17. Will God allow them to go on, emptying and then filling their nets, and having no compassion in their souls toward sparing the nations from perpetual slaughter? Such is the prophet’s plea in behalf of his people. H. C.

2:1 I WILL stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will look forth to see what he will speak with me, and what I shall answer concerning my complaint. And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. Yea, moreover, wine is a treacherous dealer, a haughty man, and that keepeth not at home; who enlargeth his desire as hell, and he is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all peoples. Shall 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 that ladeth himself with pledges! Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be for booties unto them? Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall spoil thee; because of men’s blood, and for the violence done to the land, to the city and to all that dwell therein. 9 Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, by cutting off many peoples, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. 12,13 Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! Behold, is it not of the LORD of hosts that the peoples labor for the fire, and the nations weary themselves for vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. 15 Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that addest thy venom thereto, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and be as one uncircumcised: the cup of the LORD’s right hand shall be turned unto thee, and foul shame shall be upon thy glory. For the violence done to Lebanon shall cover thee, and the destruction of the beasts, which made them afraid; because of men’s blood, and for the violence done to the land, to the city and to all that dwell therein. 18 What profiteth the graven image, that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and the teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise! Shall this teach? Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.

Chap. 2. In this chapter the prophet is seen on his watch-tower, waiting for an answer from the Lord to his expostulations (verse 1). The remainder of the chapter contains this answer in its various parts, directing the prophet first to write out the vision plainly (verse 2); assuring him it was soon to be fulfilled (verse 3); indicating how the proud and unbelieving would abuse it, but the believing he blessed thereby (verse 4); and then (verses 5-20) depicting the sins of the Chaldeans, and showing that both general justice and the special agencies of God’s providence would surely overtake them with fearful retribution. H. C.

To the expostulation, which closes the former chapter, the prophet tells us here in the second that he waited most attentively for the answer of God, and received it with a command to write it upon tables so plain “that he may run that readeth it,” or may easily run it over without hesitation, it being so legible. And the substance of the Divine answer is this: That the Chaldeans were indeed such men as the prophet had represented them; and that therefore, when God had used them as rods for the chastisement of His people, He would throw them into the fire and utterly consume them. This burden of the Babylonians begins at the fifth verse. The low and shameful condition into which the king of Babylon should sink is described in the following verses by the remarks which his conquered and captive nations should make upon him, “taking up a taunting proverb against him, and saying, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his!” etc. Reading.

In this second chapter he turns from Judah to Babylon, and predicts the doom that will fall on the Chaldeans when they shall have discharged the solemn duty for which God has raised them up, and shows us how they, “the rod of Jehovah,” will be broken and cast into the fire so soon as the moment of correction has passed. As we study it, we are profoundly impressed with one of those large convictions which widen and elevate and comfort our striving thoughts; for it sets the Maker of heaven and earth before us as using men and the races of men for ends of mercy they wot not of, as giving a dramatic unity to the whole human story, and conducting it to a happy close, in which “all the earth” will be gathered into “His holy temple.” Cox.

1. Considered as a seer, the prophet must needs look two ways: first, to God, for His message; and then down into the future, and abroad into the realms of Divine providence, to see those coming events which no human vision, unaided, could reach. This verse strikingly presents the prophet looking the first way—toward God. He says: “I will take my stand on my watch-tower, and place myself on the fortress, and will watch to see what God will say to me.” The prophet, having said what is recorded (chap. 1:12-17), should of course watch to see how the Lord received it, and what He would say in reply. He acted for the people of Judah, representing their case before God, and could not but feel deeply solicitous to get the answer. H. C.

God certainly hears what we speak, but we many times do not hear what He speaks, though He speaks peace to us. God always hears the prayer of faith and answers it, but we do not always hear what the answer is. Caryl.—Consider what we may gain by communion with good and holy men, and then conclude from this less to the greater. Consider the elevating, ennobling influences which it exercises on the character to live in habitual intercourse with the excellent of the earth, with those whose conversation is in heaven, the tones of whose minds are high and lofty and pure. Almost without being aware of it, we derive some of their spirit into ourselves; it is like an atmosphere of health which we unconsciously inhale. But how much more must this be the case, how far mightier the reactive influence for good, when we continually set before us, when we live in fellowship with Him, who is the highest, the purest, and the best, in whom all perfections meet, from whom all true nobleness proceeds; when thus, I say, our fellowship is not with men, who have caught a few glimpses of the glory of God, but with God Himself, from whom all greatness and glory proceed? Trench.

