Habakkuk 2
The first chapter of Habakkuk ended with a question left hanging in the air - how can a holy God use a nation more wicked than the one it punishes? Chapter 2 opens with the prophet's response, and it is one of the most striking pictures of waiting faith in Scripture. I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved (v. 1). He does not abandon the question, and he does not pretend it away. He posts himself like a sentry on the city wall and waits for God to break the silence. He fully expects to be corrected - what I shall answer when I am reproved - and he waits anyway.3
And the LORD answers. The reply is to be written so large and clear that a runner could read it on the move: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it (v. 2). It is for an appointed time, and though it seem to linger, it is utterly certain: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry (v. 3). Then comes the line that holds the whole book together - the great contrast between two kinds of people: Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith (v. 4). The proud man, swollen with self, has no straightness in him; but the righteous one lives by trusting God and His promise. This single sentence the New Testament will take up three times and set at the very center of the gospel.
From that center the chapter pours out five woes against the proud oppressor - the Chaldean conqueror, and every tyrant like him. Woe for plunder and greed (vv. 5-8); woe for the covetous man who would set his nest on high beyond the reach of harm (vv. 9-11); woe for the one who builds a town with blood (vv. 12-13); woe for the one who makes his neighbours drunk to gloat over their shame (vv. 15-17); and woe for the one who trusts a carved block of wood, a dumb stone in which there is no breath at all (vv. 18-19). Twice, like sunlight breaking over the wreckage, the chapter lifts two soaring lines: the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea (v. 14), and the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him (v. 20).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Habakkuk 2:1-4The Just Shall Live by His Faith
1I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. 2And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. 3For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. 4Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
The chapter opens not with God speaking but with the prophet taking up his post: I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved (v. 1). The image is military and patient at once. A watchman climbed the wall or the tower to scan the horizon and report what he saw; Habakkuk turns that picture into a posture of prayer. He has just flung his hardest question at heaven - how can a holy God use a more wicked nation as His instrument? - and now, instead of storming away or burying the question, he stations himself like a sentry and waits for the reply. There is a quiet humility in the way he says it. He fully expects to be corrected - what I shall answer when I am reproved - and he waits anyway. He does not demand that God justify Himself on the prophet's terms; he simply takes his stand and watches. This is what honest faith does with a question it cannot answer. It neither pretends the question away nor walks off in a huff. It posts itself before God and waits for Him to speak.3
And God answers. The reply is to be recorded so boldly and clearly that no one could miss it: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it (v. 2). The word the answer was meant for everyone, not locked in the prophet's private memory. It was to be carved large on tablets, set up where the public passed, written so plainly that a person could read it on the run and not stumble over the meaning. God's revelation here is not a riddle kept for the few; it is a banner raised for all to see and carry. Then the LORD presses the certainty of what He has promised: For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie (v. 3). The fulfillment has a fixed hour set by God Himself. It may seem slow in coming - from the prophet's side it appears to tarry - but the delay is not failure. The vision shall speak at its appointed end; it will not lie; the seeming slowness is the patience of a God who keeps perfect time. What looks like delay to us is appointment to Him.
Verse 4 is the hinge of the whole book, and it works by contrast - two kinds of people set starkly side by side. First the proud: Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him. The picture is of a person swollen and puffed up, his inner self inflated with his own importance. And the verdict on him is plain: there is no straightness in him. The very thing that makes him feel tall - his self-reliance, his confidence in his own strength - is exactly what bends him out of true. This is the conqueror of chapter 1, the one who sweeps over nations trusting his own might; but it is also every heart that leans on itself instead of on God. Over against him stands the other kind of person: but the just shall live by his faith. The righteous one - the person who is right with God - does not live by his own swollen strength. He lives by faith: by trusting God, by leaning his whole weight on God and on the sure promise just given. Where the proud man stands on himself and falls, the righteous man stands on God and lives. That is the answer to the prophet's anguish. The arrogant power will not last, for it is built on the one thing that cannot hold; but the one who trusts God will live - not because his circumstances are easy, but because the God he trusts is sure.
Habakkuk 2:5-14Woe to the Proud Plunderer · The Glory of the LORD
5Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people: 6Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay! 7Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be for booties unto them? 8Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of men's blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein. 9Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! 10Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. 11For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. 12Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! 13Behold, is it not of the LORD of hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? 14For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
The vision now turns its gaze on the proud conqueror and exposes the emptiness underneath the power. He is a proud man… who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people (v. 5). Here is greed laid bare. The conqueror's appetite is bottomless - wide as the grave, insatiable as death itself - forever swallowing more lands and peoples and never filled. And against such a man, the very nations he has crushed will one day raise a mocking song: Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him? (v. 6). The first of five woes falls here: Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his… and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay! (v. 6). He has piled up plunder that was never his to take - loading himself, the image suggests, with heavy mud that will only drag him down. And the reckoning is sure: Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee… and thou shalt be for booties unto them? (v. 7). The plunderer will become the plunder. Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee (v. 8). What he did to others returns upon his own head - the violence he poured out comes flooding back.3
The second woe targets the man who plunders not from raw appetite but to make himself untouchable: Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! (v. 9). The picture is vivid - a bird building its nest in a cliff face, far above the reach of any predator. So this man heaps up wealth and builds his fortress high, dreaming that enough money and enough walls will lift him out of all danger. It is the ancient form of a very modern lie: that if I can just secure enough, I will be safe from everything. But the prophet shows the foundation is rotten. Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul (v. 10). The very scheming that was meant to bring security has brought disgrace, and worse - the man has wounded his own soul. And then a haunting image: For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it (v. 11). The house built by oppression is not silent. The stones quarried by forced labour and the beams cut at the cost of human lives cry out against the builder; the very fabric of his fortress testifies to his crimes. There is no nest high enough to escape that witness.
