as captives, still we will not perish. Rather, by this treatment You are only punishing us to show us our sin, not to destroy us," as is shown by what follows:
O Lord, Thou hast ordained them as a judgment; and Thou, O Rock, hast established them for chastisement. He calls the king of the Chaldeans God's scourge with which the Lord would punish them.
This is the way Scripture in a number of passages calls kings whose service God has used in overturning some kingdom "the rod or switch of the Lord." For example, in Is. 10:5 He speaks of Assyria as "the rod of My anger." Those people who triumph in this way with God's help (for God is the one who is moving and leading them) do not realize that God is working through them, because they are wicked, but they attribute their victory to their own strength, to their own weapons, not realizing that they are able to do nothing more than the Lord allows, while they keep shouting, "Raze it, raze it! Down to its foundation!"
(Ps. 137:7). The prophet Habakkuk is saying the same thing here, namely: "Although the king of the Chaldeans thinks that he is going to eliminate us totally, nevertheless he will be able to accomplish nothing, for we will be brought back to our land from which he leads us away as perpetual exiles. You have only used him for punishment and for judgment. Otherwise he would have been able to do nothing by himself. And he will not be able to keep us in captivity, because You are the Rock; You have appointed him only to punish us. Except for You, we would not be able to endure." But all these things are understood only by faith. The flesh neither believes nor understands any of these things at all, as he said above (v. 5): "You would not believe if told, etc." In temptation the flesh cannot but despair; it is not able to see and perceive life in the middle of death, glory in shame, etc. Only faith can do this.
13. Thou art of purer eyes. All these things belong with the preceding. It is as if he were saying: "The Chaldean sacrifices to his own god, although he ought to sacrifice to You, who hand us over to him for chastisement. Why, therefore, O Lord, do You permit that wicked king to become so haughty that in this way the worse one prevails twice against us who are far more upright than he is? We would endure this with an unruffled mind if it were some godly king coming against us. Therefore, because Your eyes are pure and because You are not able to endure toil," Why dost Thou look on scorners, and art silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? Then he continues:
14. For Thou makest men like the fish of the sea, that is, "You bring it about that You set all the remaining men before Nebuchadnezzar as fish and snakes, that is, wanderers without a leader set forth to become prey. For just as fish are eaten up, so You set forth all the men to be devoured by him."
15. He brings all of them up with a hook. He now continues to the end of the chapter with the figure of speech taken from fishing. "All of them," that is, all the kings, all the nations, he brings up with a fishhook. In this way he compares the plundering of the king to fishing, as if to say: "First of all he takes the more powerful men in the nation; then, after the kings, the rulers, and the foremost of the people have been taken, all the rest are taken, the way ordinary fish usually are."
16. Therefore he sacrifices to his net. From this the thing I mentioned about an idol a little earlier becomes very evident, namely, that the prophets call that thing a strange god in which anyone trusts, just as here in plain words the prophet says that the king of the Chaldeans will sacrifice to his net, that is, his army, with which he captures all the nations. Earlier he had said that he would sacrifice to his god.
Therefore the thing in which he trusts is a person's god, as power, troops, works, etc.
For by them his portion has become so fat, that is, "he does not give credit to You for the victory he gained, but he gives it to his army, to his own powers."
And his share is rich, rich and strong, that is, very powerful and very rich kingdoms.
17. Therefore he keeps on casting out his net. Captivated by the sweetness of the plunder, he does not stop but continues to seize and devour; he can never get enough; the more he takes, the more he wants. He wishes to subject all things to himself; he is not content with those very abundant kingdoms. Such is the wickedness of the human heart and the ardent desire for possessing that it is never able to be satisfied. It always wants to have more and better things, just as Alexander was not content to have subjected the whole world to himself but desired still another world—and I don't know what other things he wanted.
