CRITICAL NOTES.]
Habakkuk 2:15. Woe] the fourth. Bottle] Skin in common use. Look] with delight (Genesis 9:22). Naked] The prostrate condition of the drunken man a figure of the overthrow of a conquered nation (Nahum 3:11), and the uncovering of the shame denotes the ignominy that has fallen upon it (Nahum 3:5; Isaiah 47:3).
Habakkuk 2:16. Thou] shalt drink of the cup of sorrow (Jeremiah 25:15-17). Foreskin] As one uncircumcised. Spewing] Shameful vomiting will cover thy glory, i.e. destroy thee. Turned] Lit. shall turn itself from other nations.
Habakkuk 2:17. Violence] Outrage in spoiling cedar forests to adorn magnificent edifices (cf. Isaiah 14:8). Cover] Completeness of the destruction. Similar violence to that which they had displayed should fall upon them.
HOMILETICS
THE THREE CUPS.—Habakkuk 2:15-17
Woe the fourth is pronounced upon beastly luxury, sensuality, and base treatment of subjugated nations. The bottle of wine turns out a cup of wrath, and the disposition in which it is given is that of voluptuousness and lust of power.
I. The cup of wine. “Woe to him that giveth his neighbour drink.” The Chaldæans, with insatiable desire, allured neighbouring States, intoxicated them with lust of war, to obtain booty, and expose them to shame.
1. Drink given to a neighbour. Drinking oneself is bad enough, but to give to others is worse. To put the bottle to others is a practice too common in the palace and the public-house. By the laws of the club or the fashion of the Court, men are constrained to drink.
2. Drink given to make a neighbour intoxicated. To give drink to a weary traveller, a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, is commendable; but to offer the bottle with a design to intoxicate, to “make him drunken also,” is abominable wickedness.
3. Drink given to expose an intoxicated neighbour to shame and contempt. “That thou mayest look on their nakedness.” To look on such things with delight is most unnatural; to abuse men in such a condition is awful. Woe to them who entice others to drunkenness that they may take advantage of them, and mock their infirmities.
II. The cup of riot. The shame with which the enemy was satisfied, was equivalent to riot, or revelling in shame. Belshazzar drank with his lords and ran to excess. In drink is a breach of propriety and good temper; “envyings, and murders, revellings, and such-like.” Day by day we learn the corruption of morals engendered and the crimes committed in sensuality and drink. Every lust of the flesh finds in drunkenness and riot its appropriate fuel and fire, and its influence in seduction and ruin baffles all calculation and conception. “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.”
“Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village, or hamlet, of this merry land,
Though lean and beggared, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of state debauch, as makes temperance real.”
III. The cup of retribution. “The cup of the Lord’s right hand shall be turned unto thee.” To deal out, in barrel or bottle, inflaming and polluting drinks is not innocent and blameless conduct. Woe, heavy woe, is pronounced upon such acts. But when the motives are mercenary, and the intentions unkind, the punishment is heavy.
1. They are filled with shame instead of glory. They sought glory, thought to be rich by oppressing others, but they lost their reputation and were filled with shame. Drunkards and ambitious men proclaim their own shame. Shameful spewing is on their glory. God rejects their services, and nature abhors their customs. “Their glory is their shame.”
2. They were treated as they treated others. “Drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered.” God’s judgments are equitable. As they had drawn others to sensuality and cruelty, so they had to drink the very dregs, and become contemptible as a drunken man lying naked, or an uncircumcised heathen, polluting himself with filthy vomit. Sensuality entails shame. Those who aid in the degradation of others adopt the most effectual means to expose themselves. “The cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken and shalt make thyself naked.”
3. They were overcome with the violence which they displayed to others. “For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee.” Violence to nature, in the destruction of the forests; to beasts, in hunting them for prey, or chasing them in fright; to man, in shedding innocent blood. The city, the country, and the people all suffered. The end of this plunder was not to adorn, but overwhelm them. The destruction was complete; “cover thee” (Isaiah 14:6-8). Violence done to others will be sure to recoil upon the transgressors; “to make them a desolation, an astonishment, an hissing, and a curse; as it is this day” (Jeremiah 25:15-18).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Habakkuk 2:16. Shame. The shame of the ungodly cometh forth from himself; the shame he put others to is doubled upon himself; and the very means which he had used to fill himself with glory and greatness, cover the glory which by nature he had with the deeper disgrace, so that he should be a loathsome and revolting sight to all. Man veils foul deeds under fair words; God in his word unveils the foulness [Pusey].
The Lord’s right hand shall be turned.
1. Retribution among men: turned, Lit. turn itself from others to you. Every one’s turn will come.
2. Retribution measured among men. “The cup of the Lord’s right hand.” Measure for measure all sin brings its own retribution; but the violent will suffer “violence,” and deeds of shame will be put to everlasting contempt. Glory. The Hebrew word for glory properly signifies weightiness; as the word twice here used for shame signifies lightness; an elegant opposition, showing that whatsoever the Babylonians gloried in, and held themselves honourable for, should be lightly accounted of, and lie buried in the sheet of shame, as in a dunghill of filthy vomit [Trapp].
Habakkuk 2:15-16. That is an extraordinary kind of argument which infers, from the mention or prohibition of an extreme sin, the rightfulness of the intervening and causative steps. Here, however, all the stages and agencies are denounced and condemned—the poisoned potion, the giving of it, and the final result [Temp. Commentary].
Habakkuk 2:17. Beasts. God avenges cruelty done to brutes. Learn—
1. The providence of God over cattle.
2. The treatment they should receive at the hands of man. “Hath God care for oxen?” “We learn here that when God cometh to execute vengeance, he surveyeth the whole catalogue of offences; and as he saith in David, ‘I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thee,’ the wrong to the cities, to the men, to the beasts, to persons, to places, all comes into account, and the offenders shall smart for all” [Marbury].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Habakkuk 2:15. Drink. Seldom does any sensual indulgence come alone. One lust prepares the way for others; the first step is sure to lead onwards. The poor deluded victim cannot stop when he pleases [C. Bridges].
Habakkuk 2:16-18. Shame. There is none of you that ever entered this house of pleasure but he left the skirts of his garment in the hands of shame, and had his name rolled in the chambers of death. What fruit had ye then? This is the question [Bp. Taylor]. The man wakes from his dream, and finds that he possesses not an atom of the rich possessions he had dreamed of [Lorin].