The third woe strikes at the founding of cities on cruelty: Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! (v. 12). Empires were raised on the backs of conquered peoples - cities built with slave labour, their grandeur mortared with bloodshed and injustice. The prophet declares that such building cannot stand, and he traces the verdict straight back to God: Behold, is it not of the LORD of hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? (v. 13). All that exhausting toil - the nations laboring and wearying themselves to build the conqueror's monuments - comes, in the end, to nothing but smoke and emptiness. What was meant to last forever feeds the fire; the labor poured out for an unjust glory is spent for very vanity. The LORD of hosts has decreed that what is built on blood will not endure. It is the same truth running through all five woes: the structures of pride look permanent and turn out to be sand. Only what is built in righteousness lasts, because only righteousness is in step with the God who governs the world.
Habakkuk 2:15-20Dumb Idols · The LORD in His Holy Temple
15Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! 16Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory. 17For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because of men's blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein. 18What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? 19Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. 20But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.
The fourth woe exposes a cruelty subtler and uglier than mere plunder: Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink… and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! (v. 15). The picture is of a man who deliberately gets his neighbour drunk in order to humiliate and degrade him - to strip him of dignity and then gloat over his shame. It is the conqueror who does not merely defeat the nations but delights in degrading them, stripping captives bare to feast his eyes on their disgrace. God's justice answers in exact measure: Thou art filled with shame for glory… the cup of the LORD's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory (v. 16). The one who handed others the cup of humiliation will be made to drink the cup from the LORD's own right hand; the shame he poured out will be poured back, until his vaunted glory is covered in disgrace. And the violence comes home again: For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee… because of men's blood (v. 17). The bloodshed and the cruelty - against people and even against the land itself - circle back to bury the one who dealt them out. Across these woes one rhythm keeps sounding: the measure a man metes out is measured back to him.
The fifth and final woe reaches past the conqueror's cruelty to the lie at the root of it all - the false god he trusts in. What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it… that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? (v. 18). The prophet draws out the absurdity with quiet force: a craftsman carves a block of wood or pours a mould of metal, and then bows down and trusts the thing his own hands have made. The idol is called a teacher of lies - it promises help it cannot give and tells its maker comforting falsehoods. The folly reaches its height in the next verse: Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! (v. 19). The man pleads with a lump of timber to wake up and a carved stone to rise and guide him. It may be laid over with gold and silver, gorgeous on the outside - but, the prophet drives the nail home, there is no breath at all in the midst of it. It is dead. Behind every proud empire that builds with blood lies this same exchange: trusting in what is lifeless and self-made, rather than in the living God. The woes against violence end here, at the source - a heart bowed to a god that cannot breathe.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Habakkuk 2 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for tzaddiq be-emunato yichyeh (v. 4, “the just shall live by his faith”), for the certain, appointed vision that will surely come (v. 3), and for the great closing call to silence before the LORD in His holy temple (v. 20).
- Habakkuk 2:4 ↔ Romans 1 · Galatians 3 · Hebrews 10Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Habakkuk 2 to the rest of Scripture - the just shall live by his faith (v. 4) taken up three times in the New Testament (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38), the certain vision that will not tarry (v. 3) echoed in he that shall come will come, and will not tarry (Heb. 10:37), and the glory of the LORD filling the earth (v. 14) read beside Isaiah 11:9 and the radiance of the new creation (Rev. 21:23).
- Habakkuk 2 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Habakkuk 2 - the watchtower scene of verse 1, the much-discussed contrast of verse 4 between the one whose soul is “lifted up” and the righteous who lives by faith, the structure of the five woes, and the meaning of verse 11's stones crying out of the wall against the builder.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Just Shall Live by His Faith
- Romans 1:17For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.Paul builds the opening of his greatest letter on verse 4 - the righteous live by trusting God.
- Hebrews 10:36-38ye have need of patience... For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith.Verses 3-4 taken up together - the certain coming worth waiting for, and the life of faith that waits.
- Galatians 3:11But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.The third New Testament quotation of verse 4 - a right standing with God comes by trusting Him.
- Isaiah 21:8I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights.The watchman’s post of verse 1 - the prophet stationed, waiting for what God will show.
- Psalm 130:5-6I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning.The waiting faith of verse 3 - the soul that watches for God and hopes in His word.
Woe to the Proud Plunderer · The Glory of the LORD
- Isaiah 11:9they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.The same flood-tide of glory as verse 14 - tied to the reign of the coming righteous King.
- 2 Corinthians 4:6God... hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.The knowledge of the glory promised in verse 14 - beheld, the apostle says, in a face.
- Revelation 21:23the city had no need of the sun... for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.The end of the story verse 14 looks toward - a world filled and lit by the glory of God.
- Jeremiah 22:13Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages.The woe of verse 12 echoed - the house built by oppression that cannot stand.
- Luke 12:19-20Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years... But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.The high nest of verse 9 exposed - the man who hoards for security and loses his soul.
Dumb Idols · The LORD in His Holy Temple
- Psalm 115:4-7Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not... neither is there any breath in their mouths.The breathless idol of verses 18-19 - lifeless work of human hands, trusted in vain.
- Zephaniah 1:7Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand.The hush of verse 20 - all the earth called to silence before the LORD.
- Zechariah 2:13Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.The same call as verse 20 - silence before the LORD who reigns from His holy place.
- Revelation 4:8they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.Where the reverence of verse 20 leads - the living God worshipped without ceasing in His temple.
- Galatians 6:7Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.The rhythm running through the woes (vv. 6-17) - the measure a man metes is measured back to him.