of their coming to destroy and take captive whole nations, they made many nations pay hefty tributes or taxes to them so they would not invade. God mockingly ask, how long will they be allowed to continue to gather what is not their own? The ESV and the ASV translate the end of 6 as load or laden themselves with pledges, and the KJV is with thick clay. The word translated pledges and thick clay respectively means a deposit made against a heavy or harsh debt. The thick clay translation meaning that they are gathering up and burying themselves what in the end will be nothing more than clumps of earth, clay. Because God will return on the heads of those who enrich themselves whatever they have stolen from others, so the more they take from others the more woe and wrath they are piling up upon themselves.

7

As all of the nations that they were extracting riches from grow and grow in numbers, will they not band together and rise up over you? God says that when they do the Chaldeans will be the ones in fear and trembling and they will be the nation that others plunder and take their ill gotten treasures for themselves.

8

It is because they the Chaldeans have robbed and taken from all the other nations, because the other nations were intimidated by the invading, killing, and terror done by the Chaldeans, that is the reason that they will be stripped of all the wealth that they claim is their own.

9

The second woe speaks out against their covetousness and is a continuation from the first woe, the first woe is of their exploitation of the nations, because of, the second woe, they coveted all of the treasures of the other nations. They wanted what others had and through evil and intimidation gathered their wealth to build up their own city and palaces, building up high walls to protect themselves from all the other nations, whom they had done the evil on.

10

Their action, their ways of gathering up their treasures causes shame to themselves and because of their greed and coveting of what others had they have sealed their fate and forfeited their own lives.

11

Every stone in every building and wall, every beam, timber, and column built cries out with their shame and guilt because every bit of their cities, walls, and palaces were built from the wealth gathered in from their greedy coveting plundering and their ill gotten gains.

12-20

12

The third woe cries out in accusation against the Chaldeans for being ruthless tyrants who have built their cities and palaces, funded not only from the greedy covetousness plundering of the other nations, but also from bloodshed and forced labor from the people they captured.

13

God shows Habakkuk, that even though to Habakkuk it seems like God is, quoting Habakkuk himself in 1:13, “idly looking at traitors”, the Chaldeans are building up their cities and palaces, making great structures only for them to be consumed with fire from God. In other words, they are building themselves up in vain and for nothing because the LORD of Hosts will bring it all down and destroy it all.

14

God has made and knows everything, and in the end, just as completely as the waters cover the seas, every knee will bend and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

15

The fourth woe God hands out is against the Chaldean debauchery. Many of these charges remind me of the very same things God laid out against Nineveh and Assyria, and like Nineveh the Chaldeans were leading the remnants of the nations around them into shame, forcing them to drink from their particular cup of poison, making them drunk with it and act shamefully so they would be able to further humiliate and extort from them.

16

But they themselves are just filling their own cup with God’s wrath and not filling it with their own glory. They will be forced to drink God’s cup, which is in his hand and ready to be poured out, and all will no longer see them as a powerful and glorious nation they will see their nakedness and shame.

17

Lebanon was a region known for its building materials and food, and the Chaldean’s plundered this area for these materials to build up and construct their palaces. But all the violence done to this region, its natural resources, also fills God’s cup of wrath and it will overwhelm them when it is poured out upon the Chaldeans.

18

18-20 is the last woe against them, even though the woe is not spoken until verse 19, but this woe charges them with their rampant idolatry. How foolish is it, or what profit is it to create an object, crafted by man, to put your trust and worship in? A speechless, lifeless thing made from wood, stone, or metal.

19

Woe to the Chaldeans who worship these things, that say to them awaken, and arise, I put all my trust in you, now teach me what to do. Things made from wood or stone, prettied up with fine gold and silver will never be alive, have breath in them, or be able to teach.

20

God concludes these woes reminding everyone that he is divine and holy and He is in his temple in heaven. While the idols created by man do not have the ability to speak, all mankind on earth that is able to speak are commanded by the living, sovereign ruler of the universe to be silent before him. No one is able to bring a charge against God or rebel against the creator of everything, and in the end all the earth will be silenced and worship the creator and not what has been created.