Habakkuk 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Habakkuk takes his place on the watchtower to wait for the LORD's reply to his complaint, and the LORD tells him to write the vision plainly on tablets, since it waits for an appointed time and will not fail to come. The answer then turns into five taunting woes against the plunderer who piles up what is not his, builds his house and city by bloodshed, shames his neighbors, and trusts in idols. Between the woes stand two lines about the LORD: the earth will be filled with the knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea, and the LORD is in his holy temple, so all the earth should be silent before him.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • The speaker says he will stand at his watch post.
   • The speaker says he will station himself on the rampart.
   • The speaker says he will keep watch to see what God will say to him.
   • The speaker says he will watch to learn what he should answer concerning his complaint or reproof.
2. 2:2
   • The LORD answered the speaker.
   • The LORD said to write the vision.
   • The LORD said to inscribe it plainly on tablets.
   • The purpose is that the one who reads it may run.
3. 2:3
   • The vision is for an appointed time.
   • The vision testifies toward the end.
   • The vision will not lie.
   • If the vision delays, one is to wait for it.
   • The vision will certainly come.
   • The vision will not be late.
4. 2:4
   • The soul of the puffed-up one is not upright within him.
   • The righteous person will live by his faithfulness.
5. 2:5
   • Wine is treacherous.
   • The man in question is proud and arrogant.
   • He does not stay at rest or remain at home.
   • He widens his appetite like Sheol.
   • He is like death.
   • He is never satisfied.
   • He gathers all the nations to himself.
   • He collects all the peoples to himself.
6. 2:6
   • All these will take up a taunt-song against him.
   • They will speak a mocking riddle about him.
   • They will say: Woe to the one who piles up what is not his.
   • They will ask how long this will go on.
   • They will say woe to the one who loads himself with goods taken in pledge.
7. 2:7
   • Those who bite him will rise up suddenly.
   • Those who shake him will awake.
   • He will become plunder for them.
8. 2:8
   • The one addressed has plundered many nations.
   • All the remnant of the peoples will plunder him.
   • The cause is human blood shed.
   • The cause is violence done to the land, to the city, and to all who dwell in it.
9. 2:9
   • Woe to the one who gains evil profit for his house.
   • He does it to set his nest on high.
   • He does it to be delivered from the grasp of harm.
10. 2:10
    • The one addressed has planned shame for his own house.
    • He has cut off many peoples.
    • He has sinned against his own life.
11. 2:11
    • A stone will cry out from the wall.
    • A rafter from the woodwork will answer it.
12. 2:12
    • Woe to the one who builds a town with bloodshed.
    • Woe to the one who establishes a city by injustice.
13. 2:13
    • This comes from the LORD of hosts.
    • Peoples labor only for fire.
    • Nations weary themselves for nothing.
14. 2:14
    • The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD.
    • This filling is like the waters covering the sea.
15. 2:15
    • Woe to the one who gives his neighbor drink.
    • He pours out to him from what is his: the text is ambiguous whether it is his wineskin or his wrath.
    • He makes his neighbor drunk.
    • He does this in order to look on their nakedness.
16. 2:16
    • The one addressed is filled with disgrace instead of glory.
    • He is told to drink also.
    • He is told to expose his uncircumcision.
    • The cup of the LORD's right hand will come around to him.
    • Shameful disgrace will be upon his glory.
17. 2:17
    • The violence done to Lebanon will cover the one addressed.
    • The destruction of beasts will terrify: the text is ambiguous whether it terrifies him or refers to the terror done to the animals.
    • The cause is human blood shed.
    • The cause is violence done to the land, to the city, and to all who dwell in it.
18. 2:18
    • A carved image gives no profit.
    • Its maker carved it.
    • The cast image is a teacher of lies.
    • The maker trusts in the thing he himself formed.
    • What he makes are idols that cannot speak.
19. 2:19
    • Woe to the one who says to a piece of wood, Awake.
    • Woe to the one who says to a silent stone, Arise.
    • The text says the idol will teach, which may be read as a statement or as a question whether it can teach.
    • The idol is overlaid with gold and silver.
    • There is no breath at all inside it.
20. 2:20
    • The LORD is in his holy temple.
    • All the earth is to keep silence before him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

The guard post and watchtower are the prophet's own image for his work: like a sentry posted on a city wall watching the road for an incoming messenger, he takes up a position and waits for a reply. The last phrase is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean "what I should answer when I am rebuked" or "what answer I will get to my complaint."

