Habakkuk 2:5 - Meaning and Application

After the prophet was told to write the vision and the people were told to wait for it, the vision itself now follows. It is, like several other prophecies, a message of judgment against Babylon and Babylon’s king, the same power that was said to pass through and offend (Habakkuk 1:11). Some think this warns especially about Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler who mainly helped destroy Jerusalem. It may also speak of the Babylonian kingdom as a whole, or of every proud and oppressive power that presses hard on other people, especially God’s people.

The charge against this enemy is the basis for the sentence against him (Habakkuk 1:5). The desires of the flesh, the eyes, and pride of life are dangerous traps for people, especially for those in high positions. We see this ruler brought under the power of each one. He is sensual and pleasure-loving, and he gives himself to wine. Drunkenness is itself a sin, and it leads to many other sins. Isaiah speaks of people who go astray through wine (Isaiah 28:7). Belshazzar, in whom this prophecy was especially fulfilled, was at the height of his drunken sin when the writing on the wall announced his coming death, in line with this judgment (Daniel 5:1).

He is also proud and overbearing. He is a proud man, and his pride is a clear sign that his fall is near. If powerful people are proud, the great God will make them see that he is above them. His drunkenness is shown as the cause of his arrogance and insolence. When a man is drunk, he may make himself as low as an animal, yet he feels as great as a king. He takes pride in the very thing that shames him. Scripture speaks of the “crown of pride” on the drunkards of Ephraim, and warns them both (Isaiah 28:1).

He is also greedy for wealth, and that comes from his pride. He thinks he deserves to have everything, so he makes it his business to take everything he can. The Babylonian kingdom wanted to be a world empire. He does not stay at home and is not satisfied with what is already his, even though he has a rightful claim to it. He thinks it is too small, so he cannot enjoy it or find peace in his own palace and kingdom. His sin becomes his punishment, and his ambition leaves him restless all the time. Even a palace becomes a prison to a discontented heart.

He stretches his desire as wide as the grave, which keeps receiving the bodies of the dead and still seems to say, “Give, give.” He is like death, which keeps destroying and is never full. Many people who have great wealth do not know when enough is enough. The more they have, the more they want, and the more eager they become for more. God is right to leave such greedy desires unsatisfied. It was already said that those who love silver will never be satisfied with silver (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Those who refuse to be content with what God gives them will not enjoy what they gain.

This proud ruler keeps gathering nations to himself and bringing peoples under his power. He invades their rights, seizes their property, and will not stop until they belong to him and answer to him. One nation will not satisfy him, so he takes another, and then another, until he tries to take all. In the same way, people in lower ranks sometimes show the same sin by adding house to house and field to field so that they can live alone in the land (Isaiah 5:8). It is hard to say which is worse, the folly of such ambitious rulers, who value greatness in size instead of good rule, or the misery of the nations torn apart by them.

The sentence against him follows (Habakkuk 2:6). Because pride has been his sin, shame and contempt will be his punishment. He will be covered with ridicule, laughed at, and despised by all around him, as proud people often deserve when they are brought low and exposed. Since he has treated his neighbors badly, those same people will become the means of his humiliation. They will take up a taunting proverb against him and enjoy seeing him brought down.

This is the kind of mockery they will use: “How bad it is for the one who piles up what is not his!” It is a way of saying, “Look what has happened to him now.” Or it may mean that the righteous person, the one who lives by faith, will speak this way. To him, the vision has been made plain, and by that help he can speak of the enemy’s fall even while the enemy seems to prosper. He can even curse the wicked man’s house while it still seems to be taking root, as Job says, “His children are far from safety” (Job 5:3). He will indeed pronounce woe against him.

There is woe on him because he increases his wealth by taking what belongs to others (Habakkuk 2:6-8). He gathers what is not his, but other people’s. Nothing we own should be counted truly ours unless we got it honestly. Wealth gained by empty and wrongful means will not last. Those who succeed in the world should not rush to feel safe in it, because if they do not succeed lawfully, a woe hangs over them.

He is pictured as loading himself with thick clay. Riches are only clay, heavy clay. Gold and silver are just white and yellow earth. Walking through thick clay slows a traveler down and makes him dirty. So it is with people who move through life surrounded by wealth. They are hindered by it and stained by it. Worse still, many foolishly load themselves with it as if this trash were treasure. They carry the burden of constant worry about it, the guilt of gaining it, keeping it, and spending it wrongly, and the heavy account they must one day give for it. They overload their ship with this thick clay and sink themselves into ruin.

While he is piling up wealth, people ask, “How long?” They ask how long it will be before he has enough. They may cry to God, “How long will you allow this proud oppressor to trouble the nations?” Or they speak to each other, wondering how long he will keep what he has taken so dishonestly. They may not say it openly, but that is what their question means.

In the end, what he has taken by violence from others will be taken by violence from him. The Medes and Persians will plunder the Chaldeans, just as the Chaldeans have plundered other nations (Habakkuk 2:7-8).

There will be people who bite and disturb you. Those from whom you felt no danger, who seemed asleep, will rise up and become a trouble to you. They will rise suddenly, when you feel safest and are least ready for the blow. Yes, they will rise suddenly, and you have reason to expect it. You have treated others that way, and now you will be dealt with in the same way. You will become plunder for them, just as others were plunder for you. According to the law of retaliation, as you have spoiled many nations, so you will be spoiled yourself (Habakkuk 2:8). All the rest of the peoples will spoil you.

