Habakkuk 2:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I will stand upon my watch The Hebrews often express one thing by a multiplicity of words, as here several expressions are used to signify the same thing, namely, watching. As the prophets were considered as watchmen, and as the watchmen were placed on high towers, and it was their duty to look around very diligently to see what messengers or enemies, or what dangers or deliverances were approaching, and to continue steadfast in their posts; so here the prophet declares that he would as diligently watch and wait for God's answer to what he had complained of in the foregoing chapter, namely, the great success of the Chaldeans though they were guilty of greater crimes than the Jewish nation. And what I shall answer when I am reproved Or rather, As to what I have argued, meaning the expostulations which he had uttered just before. Archbishop Newcome, who renders the verbs in the first three clauses of this verse in the past time, (namely, I stood on my watch-tower, &c.,) interprets the latter part of it thus: And I looked to see what he would speak by me, and what I should reply to my arguing with him; that is, what I should reply, “to my own satisfaction, and to that of others, as to the difficulties raised Habakkuk 1:13-17, why the idolatrous and wicked Chaldeans and their king are to be prosperous and triumphant.”