2. Here the answer begins. “Write the vision”—all I reveal—“engrave it on tablets, so that the reader of it may run”—i.e., with it, reading from it as he runs.

3. There seems to be no absolute demand for restricting the vision here spoken of to any particular part of what God revealed to Habakkuk. Of the whole, the main events yet future were: 1. The Chaldean invasion of Judah (recorded 1:5-11). 2. The ultimate destruction of the Chaldean power and of Babylon in righteous retribution for their sins (2:5-20). Both parts were fixed in the Divine counsels, each had its definite time to wait, yet neither would tarry long. The former came probably within a few months; the latter at the end of about seventy years, Cyrus being the instrument of Jehovah’s vengeance in its execution. “Though it linger, yet wait for it, for it will surely come; it will not be behind the time"—i.e., will not be too late, so as to come in afterward. This is the exact sense of the second verb. H. C.

The word of God will be accomplished. That word, or vision, “pants” toward its appointed end, hastens toward its goal; it is a living creative word, and carries in itself an impulse to fulfil itself. It cannot lie or fail. It will not deceive those who trust in it; though it tarry and seem to linger, it will not stop short of the goal; it only waits its due moment, and will surely arrive. Cox.—The day that God has set for the deliverance of His people and the destruction of His and their enemies is a day that will surely come at last; it is never adjourned without fixing another day, but it will without fail come at the fixed time and the fittest time. It will not tarry, for God is not slack, as some count slackness, though it tarry past our time, yet it does not tarry past God’s time, which is always the best time. H.

Two brief expressions here present us with God’s way of dealing toward men throughout all time. “The Lord tarrieth”—there is the one; “The Lord cometh”—there is the other. He tarries when He lets His people walk in darkness; and He comes when He makes plain, before the face of heaven and earth, that He can do beyond what we may ask or think. He tarries, frequently far longer than we in short-sightedness thought good, or in rash haste deemed possible; He comes, and in a manner much more manifest, and wonderful, and glorious, than our weak faith had ever thought or asked. He tarries, just that He may come; and when He comes, then it appears that “light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.” Van O.

4. In the invasion by the terrible Chaldeans, just coming upon the people as announced above (1:5-10), and the retribution to come at some future day on them—a thing of faith, forming the chief burden of chap. 2—some would be intensely agitated, having practically no faith in God’s promises, or in His threatened retributive judgments on the wicked Chaldean. Others would repose calmly upon God through their faith. These two classes are before us in this verse. I paraphrase it thus: “Behold the proud, disquieted man. His soul within him is not placid; but as for the righteous man, he shall live by his faith.” The verb “live” must be taken in its very common moral sense of true blessings—the calm repose of a true faith in God. The Hebrew accents connect very closely the words rendered “the just” and “by his faith,” showing that the earlier Jews read the clause, “He who is all right in respect to his faith shall live.” This construction also makes a natural antithesis between the proud man of the first clause and the sincerely believing man of the second. The former is never placid; the latter enjoys in the rest of faith that true life which is real blessedness. H. C.

The vision itself must still wait a verse or two; but, meantime, the prophet announces its main theme. Its theme is, substantially, the contrast between the man who is puffed up with self-trust and the man who holds fast his trust in God. He that is puffed up with vain self-confidence shall know no tranquillity of heart, while the man who confides in God and cleaves to Him shall live by his faith. This, in general, is the theme and substance of that

“vision” in which the prophet’s doubts were answered by the words that came to him when, perplexed by the apparent injustice of Providence, he made a silence in his heart, and listened to hear what Jehovah would say in him. Cox.

