Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 2

I will stand – that is, I would stand now, as a servant awaiting his master.

Upon my watch – or, keep (Isaiah 21:8; משׁמר is used in the same sense in Jeremiah 51:12) – and set me (plant myself firmly) upon the tower (literally, a fenced place, but also one confined and narrowly hemmed in).

And will watch (it is a title of the prophets, as spying by God’s enabling, things beyond human understanding); I will spy out, to see a long way off, to see with the inward eye, what He will say to me (literally, Jerome: in me).

He first reveals Himself to the prophets within to the inner man, and then through them.

And what I shall answer when I am reproved, or upon my complaint—literally, upon my reproof or arguing; this might mean either that others argued against him, or that he had argued, pleaded in the name of others, and now listened to hear what God would answer in him (see Numbers 12:6 and Zechariah 1:19).

In this way, taught by God, he should answer his own plea. But he had pleaded with God so repeatedly, why is this?

He has given no hint that any complained of or reproved him.

Theodotion says: "By an image from those who, in war and siege, have the ward of the wall distributed to them, he says, I will stand upon my watch."

Cyril writes: "It was the custom of the saints, when they wished to learn the things of God and to receive the knowledge of things to come through His voice in their mind and heart, to raise it on high above distractions and anxieties and all worldly care, holding and keeping it unoccupied and peaceful, rising as to an eminence to look around and contemplate what the God of all knowledge should make clear to them. For He hates the earth-bound and degraded mind, and seeks hearts which can soar aloft, raised above earthly things and temporal desires."

The prophet takes his stand, apart from people and the thoughts and cares of this world, on his lonely watch, like Moses on the rock. He keeps himself and is kept by God, planted firm so that nothing should move him, fenced around though confined, as in a besieged camp committed to his ward.

He looks out from his lofty place to see what answer God would give concerning times long distant, and what answer He should give first to himself, and then to those for whom his office was, God’s people.

The answer is that it is indeed for a long time to come. Write the vision, so that it may remain for those who come after and not be forgotten, and make it plain upon the tables on which he was accustomed to write; and do so in large, lasting characters, so that he may run that reads it, and so that it may be plain to anyone, however occupied or in haste. So Isaiah, too, was commanded to write the four words, "haste-prey-speed-spoil."

For the vision is yet for an (the) appointed time - Not for the present, but to develop itself in the course of time, down to a season which God only knows; as it is subsequently repeated (Daniel 11:27), for it is for the appointed time, (Daniel 11:35), for the end is yet for the appointed time (Daniel 8:19); for it is for the appointed time of the end; and is explained (Daniel 10:1; Daniel 10:14), for the vision is yet for the days (Daniel 8:26); for it is for many days (Ezekiel 12:27); the house of Israel say, The vision that he sees, is for many days and he prophesies of the times far off.

Yet it should hasten toward the end, toward its fulfillment, so that, if it is not at once fulfilled, it should be surely waited for. Theodotion says: “It shall certainly be; not in vain has it been shown, but as certainly to be. For whatever has been shown to come and to be, will come and be.”

But at the end it shall speak - (or it breathes, hastens to the end), not simply "to its own fulfillment," but to that time of the end which should close the period assigned to it. During this period it should continually be putting itself forth; it should come true in part or in shadow; gleams of it should now and then part the clouds, which, until the end, should surround and envelop it.

Being God’s truth, he speaks of it as an animate living thing, not a dead letter, but running, hastening on its course, and accomplishing on its way that for which it was sent. The will and purpose of God hastens on, though to man it seems to tarry; it can neither be hurried on, nor does it linger.

Before the appointed time it does not come; yet it hastens toward it, and will not be behindhand when the time comes. It does not lie, either by failing to come, or failing, when it has come, of any jot or tittle.

Though it tarry or linger, continually appearing, giving signs of itself, yet continually delaying its coming, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not be behindhand, when the time comes. As He says (Revelation 22:7), He comes quickly; because, as Dionysius notes: “though the delay of His coming and of the fulfillment of the vision seem long, yet, in comparison with eternity, it is very short.”

