Habakkuk 2:10

Thou hast consulted shame to thy house,.... Instead of bringing real honour and glory to their church, and that into the esteem of men, by such covetousness, ambition, and arrogance, they brought it

Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people.

Woe! it is a general and comprehensive threat against all tyrants and oppressors. To him; every one that is guilty of the sin. That coveteth an evil covetousness; or driveth a trade of oppression, to gain by what means soever, right or wrong. This is evil of sin, and will end in evil of trouble. To his house; his family, which he would enrich and greaten by raising it on the ruins of oppressed innocents. That he may set his nest on high; a proverbial speech, in allusion to birds of prey, which build their nests in the greatest heights, Obadiah 4. Greatness and an advanced estate gotten by rapine and prey may seem, but never can be, a security to any monarch. On high; higher than God and justice set him. That he may be delivered; kept secure, and out of danger from all below him. Thou, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, hast consulted shame; hast mistaken thy measures, thoughtest to advance thy glory, and to illustrate thy name; but it is in very deed the shame of thy reign that it hath been bloody. To thy house; or family, thy royal family. By cutting off many people; destroying and impoverishing multitudes of men and cities. Hast sinned; it was thy sin, whatever thou didst think of it. Against thy soul; or life of thy person, and posterity, this blood and cruelty will surely ruin thy house. From the power of evil, Heb. from the palm of the hand of evil, that no evil may fasten on, though it may attempt against them. Woe! it is a general and comprehensive threat against all tyrants and oppressors. To him; every one that is guilty of the sin. That he may be delivered; kept secure, and out of danger from all below him. From the power of evil, Heb. from the palm of the hand of evil, that no evil may fasten on, though it may attempt against them.

Habakkuk 2:10 Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned [against] thy soul.Ver. 10. Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, &c.] Thou hast taken a wrong course both for thy house of the kingdom (so the Persians called the king’ s palace, Daniel 4:27), which shall be blown up; and for thine own private family and posterity; it is not all thy care, pains, plotting, and practising that can preserve it from ignominy and utter ruin. God will turn thy glory into shame, and make thy name to rot and stink as putrified flesh, Proverbs 10:7; Proverbs 10:9, "He that perverteth his ways shall be known." And when such a man is raked up in the dust his evil courses shall be cast as dung in the faces of those whom he leaveth behind him. What fools, then, are extortioners, muckworms, and cormorants, that live miserably and deal unjustly, opening the mouths of all to cry out upon their craftiness, covetousness, and cruelty, and yet think to raise up their houses and advance their names, and adorn their children with glory and estimation? By cutting off many people] A poor glory it was to Sulla to have made such a merciless massacre at Athens (σφαγηανηλεης), and after that, to have proscribed and slain 4700 citizens of Rome, as he caused it to be publicly recorded, videlicet ne memoria tam praeclarae rei dilueretur, saith mine author. So for Julius Caesar to have been the death of a million of men, Mahomet, the Great Turk, of 800,000. So for Stokesly, Bishop of London, to boast upon his deathbed that he had in his time brought to the fire 50 heretics, as he called them; or, for the bloody Spaniards, that they have murdered 50,000,000 of Indians in 42 years, as Acosta the Jesuit testifieth. And hast sinned against thy soul] The worth whereof is incomparable, the loss irreparable, as Christ (who only went to the price of souls) telleth us, Matthew 16:26. It was therefore no ill counsel that Francis Xaverius gave John III, King of Portugal, to meditate every day a quarter of an hour on that Divine sentence, What shall it profit a man to win the world, and lose his soul? Neither was it any evil answer that Maximilian (King of Bohemia, afterwards emperor) gave the Pope, who persuaded him to be a good Catholic with many promises of profits and preferments; the king answered, I thank your Holiness, but my soul’ s health is dearer to me than all the things in the world. This pleased not the Pope, who said that it was a Lutheran form of speech; and yet that of Lewis, King of France, about the year 1152, pleased him much worse, who cast his bulls (whereby he required the fruits of vacancies of all cathedral churches of France) into the fire, saying, I had rather the Pope’ s bulls should roast in the fire than that my soul should fry in hell.

(10) And hast sinned . . .—Literally, and sinning in thy soul. All the time the Babylonian oppressor was plundering these peoples he was involving his soul in guilt. (Comp. Habakkuk 1:11.)

Verse 10. Hast sinned against thy soul.] Thy life is forfeited by thy crimes.

10. consulted shame to thy house] The next words explain that what he consulted or purposed was to cut off many nations; but this purpose shall turn out to be to the confusion of his house; Jeremiah 7:19. As the Assyrian was sent against an ungodly nation, so the Chaldean was appointed for chastisement, but neither of them understood the limits of his commission: “he thinketh not so, but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few,” Isaiah 10:7. By cutting off many people] Or, to cut off. The text is not quite assured, the Versions render: thou hast cut off. Cf. 2 Kings 10:32. And hast sinned] Or, whilst thou sinnest against thine own life. In his purpose to cut off many peoples and the execution of it he sins to the endangering or rather to the forfeiture of his own life. Comp. Isaiah 10:12-19, and particularly Isaiah 14:20. The construction and form of sentence are both unusual, cf. Proverbs 8:36; Proverbs 20:2, and Psalms 7:10; Psalms 55:20 (A.V. Proverbs 7:9, 55:19).

Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, the cutting off many people, and sinning against thy soul - The wicked, whether out of passion or with his whole mind and deliberate choice and will, takes

10. “Man proposes, God disposes.” The Chaldean disregarded the divine purpose. He thought only of his own interest and exaltation, but in doing so he prepared the way for his fall.