The just shall live by his faith. This text, most important as supplying the keynote to Paul’s doctrinal teaching, has a distinct meaning specially applicable to the prophecy. The complaint was that the righteous man is devoured by the wicked without any intervention on the part of God (1:13); the answer is that the wicked man is puffed up, and unrighteous, an object therefore of abhorrence to God, who “hateth” the proud and overthrows the unrighteous; but that the righteous will live, be preserved from the destruction which Habakkuk anticipated, on one condition, that he retain his trust in God. The word rendered “faith” has the fundamental sense of steadfastness, hence trustworthiness, faithfulness in the discharge of all duties, specially of promises; as a personal quality, truth in deed and word, and in man’s relation to God firm belief and reliance on the Divine promise, the special sense in this passage; whatever may betide others who “will not believe” (chap. 1:5), the righteous who believes and trusts will live. That the word is properly rendered “faith,” taken in the true, full sense of trustful faith, is clear from the usage of the verb in the palmary text, “and he believed” (Heb. heemin; the word here is amunah, from the same root) “in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). That such reliance or faith is meant in our passage is evident; it is demanded in the preceding clause, “wait for it.” B. C.

Abraham’s faith was no intellectual assent to a demonstrated proposition; it was the trust of the heart in the voice of God. It was the belief, not that solves difficulties, but that rises above them. Why was Abraham’s faith counted to him for righteousness? Because, as all sin lies folded in one thought of distrust, so in one thought of trust lies all possible righteousness—its patience, its hope, its heroism, its endurance, its saintliness; and therefore He who sees the end from the beginning reckons it as righteousness. In the faith of Abraham lay all the righteous endurance, all the active service, of his believing life. This simple trust of Abraham made the practical motive power of his life, as it should make that of ours. Bp. Magee.

No better index to the character of the Old Testament covenant can be found than the lives and workings of those who lived under it, and who were pointed out by Divine revelation as its best representatives and exponents. And just these, the prophets, both the literary and those of action, as also the psalmists, and all the men of God, nowhere claim that they are the children of God because they have been obedient to the commands of the Lord, because they have complied with the iota of Moses’ code. With one accord they attribute their acceptable standing in God’s sight solely and alone to God’s undeserved mercy; they are His children, because He has received them and pardoned their sins. Not self-righteousness, but the mercy of God, is the burden of their prayer and prophecy. A covenant and religious life that can produce such confidence in Divine mercy cannot be based upon the basis of legal obedience. And what this Old Testament faith and life implies is plainly also its teaching. Nowhere in its pages do we find one word that can be construed or misunderstood into the doctrine that righteousness by the law is the principle of the Old Testament covenant. As little as the Old Testament saints claimed such a righteousness for themselves, so little did they teach it as a doctrine. They ascribe all the glory to God, and not to themselves. It is only on this basis that the contents of Old Testament revelation are historically intelligible. In the old covenant, then, as in the new, the doctrine of justification by faith alone prevails; in the one, the object of this faith is still a promise, whose advent is anxiously waited; in the other, the object of this faith is a historical reality, and has arrived; the historical mission of the law has been fulfilled. There is thus between the two Testaments not a difference of kind, but merely of degree; both portray the development of the kingdom of God on earth, the one in its preparatory stage, the other in its completed stage. Schodde.

In the Hebrew religion the ground of man’s acceptance with God was neither sacrifice nor ceremonial observance, though these were required, but faith—a trust in God, bringing the whole heart and life into dependence upon Him and harmony with His will. This is set forth in the story of the heroes of old, and especially in that of the father of Israel. It is earnestly insisted upon by the prophets through a course of several centuries; it appears abundantly in the Psalms and in the story of Job. Everywhere, from the oldest patriarchal story to the latest utterance of the sacred volume, there is one and the same teaching; “his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith”—by his calm trust in God.

The Gospel teaches that this is the essential principle of all true religion; but how did Israel know it? How were those rude ages and those rough men of action able to grasp that principle which, even in our times, it has ever proved so difficult to keep alive in the hearts of men? It seems almost an insult to the understanding to ask whether it could have been a merely human development. Gardiner.

The just shall live by his faith, by that faith which he acts upon the word of God. This is quoted in the New Testament (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38), for the proof of the great doctrine of justification by faith only, and of the influence which the grace of faith has upon the Christian life. Those that are made just by faith shall live, shall be happy here and forever; while they are here, they live by it—when they come to heaven faith shall be swallowed up in vision. H.

Paul claims him as teaching substantially the same doctrine as he was laying down. There has never been but one way to God, and that has always been the way of faith. The law required righteousness, that conscience might be quickened to a sense of unrighteousness; and the saints of old drew their righteousness from the same source as had been laid bare to our eyes by the Gospel. Life and righteousness always have come through faith. Of old, the faith had a veiled promise to clasp; to day, it has an unveiled Christ. The firmness of the grasp should correspond with the clearness of the revelation. A. M.