In His first coming, He taught why God permits these things; in the second coming, He shall teach by experience how good it is for the good to bear the persecution of the evil. This is why Peter also has to say (2 Peter 3:9), The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness.

The words seem to belong, in the first instance, to the vision itself; but the vision had no other existence or fulfillment than in Him who was the Object of it, and who, in it, was foreshadowed to the mind. The coming of the vision was no other than His coming.

The waiting, to which he exhorts, expresses the religious act, so often spoken of (Psalms 33:20; Isaiah 8:17; Isaiah 30:18; Isaiah 64:3; Zephaniah 3:8; Daniel 12:12; Psalms 106:13), of waiting for God, or His counsel, or His promised time.

The sense then is wholly the same when Paul uses the words of the coming of our Lord Himself (Hebrews 10:37), Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come and will not tarry. Paul, as well as Habakkuk, is speaking of our Lord’s second coming; Paul, of His Coming in Person, Habakkuk, of the effects of that Coming. But both are speaking alike of the redressing of all the evil and wrong in the world’s history, and the reward of the faithful oppressed.

At His first coming He said (John 12:31), Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. He came to put down the mighty from their seat, and to exalt the humble and meek (Luke 1:52); but much more in the second coming, when He shall come to judge the world with righteousness and the people with His truth (Psalms 96:13), and to reward every man according to his works (Matthew 16:27).

At all times He seems continually to linger, to give signs of His coming, yet He does not come; when the appointed season shall come, He shall be found not to be later than His word. Yes, all time shall shrink up into a little moment in the presence of a never-ending ever-present eternity.

Cyril says: “Having named no one expressly, he says, wait for him, wait for him although delaying, and do not halt in your hope, but let it be rooted and firm, even if the interval be extended. For the God of all seems to suggest to the mind of the prophet that He who was foretold would surely come, yet to enjoin on him to wait for Him on account of the interval.

He who believes My word shall possess life, for this is the reward of those who honor God, and a good reward of His benevolence. He who admits faith and love to dwell in his heart has as a requital, unaging life and forgiveness of sins and sanctification by the Spirit.”

Albertus says: “He shall live; for, God is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22:32). Whoever lives and believes in Me, shall never die (John 11:26).”

It will not lie - God deigns to speak of Himself as we should be ashamed to speak of one whom we love, teaching us that all doubts question His truth. (Numbers 23:19) God is not a man, that He should lie: has He said and will He not do it?

The strength of Israel shall neither lie nor repent (1 Samuel 15:29). God that cannot lie promised before the world began (Titus 1:2). Therefore, it follows, wait for Him, as Jacob says (Genesis 49:18), I have waited for Your salvation, O Lord.

Behold, his soul which is lifted up - literally, swollen

Is not upright in him - The construction is probably that of a condition expressed absolutely. Look, it is swollen; his soul is not upright in him. We would say, “His soul, if it is swollen, puffed up, is not upright in him.” The source of all sin was and is pride. It is especially the sin of all oppressors, of the Chaldean, of antichrists, and will be of the Antichrist. It is the parent of all heresy, and of all corruption and rejection of the gospel.

It stands therefore as the type of all opposed to it. He says of it that it is in its very inmost core (“in him”) lacking in uprightness. It can have no good in it, because it denies God, and God denies it His grace. And having nothing upright in it, being corrupt in its very inmost being, it cannot stand or abide. God gives it no power to stand. The words stand in contrast with the following, the one speaking of the cause of death, the other of life. The soul, being swollen with pride, shuts out faith, and with it the Presence of God. It is all crooked in its very inner self or being. Paul gives the result (Hebrews 10:39), “if any man draw back, my soul hath no pleasure in him.” The prophet’s words describe the proud man who stands aloof from God, in himself; Paul, as he is in the Eyes of God.

As that which is swollen in nature cannot be straight, it is utterly contrary that the soul should be swollen with pride and yet upright. Its moral life being destroyed in its very inmost heart, it must perish.