IN the previous chapter Habakkuk has described the strength and the very powerful troops of the king of the Chaldeans and his attack on all nations and against all kingdoms. From this it becomes clear that we are right in thinking that this prophet lived before the time of the Babylonian captivity. In this second chapter, on the other hand, he prophesies punishment and revenge against the Chaldeans because they had
- 50 destroyed everything, especially Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The punishment and revenge were finally completed after the Babylonian captivity. And so Habakkuk's prophetic activity covered the periods before, during, and after the Babylonian captivity. Or, if someone prefers, in the prophetic manner he described as past or as now present things that were still in the future. For it is Habakkuk's desire or aim
(this is true of all prophets) to keep the people in faith, to strengthen them with much consolation and a declaration of the will of God on the strength of promises God has made so that the people in affliction might not doubt but rather give glory to the God of truth. This promise was that the people would not perish but would remain in the land until the coming of the Christ, just as the prophecies stated. For the flesh is neither able to believe in God when in temptation nor to trust that God is reliable and certain to keep His promise. So at this point Habakkuk fights against that doubt of the flesh, and he comes finally to the climax of the matter, that is, to strengthen and sustain those who are weak in faith. For just as above he described the battle of the army of the Chaldeans against the kingdoms and all the nations, so here he describes his own fight and conflict against those whom the temptation to doubt disturbed, so that those who had been crushed by misfortunes were not able to believe that God would save His own people, who thought that both they and the whole kingdom were done for, since that terrible captivity was near and, in fact, they had all been carried off into captivity already. He begins this comfort with the illustration of a good, diligent sentinel on a watchtower carefully observing the advancing enemy and so defending against them, etc. This seems to me to be the meaning of this chapter. Unless we understand it this way, we will be at a loss to explain this passage, as Jerome and all the other writers were. For the comments they have made on this passage are altogether nothing and lack all sense, and they are not to the point.1
1. I will take mit stand to watch and station myself on the tower. He strengthens himself and encourages his heart and mind in trust against a people who were in a state of agitation and distrusted the promises of God, since they were terrified by the captivity. In effect he was saying: "Although you are doubting and accuse me of a lie, you will not deter me from remaining completely unafraid and in full trust in the promises that God has made to us."
And look forth to see what He will say to me, that is, "The Lord will say something to me. I will learn from what I hear, from what the Lord reveals to me, so that I will answer you who complain against me," as he says:
And what I will answer those complaining against me. On this word depends the chief point and purpose of this whole chapter. For he is fighting, as I said, against the tongues of doubters who thought that the kingdom was now done for, since the city had been burned, the kingdom had been destroyed, and they themselves had been led into captivity. Therefore they were accusing the prophets of lying, those prophets who had promised them that the kingdom would be safe, etc. So it is against such poisonous accusations as these that he addresses himself, saying that he will stand as a faithful guard in order to see how the Lord is going to save them and that he will listen for the plan of the Lord.
2. Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets. This was a prophetic practice which had been taken from Deuteronomy, where instruction was given to polish and smooth the stones on which the second giving of the Law was to be written plainly and clearly.2 Besides, God has always had a way of strengthening the words of the prophets with some sign or of adding a sign to the visions. Thus when
Isaiah was predicting the destruction of Egypt, he confirmed his prediction with a sign, namely, that he walked around naked and barefoot, as we see in Is. 20:2–3. With an act, or sign, of similar nature he illustrated the event he was threatening for Egypt. In this way for us in the New Testament Baptism is a sign to show the need of putting to death the entire old Adam. For we are baptized into the death of Christ, as Paul says in Rom. 6:3. There are many signs of this kind, in Is. 8:1–2 there are those about a book, about witnesses, etc. This sign in Habakkuk is of this kind. He predicts that there will be a sure and faithful vision about saving the kingdom. He is ordered to write this so clearly, openly, and appropriately that all will be able to read it without any hesitation. By this sign he is indicating nothing else than that the thing he promises will most surely happen. In addition he calls the vision in a general sense a prophecy about the Christ and the kingdom of the Christ, which had already been prophesied earlier in all the prophets. And so in this way he is talking not about a vision he saw at that time but about the vision of the prophets, that is, about the prophecy that had been spoken about the coming Christ in order that he might show it on a tablet and put it on display very clearly and point it out, as it were, with his finger. That the word "vision" ought to be understood in this general way is very evident from Dan. 9:23: "Consider the - 51 word and understand the vision, etc." Again, Dan. 9:24: "That the vision and the prophecy may be fulfilled and the Holy of Holies may be anointed." In this passage he calls the vision a prophecy about saving the people of Judah, a prophecy which had now for a long time been prophesied, and about the coming of the Christ, etc., for, except for Michael,3 Daniel saw nothing at all, etc.
