Habakuk 2:4

With these verses the prophecy itself commences; namely, with a statement of the fundamental thought, that the presumptuous and proud will not continue, but the just alone will live. Hab 2:4. "Behold, puffed up, his soul is not straight within him: but the just, through his faith will he live. Hab 2:5. And moreover, the wine is treacherous: a boasting man, he continues not; he who has opened his soul as wide as hell, and is like death, and is not satisfied, and gathered all nations to himself, and collected all peoples to himself." These verses, although they contain the fundamental thought, or so to speak the heading of the following announcement of the judgment upon the Chaldaeans, are nevertheless not to be regarded as the sum and substance of what the prophet was to write upon the tables. For they do indeed give one characteristic of two classes of men, with a brief intimation of the fate of both, but they contain no formally rounded thought, which could constitute the motto of the whole; on the contrary, the description of the insatiable greediness of the Chaldaean is attached in Hab 2:5 to the picture of the haughty sinner, that the two cannot be separated. This picture is given in a subjective clause, which is only completed by the filling up in Hab 2:6. The sentence pronounced upon the Chaldaean in Hab 2:4, Hab 2:5, simply forms the preparatory introduction to the real answer to the prophet's leading question. The subject is not mentioned in Hab 2:4, but may be inferred from the prophet's question in Hab 1:12-17. The Chaldaean is meant. His soul is puffed up. עפּלה, perf. pual of עפל, of which the hiphil only occurs in Num 14:44, and that as synonymous with הזיד in Deu 1:43. From this, as well as from the noun עפל, a hill or swelling, we get the meaning, to be s…

In this chapter we have an answer expected by the prophet (Hab 2:1), and returned by the Spirit of God, to the complaints which the prophet made of the violences and victories of the Chaldeans in the close of the foregoing chapter. The answer is, I. That after God has served his own purposes by the prevailing power of the Chaldeans, has tried the faith and patience of his people, and distinguished between the hypocrites and the sincere among them, he will reckon with the Chaldeans, will humble and bring down, not only that proud monarch Nebuchadnezzar, but that proud monarchy, for their boundless and insatiable thirst after dominion and wealth, for which they themselves should at length be made a prey (Hab 2:2-8). II. That not they only, but all other sinners like them, should perish under a divine woe. 1. Those that are covetous, are greedy of wealth and honours (Hab 2:9, Hab 2:11). 2. Those that are injurious and oppressive, and raise estates by wrong and rapine (Hab 2:12-14). 3. Those that promote drunkenness that they may expose their neighbours to shame (Hab 2:15-17). 4. Those that worship idols (Hab 2:18-20).

2:4 God is aware of the self-centeredness of the proud. Their crooked lives demonstrate their unrighteousness; they refuse God’s instruction and gratify their own desires (Prov 12:15; 21:8, 29; 29:27). In contrast, the righteous enjoy proper judicial standing before God. They make God’s righteous standards their own and reproduce them in their lives. • faithfulness: Hebrew ’emunah. In Genesis, the same Hebrew root (’mn) describes Abram’s trust in God (Gen 15:6). God transforms the hearts of those who trust him so they can faithfully follow God’s holy standards. See also Rom 1:16-17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:37-39.