Alb.: “Plato says that what is properly straight, which being applied to what is straight, touches and is touched everywhere. But God is upright, whom the upright soul touches and is touched everywhere; but what is not upright is bent away from God (Psalms 73:1). “God is good unto Israel, the upright in heart;” (Song of Solomon 1:4), “The upright love thee;” (Isaiah 26:7), “The way of the just is uprightness, Thou, most Upright, doth weigh the path of the just.””

But the just shall live by his faith - The accents emphasize the words, “The just, by his faith he will live.” They do not point to a union of the words, “the just by his faith.” Isaiah says that Christ should “justify” many by the knowledge of Himself,” but the expression, “just by his faith,” does not occur either in the Old or New Testament. In fact, to speak of one really righteous as being “righteous by his faith” would imply that people could be righteous in some other way. “Without faith,” Paul says at the commencement of his Old Testament pictures of giant faith (Hebrews 11:6), “it is impossible to please God.” Faith, in the creature that does not yet see God, has one and the same principle: a trustful, relying belief in its Creator.

This was the characteristic of Abraham their father: unshaken, unswerving belief in God who called him, whether in leaving his own land and going where he did not know, for an end that he was never to see; or in believing the promise of the son through whom the Seed was to be, in whom all the nations of the world would be blessed; or in the crowning act of offering that son to God, knowing that he would receive him back, even from the dead.

In all, it was one and the same principle. According to Genesis 15:6, “His belief was counted to him for righteousness,” though the immediate instance of that faith was not directly spiritual.

In this was the good and bad of Israel. (Exodus 4:31): “the people believed.” (Exodus 14:31): “they believed the Lord and His servant Moses.” (Psalms 106:12): “then believed they His word, they sang His praise.”

Conversely, this was their blame: (Deuteronomy 1:32): “In this ye did not believe the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 9:23): “ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and believed Him not, nor hearkened to His voice.” (Psalms 106:21, 24): “they forgat God their Saviour; they despised the pleasant land, they believed not His word.”

And God asks (Numbers 14:11), “How long will it be, ere this people believe Me, for all the signs which I have shown among them?” (Psalms 78:21–22): “anger came upon Israel, because they believed not in God, and in His salvation trusted not.”

(Psalms 78:32): “for all this they sinned still, and believed not His wondrous works.” Even for Moses and Aaron, God assigns this as the reason why they would not bring His people into the land which He gave them (Numbers 20:20), “Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel” (at Meribah). This was the watchword of Jehoshaphat’s victory (2 Chronicles 20:20), “Believe in the Lord your God and ye shall be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.” This continued to be one central saying of Isaiah.

It was his own commission to his people (Isaiah 6:9), “Go and say to this people; hear ye on, and understand not; see ye on and perceive not.” In sight of the rejection of faith, he spoke prominently of the loss upon unbelief (Isaiah 7:9), “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established;” and (Isaiah 53:1), “Who hath believed our report?” he presents as the attitude of his people toward Him—Jesus, the Center of all faith. Yet still, as to the blessings of faith, having spoken of Him (Isaiah 28:16), “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone,” he adds, “he that believeth in Him shall not make haste.”

So it had been the keynote of Habakkuk to his people, “Ye will not believe when it is declared unto you.” Here he is told to declare, on the contrary, the blessing on belief: “The just shall live by his faith.” The faith, then, of which Habakkuk speaks, is faith in itself, but a real, true, confiding faith. It is the one relation of the creature to the Creator: unshaken trust. The faith may vary in character, according as God reveals more or less of Himself, but itself is one, a loving trust in Him, just as He reveals Himself.

Lap. : “By this faith in God, each righteous person begins to live piously, righteously, holily, peacefully and divinely, and advances in it, since in every tribulation and misery, by this faith and hope in God he sustains, strengthens, and increases this life of the soul.

He says then, ‘the just lives by faith,’ that is, the unbelieving and unrighteous person displeases God, and consequently will not live by the true, right, peaceful, and happy life of grace, present righteousness, and future glory, because God is displeased with him, and he places his hopes and fears not in God, but in human beings and human help and in created things. But the righteous who believes in God will live a right, sweet, quiet, happy, holy, untroubled life, because, fixed by faith and hope in God who is the true Life, and in God’s promises, he is dear to God and the object of His care.

