Albert Barnes Commentary Habakkuk 2:9

"Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil!" — Habakkuk 2:9 (ASV)

Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house - (or, with accents, “that coveteth covetousness or unjust gain, an evil to his house.”) What a man covets seems like gain, but is evil to his house after him, destroying both himself and his whole family or race with him. That he may set his nest on high, as an eagle, to which he had likened the Chaldean (Habakkuk 1:8. Compare to Jeremiah 20:16).

A pagan called strongholds “the nests of tyrants.” The nest was placed “on high,” which also means “heaven,” as it is said (Obadiah 1:4), though you set your nest among the stars; and the tower of Babel was to reach unto heaven (Genesis 11:4); and the antichrist, whose symbol the King of Babylon is, says (Isaiah 14:13), I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. Babylon, lying in a large plain on the sides of the Euphrates, the image of its eagle’s nest on high must be taken not from any natural eminence, but wholly from the works of man.

Its walls and its hanging gardens were among “the seven wonders of the world.” Eyewitnesses speak of its walls, encompassing at least 100 square miles, “and as large as the landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg;” those walls, 335 or 330 feet high, and 85 feet broad; a fortified palace, nearly 7 miles in circumference; gardens, 400 Greek feet square, supporting at an artificial height arch upon arch, of “at least 75 feet,” forest trees; a temple to its god, said to have been at least 600 feet high.

If we, creatures of a day, had no one above us, Nebuchadnezzar’s boast would have been true (Daniel 4:30), Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the Kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty? He had built an eagle’s nest, which no human arm could reach, encircled by walls which laughed its invaders to scorn, which, at that time, no skill could scale or shatter or mine. Even as one sees in a picture the vast mounds which still remain, one can hardly imagine that they were, brick upon brick, wholly the work of man.

To be delivered from the hand (grasp) of evil - that it should not be able to reach him. Evil is spoken of as a living power, which would seize him, whose grasp he would defy. It was indeed a living power, since it was the will of Almighty God, whose servant and instrument Cyrus was, to chasten Babylon when its sins were full. Such was the counsel; what was the result? The evil covetousness which he practiced brought upon him the evil from which, in that nest built by the hard toil of his captives, he thought to deliver himself.