The king of Babylon thought he had brought the nations around him so low that none of them could ever strike back. But even if only a remnant, a very small number, is left, that remnant will be enough to plunder him when God brings charges against him. God will call him to account for the blood of the thousands of lives he sacrificed to his ambition and revenge, especially the blood of Israelites, which God values in a special way. God will also judge him for the violence he did to the land, laying waste so many countries and destroying their crops, especially in the land of Israel. He will also answer for the violence done to the cities, turning many of them into ruins, especially Jerusalem, the holy city, and all who lived there. The violence proud men do to lift themselves up and enrich themselves will be brought up again one day, and they must answer for it before the God to whom vengeance belongs.

The next woe is against him for wanting more and reaching higher still (Habakkuk 2:9-11). The sin here is much the same as before, an insatiable, or never-satisfied, desire for wealth and honor. He is gathering an evil gain for his house, that is, gaining wealth for his family in a sinful way. Covetousness, the greed for more and more, is very harmful in a family. It brings unrest and trouble into the home, for the greedy person troubles his own house. Worse still, it brings God’s curse on the house and on everything connected with it. There is such a thing as lawful gain, and by God’s blessing it can be a comfort to a household, for a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. But wealth gained by fraud and injustice is bad gain. It does no good to a family, and it can bring poverty and ruin on it instead.

What does this greedy man aim at? He wants to set his nest on high. He wants to raise his family to greater rank than before, or place it beyond danger, so he thinks, so that he can escape the power of evil. He does not want even his worst enemies to be able to harm him or disturb his peace. It is common for people to excuse their greed and ambition by saying they are only protecting themselves. But they fool themselves if they think wealth will be a strong city or a high wall for them, because it is only that in their own imagination (Proverbs 18:11).

What will he get from it? He has planned, not safety, but shame for his house, by cutting off many people (Habakkuk 2:10). An estate built by sin is a disgrace to a family. Those who push others aside, or weaken them, to make room for themselves, and who impoverish others in order to enrich themselves, only bring shame on their house and leave it marked by disgrace. But that is not the worst of it. He has sinned against his own soul, bringing guilt and wrath on himself and putting his own soul in danger. Those who wrong their neighbor do far greater wrong to their own souls.

If the sinner says, “I am not guilty,” and thinks he has handled his fraud and violence so skillfully that no one can prove it, let him know that if no other witness stands against him, the stone in the wall will cry out against him, and the beam in the roof will answer it and back it up, showing that the money and materials used to build the house were gained unjustly (Habakkuk 2:11). The stones and timber cry out to heaven for vengeance, as all creation groans under human sin and waits to be set free from corruption.

The third woe is against him for building a town and city through blood and extortion (Habakkuk 2:12). He builds a town and becomes its lord. He establishes a city and makes it his royal seat. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did this when he boasted, “Is this not great Babylon that I have built as the royal home of my kingdom?” (Daniel 4:30). But he built it with the blood of his own subjects, whom he oppressed, and the blood of his neighbors, whom he unjustly attacked. He strengthened it through injustice, using unfair laws to secure it. Woe to the one who does this, for towns and cities built this way can never truly stand. They will fall, and their builders will be buried in their ruins.

Babylon, built by blood and injustice, did not last long. Its fall came soon, and then this woe came true. The prophecy spoken as though it were history, “Babylon has fallen, has fallen” (Isaiah 21:9), became history indeed. The destruction of that city was the shame of the Chaldeans, the Babylonian people, who had spent so much effort and money to protect it (Habakkuk 2:13). The Lord of hosts showed that the people who worked so hard to defend the city would labor as if in the fire, seeing the fortifications they trusted in set on fire, and struggling in vain to save them. Or, in their search for worldly wealth and honor, they put themselves to great labor and great risk, like people laboring in fire.

The worst that can be said of workers in God’s vineyards is that they have borne the burden and heat of the day (Matthew 20:12). But those driven by worldly ambition labor in the very fire and make themselves slaves to their own desires. No one is a greater drudge than the person ruled by greed. And what do they gain? Though they take endless pains, they are poorly paid. In the end they tire themselves out for nothing. They were told it was vanity, emptiness, and when they are disappointed by it, they will admit it is worse than vanity, it is a deep grief and frustration.

This also brings honor to God, because he shows himself to be a God of fair justice and unstoppable power. By the fall of the Chaldean kingdom, which all the world could not miss, the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord (Habakkuk 2:14). The Lord is known through the judgments he carries out, especially when he looks on proud people and brings them low. In that way, he proves that he alone is God (Job 40:11-12).

See what good God brings out of the fading and sinking of earthly glory. He uses it to show and increase his own glory, and to fill the earth with the knowledge of it as fully as the waters cover the sea. Those waters lie deep, spread wide, and will not dry up until time itself is over.

This is the knowledge of God’s glory seen in the face of Jesus Christ and given through the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:6). It was also seen in the amazing ruin of Babylon. If people will not learn the knowledge of God’s glory through the judgments of his word, they will be made to know and admit it through the judgments of his hand.