The just shall live by his faith. A Christian’s life is a life of faith, according to this saying of the prophet, which is thrice quoted by the apostle, with reference to the life that now is, as well as that which is to come. As it is by faith that the just shall come to heaven, and live there, so it is by faith that they live here upon earth too. And it is their living faith upon earth whereby they come to live in heaven. There they live by sight and not by faith; but that we shall never do, except we first live by faith and not by sight. Bp. Beveridge.

The faith which gives our only hope of justification is not a quiescent frame of belief and expectation; it is an active principle, a working power; only it works, not by the constraining force of law, but by the energizing force of love. This is the fulfilling of the law; love sums it up in one sentence, simple, comprehensive, complete. The fruit of this spiritual obedience is seen in all that makes society endurable, makes home blessed, makes life beautiful—in all that gives hope to the world through the coming in of the kingdom of God. J. P. T.

Assent to the truth of the Word is but an act of the understanding, which reprobates and devils may exercise. But justifying faith is a compounded habit, and hath its seat both in the understanding and will; and, therefore, called a “believing with the heart” (Rom. 10:10), yea, a “believing with all the heart” (Acts 8:37). It takes in all the powers of the soul. There is a double object in the promise; one proper to the understanding, to move that; another to the will, to excite and work upon that. As the promise is true, so it calls for an act of assent from the understanding; and as it is good as well as true, so it calls for an act of the will to embrace and receive it. Therefore he which only notionally knows the promise and speculatively assents to the truth of it, without clinging to it and embracing of it, doth not believe savingly, and can have no more benefit from the promise than nourishment from the food he sees and acknowledgeth to be wholesome, but eats none of it. Gurnall.

“God’s righteousness-by-faith” hangs together and receives one consistent sense. It is at every point the clean contrary to “Man’s-righteousness-by-works;” and accordingly the apostle’s efforts through nearly three chapters (Rom. 3-5) are directed to abolish the latter, that he may establish the former and shut us up to accept it. If it can be shown that by the deeds of the law can no man be justified before God, then it will follow that any justifying righteousness available for us must be a righteousness not ours, but God’s; which comes to our account—not on our doing it, but on our trusting to it as our Saviour’s deed. And it is just such a righteousness which in the Gospel is revealed unto us. Dykes.

The justification of sinners is directly connected with Christ as a propitiation, and described, in every variety of expression, as having been effectually procured by and founded upon that propitiation. It is connected (1) with the death of Christ (Rom. 5:10); (2) with the blood of Christ (Eph. 1:7; Rom. 5:9); (3) with the obedience of Christ (Rom. 5:19); (4) with the righteousness of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21); (5) with the name of Christ (1 Cor. 6:11; Acts 10:43); (6) with the knowledge of Christ (Isa. 53:11; John 17:3, 4). In short, in every part of Scripture this connection is seen, and Christ’s people are so absolutely dependent on what He did and suffered for their pardon and acacceptance that He is said to be their life, their peace, their righteousness, their hope, their joy, as if “all their springs were in Him,” and “Christ were all in all.” J. Buchanan.

Faith in Christ is not only faith in His having died for us; it is faith in Him as our Saviour now also by His life; it is the throwing ourselves upon Him in all things, as our Redeemer, as our Saviour, as our Head of whom we are members, deriving our life only from Him.

And thus it is true that our faith in Christ alone justifies; our faith in His death once, in His life evermore; our faith in Him as redemption, and as sanctification; our faith in Him as everything, in ourselves as nothing; our faith in Him leading to union with Him, that so being His members truly we shall be with Him and in Him evermore. T. Arnold.

The reckoning of righteousness to the unrighteous, on condition of their faith, is not because of any merit in faith. It does not come about in reward of, but by means of, their faith, which is nothing in itself, but is the channel only of the blessing. Nor is it a mere arbitrary act of God’s, or an unreal imputing of what is not. But faith unites with Christ; and “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” so as that “in him we have redemption.” His righteousness becomes ours. Faith grafts us into the living Vinc, and we are no longer regarded in our poor sinful individual personality, but as members of Christ. Faith builds us into the rock; but He is a living stone, and we are living stones, and the life of the foundation rises up through all the courses of the great temple. Faith unites sinful men to God in Christ; therefore it makes them partakers of the “blessedness of the man, . . . to whom the Lord will not impute sin,” and of the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord reckons His faith for righteousness. That same faith which thus clothes us with the white robe of Christ’s righteousness, in lieu of our own tattered raiment, also is the condition of our becoming righteous by the actual working out in our character of all things lovely and of good report. It opens the heart to the entrance of that Divine Christ who is made first for us, and then, by daily appropriation of the law of the spirit of life, is made in us “righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” A. M.

The Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world. Human theories, like a mist before the sun, may obstruct and becloud the light of this great fact; but received as a fact, with humble faith, it inspires gratitude, diffuses peace, and imparts strong consolation. Here is a reason out of ourselves—higher, stronger than ourselves—which is as an anchor to the soul. Condemned by the written law, condemned by his own conscience, man places his hand on the cross of Christ and repeats the great words of his faith: “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” The pillars of heaven may tremble, but he who trusts in God’s mode of justifying the guilty shall never be afraid. W. Adams.

5. At this point the strain of discourse turns to the Chaldean power, considered as a unit, and continues to speak of him through the chapter. Starting with the thought in the first clause of verse 4—the case of the proud, unbelieving, and therefore disquieted Jew—the prophet proceeds to say: “How much more of this one (the Chaldean) because he errs the more by reason of wine, is a proud man, and never rests quietly at home; who enlarges his desire as Sheol (i.e., the grave) does its mouth, and he is like death and is never satisfied; and consequently he gathers unto him all the nations and annexes to himself all the peoples.” This represents the ambition of a young conquering power, grasping the dominion of the world, and, like Alexander, pained to tears when he finds no other world to conquer. Such is the Chaldean. The reader will note, here and onward through the chapter, how the Lord does in fact answer the expostulations of His prophet, recorded 1:12–17. The prophet had virtually said: “O Lord, Thou art ever righteous and just; Thou canst not look quietly on wrong and its resulting miseries; how, then, canst Thou see the Chaldean exterminate another nation more righteous than he? How canst Thou let him go on unpunished, sweeping the nations into his drag net, and slaughtering myriads of men to satiate his mad ambition?” The Lord replies: Be at rest; the Chaldean is indeed guilty, he shall have his just doom not far hence. There shall never be just occasion to say or to think that I can look down upon wrong-doing and its consequent misery with indifference, or that justice has forsaken My throne. This is what the prophet brings back from God concerning his expostulation (2:1). H. C.

First Woe, to end of Verse 8.

6. The acquisitions of the Chaldeans, whether annexed territories or spoils amassed by rapine, are represented as so many pledges extorted from the conquered and reclaimable by them; the greater the amount the heavier the debt and the retribution.

7. The word suddenly points to the rise of the Medo-Persian power, the exactors of the debt; a rise not less sudden, rapid and unexpected than that of the Chaldeans.

8. The agents in the overthrow of the Babylonian empire were Media, Persia, with confederate tribes, all of whom had been attacked and spoiled by Nebuchadnezzar, but existed as a powerful remnant ready when “awakened” to exact revenge. B. C.

9–11. Second Woe.

Here is a woe against him for coveting still more, and aiming to be still higher. The crime for which this woe is denounced is much the same with that in the foregoing article—an insatiable desire of wealth and honor; it is coveting an evil covetousness to his house, grasping at an abundance for his family. Covetousness is a very evil thing in a family; it brings disquiet and uneasiness into it; he that is greedy of gain troubles his own house; and, which is worse, it brings the curse of God upon it and upon all the affairs of it. Woe to him that gains an evil gain; so the margin reads it. There is a lawful gain which by the blessing of God may be a comfort to a house (a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children); but what is got by fraud and injustice is ill got and will be bad again, will not only do no good to a family, but will bring poverty and ruin upon it. H.

9. The Chaldeans employed the wealth and the muscle of the nations they subdued, in building their immense walls, towers and castles, hoping thereby to make their city impregnable, and thus deliver themselves from the fear of future harm from foreign enemies. They did indeed set their nests on high, as the eagle in the lofty erags of the rock. H. C.