So he may run who reads it, that is: "With a very bright light and clearness show forth the writing so that the writing, clearly and plainly set forth, will not delay the one who reads it but that he will be able to read it even while he is on the run." Then he adds the vision, or message:
3. For so far the vision is seen from a distance. This entire verse has been translated poorly4 from the Hebrew. I translate it this way: "Because the vision still is at its set time," or more clearly: "It has its own time." This means that the vision which has been prophesied by the prophets still has its definite and prescribed time; it will not deceive us; without a doubt that thing which has been predicted will come to pass at its own time. Then follows: And it will freely become publicly known. Our translator has done a bad job here. This is the word which the evangelist Luke was in the habit of translating with the word παρρησιάζειν.5 This is the way it is in Ps. 12:5: "I will deal confidently with him." In the same way we have it somewhere else in a psalm: "He will speak with confidence with his enemies" (cf. Ps. 127:5). This phrase the evangelist John almost everywhere expresses like this: "Ah, now You are speaking plainly, etc." (John 16:29). And so this is the meaning of the prophet: "We must wait for the end, until those things which have been promised about the Christ happen." He had to use these symbols and words and signs to build up the people who were becoming desperate in a calamity that was already so great and was getting more serious every day.
If it seem slow, wait for it. He brings abundant consolation with great power. The thing he had expressed negatively shortly before he expresses positively at this point, and he answers, as it were, those who might be able to object to him: "You promise us a deliverer; you promise us a safe kingdom; but when will it come? It is always delayed. In no way do we see how we and the kingdom will remain safe, since the kingdom is destroyed and we are carried off as captives, etc." To people with such objections the prophet responds: "Wait, even if it is delayed and that vision does not come true immediately, even if we do not see the liberation right now, finally we will see it; it really will come and will not delay." In this way the prophet stands firm in his duty and strengthens those who are weak in faith, whom the temptation to despair was upsetting because the calamity kept getting worse. Not only this, but he also cries out against his attackers, whom he rebukes in turn and accuses of wickedness as he adds:
4. Behold, he who is unbelieving. This is another poor translation. I would translate it this way: "Look, he who is going to remain stubborn—his spirit will not be pleased by it." This means that he who opposes it and isolates himself from that prophecy and with stuffed ears, as it were, refuses to hear it, who stubbornly isolates himself, such a person will not be pleased, will take no delight in that vision, will get no benefit from it, etc. As I said, the prophet is saying this against the blasphemers, as if to say: "Watch out, you people, whom neither a clear picture nor a word affects, because if anyone continues to resist this promise stubbornly, he will be in trouble, he will have no share in this vision, he will get no benefit from it. He who has been promised will come at the time when it will be fulfilled." What he is saying is that such a person's soul will have no pleasure in that promise. This is the same thing Christ in the parable in the gospels said in different words about those who were invited but refused to come (Luke 14:24): "None of them shall taste my banquet, etc." The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has cited this passage in Heb. 10:38, and he translates: "But if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him." He has followed the Septuagint translation, but the Hebrew text is quite different. For the Septuagint translators refer it to the soul of God, which is not appropriate. Although the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has erred in his wording, still he has captured the real meaning of the prophet quite clearly and suitably, etc.
But the righteous shall live by his faith. This verse has been handled eminently by the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 1:17) and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 10:38), just as it deserves to be handled. In summary form Habakkuk presents the following thought: The godly people are waiting for the Lord; therefore they live, therefore they are saved, therefore they receive what has been promised.
They receive it by faith, because they give glory to the God of truth, because they hold the hand of the Lord. And so the prophet is looking not only to this promise but also to all the other promises about preaching the Gospel or revealing grace. And so this is the thought: "I cannot force it into your hearts.