This sentence, ‘the just shall live by faith,’ is universal, belonging to both Jews and Christians, to sinners who are first being justified, as also to those who are already justified. For the spiritual life of each of these begins, is maintained, and grows through faith. So when it is said, ‘the just shall live by his faith,’ this word, ‘his,’ marks the cause, which both begins and preserves life. The just, believing and hoping in God, begins to live spiritually, to have a soul right within him, by which he pleases God; and again, advancing and making progress in this his faith and hope in God, with it he advances and makes progress in the spiritual life, in rightness and righteousness of soul, in the grace and friendship of God, so as more and more to please God.”

Most even of the Jewish interpreters have seen this to be the literal meaning of the words. It stands in contrast with, illustrates, and is illustrated by the first words, “his soul is swollen, is not upright in him.” Pride and independence of God are the center of the lack of rightness; a steadfast cleaving to God, by which “the heart” (as Abraham’s) “was stayed on God,” is the center and cause of the life of the righteous.

But since this steadfastness of faith is in everything the source of the life of the righteous, then the pride, which issues in a lack of rightness of the inmost soul, must be a state of death. Pride estranges the soul from God, makes it self-sufficing, so that it does not need God, with the result that he who is proud cannot come to God to be made righteous by Him.

So conversely, since by his faith the righteous lives, this must be equally true whether he is just made righteous from unrighteousness, or whether that righteousness is growing, maturing, being perfected in him.

This life begins in grace, lives on in glory. It is begun, in that God freely justifies the ungodly, accounting and making him righteous for and through the blood of Christ; it is continued in “faith which worketh by love;” it is perfected when faith and hope are swallowed up in love, beholding God. In the Epistles to the Romans (Romans 1:17) and the Galatians (Galatians 3:11), Paul applies these words to the first beginning of life, when those who had before been dead in sin began to live by faith in Christ Jesus who gave them life and made them righteous. And in this sense, he is called “just,” although before he comes to the faith he is unjust and unrighteous, being unjustified. For Paul uses the word not of what he was before the faith, but what he is when he lives by faith.

Before, not having faith, he had neither righteousness nor life; having faith, he at once has both; he is at once “just” and “lives by his faith.” These are inseparable. The faith by which he lives is a living faith (Galatians 5:6), “faith which worketh by love.” In the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 10:38), Paul is speaking of their endurance in the faith, once received, whose faith is not shaken by the trial of their patience. Those who look on beyond things present, and fix their minds steadfastly on the Coming of Christ, will not suffer shipwreck of their faith through any troubles of this time.

Faith is the foundation of all good, the beginning of the spiritual building, by which it rests on The Foundation, Christ. “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” and so the proud cannot please Him. Through it is union with Christ and thereby a divine life in the soul, even a life (Galatians 2:20), “through faith in the Son of God,” holy, peaceful, self-possessed (Luke 21:19), enduring to the end, being “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).

This general rule the prophet goes on to apply in words which belong in part to all oppressors and in the first instance to the Chaldean, and in part yet more fully to the end and to antichrist.

Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine (or better, “Indeed, how much more, since wine is a deceiver,” as Solomon says, Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever erreth thereby shall not be wise (Proverbs 20:1); and, In the end it biteth like a serpent and pierceth like an adder (Proverbs 23:32); and Hosea, Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart (Hosea 4:11)).

Just as wine at first gladdens, then deprives of all reason, and lays a man open to any deceit, so also does pride. And since all pride deceives, how much more so when people are either heated and excited by the abuse of God’s natural gifts, or drunk with prosperity and hurried away—as conquerors are—to all excess of cruelty or lust to fulfill their own will, and neglect the laws of God and man.