10. Hast sinned against thy own soul. Committing a sin which will be visited on thyself, bringing with it immediate guilt, and a certainty of future punishment. The buildings, like those of Egypt under Rameses II., were the work of innumerable captives carried off ruthlessly in wars of aggression.

11. Each part of the building, bearing witness to the crimes of the founder, will cry out for vengeance; thus echoing the prophet’s outcry (chap. 1:2). The figure, not uncommon in classic writers, is adopted, though with a modified application, by our Lord (Luke 19: 40); it has a peculiar fitness in reference to a building founded on bloodshed and compacted by fraud (see verse 12). Blood shed by violence cries out for vengeance (Gen. 4: 10). B. C.

The boldness and beauty of this figure of the stones and beams of a house built with godless gains crying shame on its inmate, appealing and responding to each other in a common prediction of woe, need no words to set them forth, but may be safely left to make their own impression on our minds. But they take an added force when we remember that the marshy plains of Chaldea produce neither timber nor stone. Every block of marble, therefore, and every beam of costly timber, such as they lavished on palace and temple, were drawn from a foreign land—often drawn by robbery and violence—and would be the more likely to protest against the base and alien uses to which they were devoted. Cox.

Thy soul. The offspring of God, and bearing on it the image of the Father, the soul is great. Its attributes, incomparably higher than any which reside in matter, make it great. Its vast capacities, also, and, most of all, its immortal destiny, make it great. In the teaching of Christ the soul is the man, and determines his position in the scale of existence; not the body, not outward possessions, not social rank, not anything connected only with the present world; but the spiritual nature, its powers, principles and moral condition. The soul is the man; in it are all his real distinctions, all his worth, his dignity and his happiness; there lies his character in the universe, there his whole being for good or for evil—there and nowhere else. The Gospels have filled the world with a most blessed sound; there is a soul in man, and the soul is, beyond expression, great and precious. J. Young.

Third Woe, Verses 12-14.

The prophet sees the city in process of extension, bands of captives, Jews and Gentiles, bleeding and dying under the blows of their drivers, and he realizes the fraudful dealings by which the treasures expended in the erection of enormous fortifications had been amassed. B. C.

There never were such great builders as the despots of Babylon; the land which they covered or enclosed with their vast erections is to be reckoned by hundreds of square miles; and hence the Chaldean is denounced under the figure of a builder. The great cities of Chaldea built or rebuilt under its victorious despots, with their walls, temples, hanging gardens, canals, etc., were erected with the treasures and by the forced labor of conquered races. They were therefore “built with blood” and “founded on injustice.” Whole tribes were “expended” and exhausted upon them. But while the Chaldean thought to establish his empire by erecting impregnable cities, God saw and ordained that these cities should be burned and destroyed. The nations and races compelled to labor on them were therefore “wearying themselves for the fire,” and “exhausting themselves for vanity,” since the fire would consume the stately products of their labor and bring them to nought. But why—why must this be? Why were cities so vast and stately, why was a kingdom so vast, and populous, and rich, ordained to destruction? Had God in judgment forgotten His mercy? No; the judgment was the sign and manifestation of His mercy. For, in His mercy, He designed that “the whole earth should be filled with the knowledge of His glory”—i.e., should be quickened into life eternal; and how could His kingdom come till the great kingdom founded in injustice and blood was brought to an end? So we have this wonderful picture or panorama suggested. The mighty Chaldean condemns the races he has robbed and captured to build great cities which are to be the defence and glory of his kingdom. The transported captives, torn from home and fatherland, exhaust themselves in toil. He who sitteth in the heavens sees that, so far from establishing the Chaldean power, they are wearying themselves for the fire by which He will cause the cities and the power which erected them to be consumed. Nay, more; his design in condemning that power to overthrow is not a mere destructive indignation, but a reconstructing, reconciling, all-embracing compassion. On the ruins of the power which exalts itself against Him, He intends to found “the kingdom that cannot be moved,” in which justice shall reign, and holiness, and charity. Cox.