You have the clear written record (pictura) and Word. If you believe it, you will live, because the - 52 righteous lives by his faith as long as he waits for the Lord. If you will not believe, you will not live, etc."
These things seem completely impossible in the judgment of the flesh, which cannot but look at the present calamity, the misfortune that is present. This is how it happens that it forgets the promises. For what seems less likely to the flesh than to look at wretched captivity, destruction of the kingdom, and deportation of the inhabitants and still to be required to believe that the kingdom is going to be saved, that the people are going to be safe in their own land, etc., as the prophecies say? So the prophecies seemed completely contradictory. I have treated this matter sufficiently in the preface to Jonah and other prophets when I discussed the passage about the purchase of the field, Jer. 32:6–15. These works and words of God are so wonderful that they are neither understood at all by the flesh nor can be believed by it, as the prophet said earlier. Faith alone knows these things and understands and believes them. In the same way we also believe that we are going to be brought back at the end with the body and soul together through Christ and with Christ. This of course is absolutely impossible for the human nature to believe if it has not been born again through the Spirit, etc.
This is the first and most important part in this prophet, where he promises that the Christ is going to come and that the promises which have been made to the fathers are going to be fulfilled. The second part now follows, in which he describes the destruction of the kingdom of the Chaldeans, although it was a very powerful, very wealthy, and famous kingdom. In this way he has prophesied two things, both of which seem completely impossible in the opinion of the flesh. The first is that people who had been led away into captivity, whose land had been laid waste by fire and robbery, would be brought back and relocated in their former kingdom, etc. The second is that he who was such a powerful king that he had subjected all kingdoms to himself, in whose hands was the supreme control of all things, that he would be punished in turn and that his kingdoms were going to be destroyed and snatched from him, etc. In this way he weakens all the arguments of the flesh so that with our eyes closed we might just cling to the Word of God and give glory to the God of truth.
5. Moreover, wine is treacherous. The Hebrew means: "As wine makes someone worthless or bad, so will he become an arrogant man. As wine makes men to be lewd, to act unjustly and shamelessly, as gluttons usually are who gorge themselves with wine, so My Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Chaldeans, will be with his men, who are already drunk with wine, that is, who have gorged themselves with very great wealth and have filled their caves to the top." Their lot will be what the common proverb says: A drunken house spits out its master.6 And so he adds here:
Therefore the arrogant man will not be praised, or more correctly: "Therefore he will not abide nor be honored." This means that they will not remain in their palaces, in that abundance of all things. No longer will the supreme control be in their power, but it will be taken away from them, and they will be worthless in the land, etc.
His greed is as wide as Sheol. He is giving the reason for the things which he said above; he is explaining that the excessive drunkenness of the king of the Chaldeans was his excessive greed and insatiable passion for possession. It is as if he were saying: "He could not get enough, so he robbed and robbed as long as he could. He was never able to control his lust for possession." His greed was like hell, which cannot be satisfied, as we see in the Proverbs of Solomon (Prov. 30:15–16). There is a similar passage in Isaiah (Is. 5:14).
He gathers for himself all nations, that is, the fortunes of all the nations, the wealth, and all the best kingdoms of the world. But he will perish by that violence of his; he will not be able to endure, since
"Excessive force falls of its own weight," as the well-known author wrote,7 and as a popular saying goes, "No violence lasts forever."8 He immediately adds:
6. Shall not all these take up their taunt against him? They will take a witty saying or riddle or an adage with which to insult him; they will hurl at him proverbs and will reproach him very boldly and openly because they have no fear. So Habakkuk vehemently describes the wretched and disastrous destruction of the kingdom of the Chaldeans, just as Ovid speaks about the destruction of Troy: "Now there's a cornfield where Troy used to stand, and all ready for harvest's sickle and cord is a land fertile with Phrygian blood."9 Now he adds the first of his proverbs:
Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own, that is, "Goods ill got must ill be lost."10 Easy come, easy go. It will agree with you as grass does with a dog.11
- 53 He gathers against himself thick mud. In Hebrew there is one word which our translator has translated with two words. The Hebrew word means "mud." He censures the king's greed, which was so great that he kept acquiring many kingdoms. These will all become a burden and destruction for him at last. He compares them with mud, with which he says he is weighed down. The meaning is the same as what the well-known author wrote very correctly and very wisely: "The person whom many people fear must fear many people."12 "To gather against himself thick mud" is to rule in such a way that you are feared. It happens as Ennius said, "Let them hate, so long as they fear."13The prophet means that all the kingdoms will rise against the king, since he has acquired his power by force.
