Bible Study - Book of Habakkuk Part 4 - Habakkuk 2:6-20

We ended last week with God speaking of the Babylonians, also called the Chaldeans, continuing to conquer and gather up many nations and peoples for themselves, as if they now owned them. Beginning with Habakkuk 2:6, though, God also warned and predicted that the Babylonians would eventually fall at the hands of other nations who would “scoff” at and “taunt” them, because of their sins and terrible mistreatment of others.

God then gave a series of five “woes” directed against the Babylonians and their empire. He described just what they were doing and how terrible it was and how many enemies they were making for themselves, who would eventually rise up against them. As verse 6 continued, God described the Babylonians as taking and “heaping up what was not their own,” as they conquered other nations. They were also adding to the burden of the conquered people who were left alive by making them “pledge” to give even more in taxes and tribute to them. “How long” would this abuse last? Not forever.

God then predicted in verses 6-8 that the oppressed people would eventually “arise” and “awake” and make the Babylonians “tremble,” and they would then “plunder” them because of all the “bloodshed” and “violence” done by them. (This is only one of many warnings God had given the Babylonians and other nations like them of the consequences of their evil actions. See, for example, Isaiah 44:28-45:1, where a Medo-Persian leader is named as helping God’s people in the future and defeating the Babylonians. See also Isaiah 47, where the fall of the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, was predicted, in spite of their thinking they were so safe and secure.)

Return to Habakkuk 2:9-11, where God spoke  another “woe” to the Babylonian “house,” to its “dynasty,” and to literal magnificent “homes” (“nests”) of their powerful people. By their own evil toward others, they “were forfeiting their own lives.” (Sin compounds itself and creates more sin and evil and trouble. Remember the warning of Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” God even said that the “stones” and “beams” of Babylonian homes would “cry out” against the Babylonians (Habakkuk 2:11). Jesus alluded to this passage in Luke 19:40, when the Pharisees were criticizing the praise that Jesus was receiving as he came into Jerusalem. He said that if others were silent, even “the very stones would cry out” out in honor of Him. Some think that Jesus was also predicting the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem and its magnificent temple in 70 AD, because of continued sin and rebellion against God and rejection of Jesus as Savior. Jesus spoke of that clearly in Luke 21:5-6. At that time, the stone of the city and temple would be crying out in sorrow.)

In Habakkuk 2:12-14, God spoke another “woe” against the Babylonians for building for themselves through “blood” and “iniquity” (sin) and slave labor, where people “weary themselves for nothing” and eventually everything will be destroyed by fire. (This is the opposite of what will happen when some of God’s people would return to their land in joy after their captivity in Babylon had ended (see Psalm 126:1-2) and then eventually, the Savior, “the Root of Jesse,” would come and bring hope and rest. Notice some of similar words in verse 14 and in Isaiah 11:9-10.)

God spoke a fourth “woe” against the Babylonians in Habakkuk 2:15-17, when He used again the picture image of drunkenness and the way the Babylonians cruelly had taken advantage of people and shamed and debased them and did “violence” to them and the natural world, including the cedar forests in Lebanon and the “beasts,” the animals there. As a result, the Babylonians would eventually have to “drink the cup” of the Lord’s wrath and judgment for the wrongs they had done. (See Psalm 75:7-8 as another example of this picture image of the cup of God’ wrath. Look also at Isaiah 51:17, where Israel is described as having to drink from this cup, at times like that of the Babylonian captivity, because of their great sins. Also read Isaiah 51:21-23, where the cup of wrath is taken away from Israel and passed on Israel’s former “tormentors.”)

God also recognized that behind all the other problems of the Babylonians was the worship of false gods and even making their own idol gods and trying to listen to them, instead of the one true God. God spoke one last “woe” against idolatry, showing how foolish it is to worship something one has “created” by himself of “metal” or “wood” or “stone.” “Can this teach?” God asked. If an idol is “overlaid with gold and silver,” it obviously cannot have any “breath at all in it” and is “speechless,” even if if one calls on it to “awake” and “arise.” It is, in reality, “a teacher of lies,” which comes from oneself and one’s own sinful ideas and nature, as an idol’s “creator.”

Some think Paul may have been thinking of this passage when he spoke about “mute idols,” which were so common in the Greco-Roman world and are still popular in some places today and are a means by which people are “led astray” to false ideas. See also God’s description of idolatry, given through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 44:8-20. If you look at Daniel 3 and Daniel 6, you will also see how the Babylonians were so caught up in building such idols and honoring them or having people worship their leaders themselves as gods. What a danger that was for faithful Jewish believers like Daniel and others when they were captives in Babylon.

God ended His response to Habakkuk in Habakkuk 2:20, where He reminded Habakkuk that He was still the LORD, the one true God. He was still reigning from heaven and working out His plan for the world, even when He seemed to be silent and doing nothing that people could see. All people should simply “keep silence before Him” and wait upon Him. He was and is the living God, and true knowledge and revelation come through Him alone. Habakkuk, as His prophet, and those still faithful to God especially needed to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7) and “live by faith,” as God taught in Habakkuk 2:4, and trust that He was working for good and would be just and merciful, even if Habakkuk (or we today) cannot always see it or understand.

Habakkuk did finally get this message, because unlike idols and false gods, the one true God “can teach” (Habakkuk 2:19-20). Next week, we will hear Habakkuk’s response of faith to God and what it means for us, too, to “live by faith.”