Habakkuk 2:15

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink,.... Before the full accomplishment of the above prophecy concerning the abundance of the knowledge of the Lord in the earth, and before the utter

Woe 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!

Another public and crying sin of this Chaldean kingdom was excessive drinking, and making one another drunk, and for this God will severely punish. Puttest thy bottle to him; forcing them by importunity or threats to drink by greater measures then they can bear. Makest him drunken also; never givest over till thou hast made him vile and loathsome, as well as senseless in his drink. That thou mayest look on their nakedness; designing to put the greatest abuse on them, exposing them to view, scorn, and derision, or to beastly or not to be named uncleanness, which vice the Babylonians are charged with by Herodotus and Ctesias. Another public and crying sin of this Chaldean kingdom was excessive drinking, and making one another drunk, and for this God will severely punish. That thou mayest look on their nakedness; designing to put the greatest abuse on them, exposing them to view, scorn, and derision, or to beastly or not to be named uncleanness, which vice the Babylonians are charged with by Herodotus and Ctesias.

Habakkuk 2:15 Woe 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!Ver. 15. Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink] The Babylonians (among other their flagitious practices afore mentioned) were much addicted to drunkenness, as is recorded by Herodotus, Ctesias, and others. Their land was sick of drink, and would therefore spue them out: themselves were men of wine, Habakkuk 2:5 (see the note), and should therefore drink deep of the wine of God’ s fierce wrath. They drank to their neighbours or companions, not in a way either of courtesy or charity, but purposely to intoxicate them, to make them drunk, that they might either deride them or abuse them to filthy pleasure, or both; they bucked them with drink, and then laid them out to be shunned and scorned, as Noah was by his graceless son. Therefore as he cursed Canaan (though Scaliger excuse him), and it stuck to his posterity for ever, so doth God here denounce a woe to drunkards, and so sets it on, as no creature shall ever be able to take it off. That puttest thy bottle to him] Not thy bowl only, but thy bottle, that he may drink, and be drunk, and spue, and fall, Jeremiah 25:27. This is ordinarily practised by our roaring boys (as they will needs be called by a woeful prolepsis, here for hereafter), in their Cyclopical, κυκλοποσιαι. Either by persuasions or threats the bottle is set to the mouth, and must be emptied ere it come thence. The civil, sober, and temperate man is urged, and, it may be, forced to swallow down long and needless draughts, as a horse doth a drench, by domineering drunkards, that they may see his nakedness, triumph over him, as laid up, or (as the new term is), satisfied. Their vile courses are here graphically, and in lively colours, described by the Holy Ghost; to set forth the hatefulness thereof, and how woeful will be the issue. There are those who read the words thus, That puttest thine anger to him, thy fervour, and thy fury, viz. if he pledge thee not whole ones, and drink not all the outs, as they call them. Domitius, the father of Nero, slew Liberius, an honest Roman, because he refused to drink so much as he commanded him. Others read it, That puttest thy poison to him; and indeed, Ebrietas eat blandus daemon, dulce venenum, suave peccatum. Drunkenness is a fair spoken devil, a pleasant poison, a sweet sin, which he that hath in him hath not himself, and which he that runs into runs not into a single sin, but is wholly turned into sin. How often (saith a grave divine) have I seen vermin sucking the drunkard’ s blood, as fast as he that of the grape or malt, yet would he not leave his hold or lose his draught?

(6-20) The destruction of the Chaldæans has hitherto been only implied. It is now plainly foretold in a denunciatory song, put into the mouths of the invader’s victims. In this song there are five strophes, of three verses each, 6-8; 9-11; 12-14; 15-17; 18-20.

Verse 15. Wo unto him that giveth his neighbour drink] This has been considered as applying to Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, who enticed his neighbours Jehoiachin and Zedekiah to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, whereby the nakedness and imbecility of the poor Jews was soon discovered; for the Chaldeans soon took Jerusalem, and carried its kings, princes, and people, into captivity.

15–17. Fourth woe: his contemptuous humiliation of prostrate potentates and nations 15. The helplessness of the nations before the power or the craft of the Chaldean and his contemptuous treatment of them when subject to him is represented under the figure of giving one to drink to intoxication and then making brutal merriment over the exposure of his nakedness (Genesis 9:21). That puttest thy bottle to him] As the text stands the verse reads: Woe to him that giveth his neighbour drink, mixing therewith (or, adding thereto) thy wrath, and makest him drunken also. The idea would be, not that the wrath was the drink, but only mixed with it or added to it (1 Samuel 2:36; Isaiah 14:1). This is not natural. A.V. “bottle” (Genesis 21:14) is in Heb. a word similar to “wrath,” and might be read if the vowel points were altered, but its use is quite improbable. The ancient “bottle,” being a wine-skin, would not suggest the figure. Wellh. makes the ingenious conjecture that the term “mixing,” or adding to, has arisen by accidental repetition of a letter, and that its true sense is “from the cup” (Zechariah 12:2)—Woe to him that giveth his neighbour drink from the cup of his (lit. thy) wrath, and makest him drunken also.

From cruelty the prophet goes on to denounce the woe on insolence.

Woe upon cruelty toward other nations, Habakkuk 2:15-17.Habakkuk 2:15 presents a figurative description of the craftiness, cruelty, and cunning by the use of which the Chaldeans have reduced the nations to helplessness.