2:2

Tablets were flat writing surfaces of stone, clay, wood or metal, used for notices meant to be public and permanent. The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean that a herald picks up the message and runs off with it, or that anyone passing by can take it in at a glance without breaking stride.

2:3

"A time that is set" translates a word used for a fixed date, a scheduled appointment, not a vague someday.

2:4

"Faith" here renders Hebrew *emunah*, which means steadiness, reliability, keeping firm hold, closer to faithfulness than to mental agreement. "His" is genuinely ambiguous: the righteous person may live by his own steadfastness, or by the reliability of the vision (or of God) just described.

2:5

The opening words of this verse are unclear in the traditional Hebrew text, which reads roughly "wine betrays"; a copy of Habakkuk found among the Dead Sea Scrolls reads "wealth betrays" instead, and translations divide between the two. "The grave" renders *Sheol*, the Hebrew name for the underworld where all the dead go, pictured here, as often, with a mouth open wide that is never filled.

2:6

"How terrible for..." renders the single cry "Woe!", the shout raised over a corpse at a funeral, used in speech like this to announce that someone is as good as dead already. The "taunting rhyme" is a *mashal*, a short pointed saying built on wordplay and passed around at the target's expense. "Goods taken as pledges": a pledge was property a lender held as security until a debt was paid, and the taunt casts the conquering empire as a creditor loaded down with other people's collateral.

2:7

There is a pun in the Hebrew: the word for creditors comes from the same root as the word for a bite, because interest charged on a loan was called a "bite." The debtors' creditors suddenly bite back.

2:8

"The peoples who are left" are the survivors of the nations this empire has already plundered.

2:9

Setting a nest up high is a stock image for a stronghold built out of reach, used elsewhere of eagles nesting on cliffs and of fortresses on crags.

2:10

"Sinned against your own life" is closer in Hebrew to forfeiting your own life: the damage was aimed outward but comes back on the one who did it.

2:11

In Hebrew legal language witnesses "cry out" against an accused person. Here the stones and roof beams of the house, bought with what was taken from others, take the witness stand themselves.

2:12

"Town" and "city" are not two different places. Hebrew poetry works by saying a thing twice in slightly different words, and the second line restates the first.

2:13

"Feeds the fire": everything the conquered peoples built with their labor ends up burned, so the work is consumed for nothing. The same taunt appears almost word for word against Babylon in Jeremiah 51:58.

2:14

"Glory" translates *kavod*, whose root sense is weight, the visible, impressive presence of someone who carries real substance.

2:15

A wineskin was a whole animal hide, sewn shut and used as a bottle. The Hebrew word used here closely resembles the word for "wrath," and some translators read the line as pouring out one's rage rather than one's wine. Stripping a drunken man naked was a recognized way of humiliating him in public; the offense is the exposure and the gloating, not nakedness itself.

2:16

The King James "let thy foreskin be uncovered" reflects a Hebrew verb meaning to show yourself uncircumcised: that is, to be exposed as an outsider and disgraced. A Dead Sea Scrolls copy and the ancient Greek version read a similar-looking word meaning "stagger," giving "drink, and stagger." A cup handed around a circle of drinkers is a standard image for a share of punishment being served out in turn.

2:17

Lebanon was famous for its cedar forests. Mesopotamian kings logged them for palaces and temples and boasted about it in their inscriptions, destroying the wildlife along with the trees. Some readers take Lebanon here literally as the forest, others as a figure for the land and people being cut down.

2:18

Two different manufacturing methods are named: an image carved from wood or stone, and an image cast from molten metal poured into a mold. "A teacher of lies" refers to the practice of consulting such an image for guidance or oracles.

2:19

Images of this kind were commonly a wooden or stone core covered with a thin skin of hammered gold or silver. "Breath" is Hebrew *ruach* (breath, wind, spirit) the standard mark of a living creature.

2:20

"His holy temple" may mean the building in Jerusalem or God's dwelling in heaven; the Hebrew permits either. Silence was the expected response in the presence of a king or a god, and also the hush of a courtroom just before sentence is passed.