7. Will not those who bite you suddenly arise? He states how heavy the mud will be by using the figure of speech of a sleeping king who is by nature fearful. It is as if he were saying: "Now you are safe; under the present favorable circumstances you are confident that you will continue in your kingdom and your despotic rule. However, when you do not expect it, those who are going to bite you will suddenly rise up against you, those very people from whom you now consider yourself safe. You will be booty for them; they will seize you just as you have seized them and made them pay tribute to you by violence."
8. For the blood of men and violence. The prophet designates as the main sin of that king that he had led away God's people captive and destroyed Jerusalem, the city of God, where the Word of God was. For emphasis, he calls Jerusalem the city, as though that were the only city in the world where the Word of God was. The king of the Chaldeans fought against Jerusalem, and that was the first sin for which the prophet blames him. All these things are said for the consolation of Judah, whom the prophet was trying to strengthen so that they would not despair but rather believe that their kingdom would be safe until the Christ would come. But as I have said, he was prophesying something that-seemed unbelievable to both the Jews and the Chaldeans. For the Jews he was prophesying safety and a safe kingdom; for the Chaldeans, destruction and death, just as it turned out. For Cyrus, the king of the Persians, overthrew the whole kingdom of the Chaldeans, etc.
9. Woe to him who is greedy to the detriment of his house. He points out another sin, the excessive greed of the king and his princes, by which they weakened and thinned out all the nations by heaping up for themselves more than was necessary, exacting intolerable tributes from their subjects so that they could build for themselves well-fortified and very beautiful citadels, in which they might safely reside, etc. He says that this greed would be a disaster for his house, as if to say: "At the end it will prove to be injurious and disastrous to your house."
10. You have devised shame, that is, "All of this will roll back to the shame of your house. All the things which you have feared will return upon your own head."
Your soul has sinned. When he mentions the soul, he is including the entire will, that is, the ardent, very full desire. Moses speaks about Pharaoh in the same way (Ex. 15:9): "And my desire shall have its fill of them, etc.," that is, "I will vent my spleen on them." We have the same manner of speaking here:
"You have sinned with your soul," that is, "You have sinned out of sheer spite, that you may vent your spleen." What follows shows that this is the true meaning.
11. For the stone will cry out from the wall. That tyrant has so little courage that he is nowhere safe; he does not even trust any of his own people; he is even afraid of a shaking leaf. In exactly the same way, he says here, as it were: "You will be so afraid for yourself that when settling walls make a creaking sound, you will think that your misfortune is at hand." He refers to this when he speaks about the noise of the walls, for he will be reminded immediately that all those buildings and all that wealth had been acquired by evil schemes, by the sweat of poor men. Therefore: "They will convict your conscience because you have acquired your wealth unjustly by violence and robbery, etc." For men of that kind, when their conscience accuses them, think that their sin is open to all creatures, as popular sayings have it: "The world is too narrow for him" and "I think that even the walls are observing me." The prophet has spoken like a poet, for poets are accustomed to speak of cornfields as happy and of meadows as laughing, etc.
12. Woe to him who builds a town with blood. He is describing the third sin. He is accusing the king and his men of greed, not only because they had exacted and extorted tribute money violently but because they had acquired many things by blood. In other words, they had killed many innocent people, whose goods they had then snatched for themselves. They had oppressed many innocent people, against whom they had pronounced unjust laws and unfair sentences in order to make money after they had condemned many people in this way, and so he speaks here of iniquity, that is, unfair judgments.