14. The general scope of the context must determine the specific sense of this passage. This shows that the prophet thinks of God as glorifying Himself by the retributions of justice on nations guilty of great oppression and wrong. Hence our verse assumes it to be a great principle in the government of God over nations as such that He will not only glorify Himself by the retributions of justice upon them, but will fill the whole earth with the knowledge of this glory, even as the waters cover the bed of the sea. He will manifest Himself so abundantly as the avenger of the oppressed, and as one who takes vengeance on oppressors, that no man in all the earth can fail to know it—none be too blind to see it. The same sentiment is in Num. 14:21—referring there, however, to retribution on the unbelieving Hebrews who gave credit to the unbelieving spies more than to the God of all the promises: “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord”—which was revealed then in forty years of wandering in the desert, through privations and plagues which swept to their early graves the last man of that unbelieving host. The very analogous promise (Isa. 11:9) looks toward the visitations of mercy and the triumphs of love: “They 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;” and this knowledge shall mould human hearts into the spirit of heavenly love and blessed peace. So it is clearly in God’s plan to manifest His glory in both ways—in the retributions of justice and in the visitations of mercy. H. C.

Fourth Woe, Verses 15-17.

15. Giveth his neighbor drink.** The expression is figurative, but suggested by the habits of the Babylonians (see verse 5). B. C.—Just as a man might give a neighbor, against whom he had a grudge, strong drink in order to put him to shame, so the Chaldean had disguised his wrath, and enticed nations by blandishments and promises of friendship and protection into alliances which were turned to their shame and ruin. The Chaldean was a shameless league-breaker, winning his neighbors with smooth words to thoughts and hopes of peace, and then taking them at unawares and falling on them when they were disarmed. God will requite him, giving him to drink the cup with which he had intoxicated others, striking him down by the artifices of foes who come upon him when he is not aware. This seems to be the meaning, enigmatically or figuratively expressed, of verses 15 and 16. Cox.

Much in point here are the facts of her history when, on the very night of her final fall, Belshazzar and his lords drank wine from the sacred vessels of Jehovah’s temple, and in the height of their drunken revelry the thunderbolts of ruin fell! (Dan. 5:1-4, 30; Jer. 51:39.) H. C.

Fourth woe, verses 15, 16. Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink. Grotius justly observes that these two verses contain an allegory. The Chaldeans gave to the neighboring nations the cup of idolatry and of deceitful alliance; and in return they received from Jehovah the cup of His fury. Abp. Newcome.

Some there be that place their happiness in the bottle, in rioting and drunkenness, excess and intemperance; saying with the epicure, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Intemperance indeed is commonly a social vice; carries some show and appearance of a virtue, seems not, like one of the foregoing sins, pride, envy, covetousness and oppression, to seek its own only, but also the things of others; it delights in conversation and good company; pretends to benevolence and love of its neighbor; appears intent upon promoting that joy and pleasure, that cherfulness and good humor, which is thought the best cordial of life, and the most sovereign remedy of its sorrows and cares. But alas! what is this heaven of the epicure, this summum bonum and chief felicity, which the sensualist fancies to be nowhere else but in his cups and good cheer? What is it (if we believe this oracle of truth) but a false good, a true evil, a delusive bliss, a real woe? “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink;” if it be a happiness, it is not the happiness of a man, but of a brute. As the root it springs from is only the animal life, and the mere appetite of taste its gratifications, if it aim no higher it must needs be unworthy the dignity of a rational being; and all its pleasures base, brutal, inglorious. “Thou art filled with shame for glory.” The more of this happiness the drunkard enjoys, the more is his misery, the greater is his woe; to be filled with liquor is to be filled with “shame;” and he that drinks till he can hold no more has one cup more to pledge, which he little thinks of; the “cup” of Divine vengeance, for abusing himself and his neighbor with such brutish excess. Hear this, all ye that love to indulge in yourselves or to promote in others the pleasure of this bestial vice; and remember the just sentence of Divine wrath here pronounced against it, which will certainly take hold of you even in this life, if not prevented by a timely repentance. “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, and makest him drunken also.” Wogan.

20. All unlike the whole idol system are the power, the majesty, and the all-pervading reign of the dread Jehovah! That He should be thought of by a Jew as in His holy temple at Jerusalem was both natural and truthful; for His manifested presence was there in the Holy

of Holies, reposing above the mercy-seat and beneath the wings of the cherubim. All the idol temples were godless. Not so the temple of the Lord of Hosts in Mount Zion! His rule is both supreme and universal. Let all the earth stand in awe before Him—all the more so, as they note how the proud and conquering nations of the earth, like old Babylon, meet

their righteous doom from the retributive justice of His throne! H. C.