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Habakkuk

Habakkukchapter 2

20 verses · BSBHabakkuk book hub →

Speaks with:Hebrews 10×2Habakkuk 2×2Nahum 3×2Jeremiah 51×2Jeremiah 10×2Isaiah 21×1

Summary

Chapter summary

'I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower': the prophet takes his post and waits, and the answer comes with instructions: 'Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that readeth it… though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come.' Then the line that carried the Reformation: 'the righteous shall live by his faith' (2:4), the text Paul builds on in Romans 1 and Galatians 3. Five woes follow against the plunderer: the debt-collector, the nest set on high while 'the stone shall cry out of the wall,' the city built with blood, the neighbor made drunk, the gilded idol with 'no breath at all in the midst of it.'

Context

Prophecy · Habakkuk — Habakkuk overview

  • A. 1–4 Standing on the watchtower: the just shall live by faith
  • B. 5–8 Woe to the plunderer — the remnant will plunder you
  • C. 9–14 Woe to the house built by evil gain
  • D. 15–17 Woe to the one who makes his neighbor drunk
  • E. 18–20 Woe to the wood that says, awake — but the LORD is in his temple

The outline

  1. A.Standing on the watchtower: the just shall live by faithvv. 1 to 4

    Read vv. 1 to 4 →

  2. B.Woe to the plunderer — the remnant will plunder youvv. 5 to 8

    Read vv. 5 to 8 →

  3. C.Woe to the house built by evil gainvv. 9 to 14

    Read vv. 9 to 14 →

  4. D.Woe to the one who makes his neighbor drunkvv. 15 to 17

    Read vv. 15 to 17 →

  5. E.Woe to the wood that says, awake — but the LORD is in his templevv. 18 to 20

    Read vv. 18 to 20 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The just shall live by his faith

Pattern

Habakkuk asked God why judgment tarried and was told to write the answer plainly: the just shall live by his faith. The New Testament quotes the sentence three times, as the thesis of Romans, the proof in Galatians that no man is justified by the law, and the anchor of endurance in Hebrews.

One sentence from a short prophet carries the doctrine of justification by faith. Luther's own account of his awakening runs through Romans 1:17, and the church has read the verse as the gospel in miniature ever since.

  1. Habakkuk 2:4 you are here

    The sentence given to the watchman

    Habakkuk, waiting on his watch for God's answer, receives it: the just shall live by his faith.

  2. Romans 1:17

    The thesis of Romans

    Paul sets the sentence at the head of his fullest statement of the gospel.

  3. Galatians 3:11

    No man justified by the law

  4. Hebrews 10:38

    Faith holding on under trial

    Hebrews quotes the verse to a church tempted to draw back.

The world behind this chapter

Habakkuk 2
When
The prophet waits for an answer · c. 609–605 BC, continuous with chapter 1
Where
A watchtower, where a lookout waits to see what is coming
Who first heard it
People who needed to know what happens to the empire God is using

The history

Habakkuk climbs his tower and says he will watch to see what God will say to him. City watchmen stood on the wall or a tower to spot a runner, a signal fire, or dust on the horizon, and they were the first to know anything.

The answer starts with an instruction about writing: write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. Public notices were painted or cut on boards and set up where people passed, big enough to read at speed. God tells him to publish it in that format.

Then the sentence that outran the book: "the just shall live by his faith." Paul quotes it in Romans and Galatians, Hebrews quotes it, and Martin Luther's reading of it lit the fuse of the Reformation. In its first setting it means the righteous person stays alive — keeps going — by steady trust, when the visible evidence has gone the other way.

The rest of the chapter is five woes aimed at Babylon, and each one is built out of the empire's own habits: piling up what is not yours, building a house by evil gain, building a town with blood, getting your neighbor drunk to shame him, and making an idol and telling a block of wood to wake up.

The line about building a city with blood has a hard edge in this period. Babylon's monuments were raised with conscripted labor and financed by tribute, and the stone will "cry out of the wall."

The chapter ends in silence: the LORD is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him.

What it meant to them

This answered the question of chapter 1 without softening it. Babylon really would come, and Babylon really would be judged; the invader was a tool, not a favorite.

The promise in the middle is what people actually lived on: the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. That was said to a small nation about to be swallowed, by a prophet who could see the army coming.

Sources cited

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Habakkuk 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 3 · Written to them

Though it tarry, wait for it; it will surely come

topics/waiting→

MannaFest topical index

This page draws on E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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