Habakkuk 2:10 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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 that counsel, which certainly brings shame to himself and his house, according to the law of God, whereby, according to Exodus 20:5, He “visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him,” i. e., until by righteousness and restitution the curse is cut off. Proverbs 15:27 : “he that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house.” So Jeremiah says Jeremiah 7:19 : “Thus saith the Lord, Is it Me they are vexing? Is it not themselves, for the confusion of their faces?” i. e., with that end and object. Holy Scripture overlooks the means, and places us at the end of all. Whatever the wicked had in view, to satisfy ambition, avarice, passion, love of pleasure, or the rest of man’s immediate ends, all he was doing was leading on to a further end - shame and death. He was bringing about, not only these short-lived, but the lasting ends beyond, and these far more than the others, since that is the real end of a thing which abides, in which it at last ends. He consulted to cut off many people and was thereby (though he did not know it) by one and the same act, “guilty of and forfeiting his OWN soul” Proverbs 8:36. The contemporaneousness of the act is expressed by the participle; the pronoun is omitted as in Habakkuk 1:5).