13. Peoples labor only for fire, that is, "For that wickedness of yours you will pay this penalty to God:
Babylon and your whole kingdom will be burned, and so all things will be destroyed by fire. Meanwhile the inhabitants will take great pains to extinguish the fire, but they will not be able to do it; their efforts will be in vain. It turns out that they will be tormented in two ways: first, their goods and all the things they own will be burned; second, while exerting great effort and much sweat and exertion to save their things, which they will not be able to save, they will themselves fall."
14. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
There is a similar passage in Isaiah (Is. 11:9), where he describes the grace to be revealed through the Gospel, saying that the Gospel will be preached everywhere in the world, the forgiveness of sins will abound, etc. But here the prophet is not speaking about grace to be revealed, but he is speaking, just as other prophets are accustomed to speak, about the knowledge of the vengeance of the Lord against the wicked whom He is punishing, for instance: "As I live, the earth will be covered with the glory of the Lord" (cf. Num. 14:21), and as the Lord said to Pharaoh in Exodus (Ex. 9:16): "For this purpose have I let you live, to show you My power, so that My name may be declared throughout all the earth." Here the prophet Habakkuk is saying the same thing: "As the Lord was glorified because He killed wicked Pharaoh and others whom He was punishing, so He will bring it about that, after Babylon has been destroyed, all the nations will glorify Him, give thanks to Him, and acknowledge that the Lord has given them the victory."
15. Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink of the cup of his wrath, and makes them drunk, to gaze on their shame! The stories of the Jews which they base on this passage are of no value. These stories tell about a cup given to Hezekiah the king by the king of the Chaldeans to make a treaty with him and all kinds of other things. The Jews are remarkably skillful in explaining their own affairs. However, what we really have here is a figure of speech that Scripture often employs. For by cup and drink Scripture signifies anger and punishment, as in the psalm (Ps. 11:6): "A scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup."
Jeremiah and Isaiah used this figure of speech very frequently. "To drink a cup," therefore, means to suffer misfortune and punishment; "to give to drink" means to inflict punishment on someone. Habakkuk, therefore, is speaking about the excessive cruelty and tyrannical rule of the king. The king had exercised excessive tyranny over those whom he had conquered in war; he had mistreated them more than the Lord had wanted, as he mentioned earlier in the first chapter (1:12): "Thou hast ordained them14 as a judgment
… for chastisement, etc." The Lord intended that the king only chastise the people, not destroy them, as the king had in mind. This is what the prophet calls "the cup of his wrath."
To gaze on their shame! The metaphor is that of a drunken man who lies nude, exposed for all to see, as Noah was (Gen. 9:21–23). Therefore this is the meaning: "You have taken away all their wealth, power, and troops, so that nothing at all remains for them anymore except disgrace and greatest poverty, etc."
16. Drink, yourself, and be circumcised! This is the correct translation from the Hebrew. The meaning is: "I will make you drunk in turn so that you will lie nude and disgraced. All the nations will circumcise you in your totally drunken condition, that is, they will rob you while you are down and out and will take all your goods from you."
The cup of the Lord's right hand will come around to you, that is, "Your calamity will be very great."
The vomit of disgrace. In Hebrew there is only one word, which our translator15 has translated with two words.16 I admit that I do not know what the real meaning of the Hebrew noun is. Therefore, until I learn its meaning, I will follow our translator in interpreting this as "the vomit of disgrace," that is, ignoble and indecent. This is the meaning: "As one who vomits shows that he has drunk or eaten too much, so all will report about you that you were stripped of all glory, wealth, and honor—you, who until now stood alone as the richest and most honored one. To such an extent you have gorged yourself, etc."
17. The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you. Habakkuk is saying that the principal reason for the overthrow of the kingdom of the Chaldeans is that they had opposed Judah, God's people, and had very savagely attacked Jerusalem, God's city, in which the Word of God ruled. For this is the way Satan especially employs his forces where he sees God's Word ruling. In accordance with the custom of Scripture, Habakkuk calls Judea "Lebanon," for in remote regions they used to call Judea by the names of wellknown mountains or rivers, as is evident in the psalm (Ps. 42:6): "I will remember Thee from the land of Jordan, etc."