Literal drunkenness was a sin of the Babylonians under Persian rule, so that even a pagan says of Babylon, “Nothing can be more corrupt than the manners of that city, and more provided with all to rouse and entice immoderate pleasures”; and “the Babylonians give themselves wholly to wine, and the things which follow drunkenness.”

When flushed with wine, Belshazzar, with his princes, his wives, and his concubines, desecrated the sacred vessels, insulted God in honor of his idols, and in the night of his excess “was slain.” Pride blinded, deceived, and destroyed him.

It was the general drunkenness of the inhabitants at that same feast which enabled Cyrus, with a handful of men, to penetrate the city by means of its river—a city which, with its provisions for many years and its impregnable walls, had mocked his siege. He calculated beforehand on its feast and the consequent dissolution of its inhabitants; without this, in the language of the pagan historian, he would have been caught “as in a trap,” his soldiery drowned.

He is a proud man, neither keepeth at home. It is difficult to limit the force of the rare Hebrew word rendered “keep at home,” for one may cease to dwell or abide at home either by his own will or against it; and, as in the case of invaders, the one may be the result of the other.

He who would take away the home of others becomes, by God’s Providence, himself homeless. The context implies that the primary meaning is the restlessness of ambition, which does not abide at home, for his whole pleasure is to go forth to destroy. Yet there sounds, as it were, an undertone: “he would not abide in his home and he shall not.”

We could scarcely avoid the further thought, if we could use a translation that does not fix the meaning, that it implies “he will not home,” or “he will not continue at home.” The words have seemed to different minds to mean either, as indeed they may. Such fullness of meaning is the opposite of the ambiguity of pagan oracles; they are not alternative meanings, which might be justified in either case, but cumulative, one upon the other.

The ambitious give up present rest for future loss. Nebuchadnezzar lost his kingdom and his reason through pride, and received them back when he humbled himself; Belshazzar, being proud and impenitent, lost both his kingdom and life.

Who enlargeth his desire—literally, his soul. The soul becomes like what it loves. The ambitious man is, as we say, “all ambition”; the greedy man, “all appetite”; the cruel man, “all savagery”; the vainglorious, “all vainglory.” The ruling passion absorbs the whole being; it is his end, the one object of his thoughts, hopes, and fears.

So, just as we speak of “largeness of heart,” which can embrace in its affections all varieties of human interests, whatever affects man, and “largeness of mind,” uncramped by narrowing prejudices, the prophet speaks of this “ambitious man widening his soul”—or, as we might say, “appetite”—so that the whole world is not too large for him to long to grasp or to devour.

Thus the Psalmist prays not to be delivered into the murderous desire (literally, their soul) of his enemies (Psalms 27:12; compare to Psalm 41:3 (Psalms 41:2 in English);Ezekiel 26:27), and Isaiah, with a metaphor almost too bold for our language, says, Hell hath enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth beyond measure (Isaiah 5:14). It devours, as it were, first in its cravings, then in act.

As hell—which is insatiable (Proverbs 30:15). He says, “enlargeth”; for as hell and the grave are year by year fuller, yet there is no end, the desire “enlargeth” and becomes wider, the more is given to it to satisfy it.

And (he) is (himself) as death, sparing none.

Our poetry would speak of a destroyer as being “like the angel of death”; his presence, as the presence of death itself. Where he is, there is death. He is as terrible and as destroying as the death which follows him.

And cannot be satisfied—even human proverbs say (Juvenal, Satires, 14.139): “The love of money groweth as much as the money itself groweth.” “The avaricious is ever needy.”

Ecclesiastes 5:10 states: he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver. For these fleeting things cannot satisfy the undying soul. It must hunger still, for it has not found what will allay its cravings.

But gathereth—literally, “And hath gathered.” He describes it as though it were already done, because of the rapidity with which he completes what he longs for.

Unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people—One is still the subject of the prophecy, rising up at successive times, fulfilling it and passing away: Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Attila, Timur, Genghis Khan, Hunneric—scourges of God.

All were deceived by pride, all swept the earth, all in their ambition and wickedness were the unknowing agents and images of the evil One, who seeks to bring the whole world under his rule.

But shall it prosper?