Habakkuk 2:15 - Meaning and Application

The first three woes are closely related. They are aimed at oppressors and extortioners, people who build wealth by robbery and injustice. The commentary repeats this charge because it is the main offense in view, especially the shedding of innocent blood, which cries out to God for justice. God will surely call the whole land and city to account, as the one who upholds right and avenges wrong.

Two more offenses are added here, and they bring woe on all who commit them, especially the Babylonian rulers who held God’s people captive. The first is promoting drunkenness. Belshazzar, a Babylonian king, was a clear example of this, especially on the very night when this prophecy was fulfilled in his life and kingdom, when he drank wine before a thousand nobles (Daniel 5:1). It may even be that later Persian kings made it a law that no one should be forced to drink, because they had seen the ruin caused by such pressure in Babylon (Esther 1:8).

The sin here is making a neighbor drunk (Habakkuk 2:15). Giving drink to the poor, the thirsty, the weary traveler, or the one who is close to death is an act of kindness. Scripture approves that kind of mercy. But giving drink to someone who already has enough, with the purpose of making him drunk, is evil. It is a way of pushing him into foolish speech, shame, loss of self-control, secret disclosures, or bad choices, and those who make a habit of it are enemies of God and of their fellow man.

To lead others into drunkenness, to tempt them with drink, or to pressure them by group rules to keep drinking, is to work toward harm of both soul and body. Such people have much to answer for. The warning is strong: there is a woe against them (Habakkuk 2:15), and the punishment will fit the sin (Habakkuk 2:16).

If a man puts the cup of drunkenness into his neighbor’s hand, God will put the cup of fury and trembling into his own hand. The power of God will rise against him. The same cup that had gone around the nations, making them fall into ruin and horror, would finally be given to the king of Babylon, just as Jeremiah had said (Jeremiah 25:15, 25:16, 25:18, 25:26, 25:27). In the same way, New Testament Babylon, which made the nations drunk with the wine of her sins, will one day be made to drink blood, because she deserves it (Revelation 18:3, Revelation 18:6).

If a man delights in shaming others, he will himself be covered with shame. He will be filled with disgrace instead of honor. The glory he once trusted in will only make his shame worse, because he will be exposed in fear and cowardice, as if his nakedness were uncovered. Those around him will heap contempt on him. What he once prized most, his dignity, wealth, and rule, will become the very place of his humiliation, and those he made drunk will mock it.

The phrase about the violence of Lebanon likely means the violence done to the land of Israel and to the temple (Deuteronomy 3:25; Zechariah 11:1). Or it may mean that Babylon will be hunted down and spoiled with the same violence used by wild beasts in Lebanon. In either case, God is repaying Babylon for the wrong it did.

The second offense is idolatry. Babylon was also guilty of this, and so the woe speaks against it, and against all who follow the same path, including New Testament Babylon. They are mad about their idols (Jeremiah 50:38). They make many kinds of images, both carved and cast, so people can choose the one they like best. They take great care in shaping them, and the craftsman prides himself on his skill. They also spend heavily to cover them with gold and silver, because people everywhere are drawn to such things. By dressing up their idols this way, they try to make them more attractive to the children of this world.

They also expect help from these idols. The maker of the idol trusts in it as though it were a god, and gives it the honor that belongs to God alone. People who worship the true God honor him by praying to him and waiting for his guidance. Idolaters give those same honors to their images.

They pray to their idols. They say to the wood, “Wake up and help us,” and to the dumb stone, “Rise up and save us.” In this way, they treat the image as if it were a god. That is the same kind of prayer the church offers to the true God, “Wake up, O Lord” (Psalm 44:23). As Isaiah says, “Deliver me, for you are my god” (Isaiah 44:17). In effect, what a person asks from is the god he serves.

They also consult their idols like oracles, expecting them to direct and guide them. They tell the dumb stone, though it cannot speak, that it will teach them. Whatever a wicked demon, or an equally wicked priest, says through the image, they accept it with great reverence, as if it came from God himself. They are ready to let it rule their lives. In this way, idolatry is planted and spread under a show of religion and devotion.

Now God exposes the extreme foolishness of this. By Isaiah, when he promised to bring his people out of Babylon, he showed the shameful stupidity of idol worshipers, and he does the same here through Habakkuk, on a similar occasion. Their images are only matter after all, the lowest form of existence. No amount of work or cost can lift them above that. They have no sense, no reason, and no life. They are silent and lifeless, with no breath in them at all, so even the smallest living creature is better than they are.

The image cannot do its worshipers any good (Habakkuk 2:18). If it is only matter, it might have some use if shaped for an ordinary purpose. But once people make it into a god, it becomes useless. It cannot help them in the least. Worse than that, it deceives them and keeps them under a strong lie. They say it will teach them, but it teaches lies. It makes people think of God as having a body, as limited, visible, and dependent, when he is really Spirit, infinite, invisible, and self-sufficient. It confirms people in wrong ideas about God and makes him seem like whatever each person wants him to be. If we can say to the work of our own hands, “You are our gods,” then we can say the same about any creature of our own imagination, no matter how strange it is. An image is a teaching of emptiness, falsehood, and error (Jeremiah 10:8, Jeremiah 10:14, Jeremiah 10:15).

So it is easy to see what kind of religion people have, and what they are aiming at, when they praise these teachers of lies as books for ordinary people. They want people to study and follow them after the Scriptures have been locked away from them in a language they do not know.

But the Lord is in his holy temple. Our Rock is not like their rock (Deuteronomy 32:31). Their gods are dumb idols. Our God is Jehovah, the living God, who is what he is, not what human hands make him seem to be. He is in his holy temple in heaven, the place where his glory dwells, and there we come to him in the way he himself has appointed, not in a way we have invented. Compare (Psalm 115:3) and (Psalm 11:4).

The many gods that idolaters set up and work so hard to support cannot drive out our God. He is, and will remain, in his holy temple, glorious in holiness. Though his temple in Jerusalem has been laid waste, he has a temple above, beyond the reach of their rage and hatred, yet still within reach of his people’s faith and prayers. Our God will also make the whole world silent before him. He will strike idolaters as dumb as the idols they serve, exposing their folly and covering them with shame. He will silence the fury of oppressors and stop their rage against his people.

It is the duty of God’s people to wait before him in quiet worship (Psalm 65:1), and patiently look for him to save them in his own way and time. “Be still, and know that he is God” (Zechariah 2:13).