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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Habakkuk 2:15 - 2:15
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The fourth woe is an exclamation uttered concerning the cruelty of the Chaldaean in the treatment of the conquered nations. Hab 2:15. “Woe to him that giveth his neighbour to drink, mixing thy burning wrath, and also making drunk, to look at their nakedness. Hab 2:16. Thou hast satisfied thyself with shame instead of with honour; then drink thou also, and show the foreskin. The cup of Jehovah's right hand will turn to thee, and the vomiting of shame upon thy glory. Hab 2:17. For the wickedness at Lebanon will cover thee, and the dispersion of the animals which frightened them; for the blood of the men and the wickedness on the earth, upon the city and all its inhabitants.” The description in Hab 2:15 and Hab 2:16 is figurative, and the figure is taken from ordinary life, where one man gives another drink, so as to intoxicate him, for the purpose of indulging his own wantonness at his expense, or taking delight in his shame. This helps to explain the מַשְׁקֵה רֵעֵהוּ, who gives his neighbour to drink. The singular is used with indefinite generality, or in a collective, or speaking more correctly, a distributive sense. The next two circumstantial clauses are subordinate to הוֹי מַשְׁקֵה, defining more closely the mode of the drinking. סִפֵּחַ does not mean to pour in, after the Arabic sfḥ; for this, which is another form for Arab. sfk, answers to the Hebrew שָׁפַךְ, to pour out (compare שָׁפַךְ חֲמָתוֹ, to pour out, or empty out His wrath: Psa 79:6; Jer 10:25), but has merely the meaning to add or associate, with the sole exception of Job 14:19, where it is apparently used to answer to the Arabic sfḥ; consequently here, where drink is spoken of, it means to mix wrath with the wine poured out. Through the suffix חֲמָֽתְךָ the woe is addressed directly to the Chaldaean himself, - a change from the third person to the second, which would be opposed to the genius of our language. The thought is sharpened by וְאַף שַׁכֵּר, “and also (in addition) making drunk” (shakkēr, inf. abs.). To look upon their nakednesses: the plural מְעוֹרֵיהֶם is used because רֵעֵהוּ has a collective meaning. The prostrate condition of the drunken man is a figurative representation of the overthrow of a conquered nation (Nah 3:11), and the uncovering of the shame a figure denoting the ignominy that has fallen upon it (Nah 3:5; Isa 47:3). This allegory, in which the conquest and subjugation of the nations are represented as making them drink of the cup of wrath, does not refer to the open violence with which the Chaldaean enslaves the nations, but points to the artifices with which he overpowers them, “the cunning with which he entices them into his alliance, to put them to shame” (Delitzsch). But he has thereby simply prepared shame for himself, which will fall back upon him (Hab 2:16). The perfect שָׂבַעְתָּ does not apply prophetically to the certain future; but, as in the earlier strophes (Hab 2:8 and Hab 2:10) which are formed in a similar manner, to what the Chaldaean has done, to bring upon himself the punishment mentioned in what follows. The shame with which he has satisfied himself is the shamefulness of his conduct; and שָׂבַע, to satisfy himself, is equivalent to revelling in shame. מִכָּבוֹד, far away from honour, i.e., and not in honour. מִן is the negative, as in Psa 52:5, in the sense of וְלֹא, with which it alternates in Hos 6:6. For this he is now also to drink the cup of wrath, so as to fall down intoxicated, and show himself as having a foreskin, i.e., as uncircumcised ( הֵעָרֵל from עָרְלָה ). This goblet Jehovah will hand to him. Tissōbh, he will turn. עַל (upon thee, or to thee). This is said, because the cup which the Chaldaean had reached to other nations was also handed over to him by Jehovah. The nations have hitherto been obliged to drink it out of the hand of the Chaldaean. Now it is his turn, and he must drink it out of the hand of Jehovah (see Jer 25:26). וְקִיקָלוֹן, and shameful vomiting, (sc., יִהְיֶה) will be over thine honour, i.e., will cover over thine honour or glory, i.e., will destroy thee. The ἁπ. λεγ. קִיקָלוֹן is formed from the pilpal קלקל from קלל, and softened down from קִלְקָלוֹן, and signifies extreme or the greatest contempt. This form of the word, however, is chosen for the sake of the play upon קִיא קָלוֹן, vomiting of shame, vomitus ignominiae (Vulg.; cf. קִיא צֹאָה in Isa 28:8), and in order that, when the word was heard, it should call up the subordinate meaning, which suggests itself the more naturally, because excessive drinking is followed by vomiting (cf. Jer 25:26-27).
This threat is explained in Hab 2:17, in the statement that the wickedness practised by the Chaldaean on Lebanon and its beasts will cover or fall back upon itself. Lebanon with its beasts is taken by most commentators allegorically, as a figurative representation of the holy land and its inhabitants. But although it may be pleaded, in support of this view, that Lebanon, and indeed the summit of its cedar forest, is used in Jer 22:6 as a symbol of the royal family of Judaea, and in Jer 22:23 as a figure denoting Jerusalem, and that in Isa 37:24, and probably also in Zec 11:1, the mountains of Lebanon, as the northern frontier of the Israelitish land, are mentioned synecdochically for the land itself, and the hewing of its cedars and cypresses may be a figurative representation of the devastation of the land and its inhabitants; these passages do not, for all that, furnish any conclusive evidence of the correctness of this view, inasmuch as in Isa 10:33-34, Lebanon with its forest is also a figure employed to denote the grand Assyrian army and its leaders, and in Isa 60:13 is a symbol of the great men of the earth generally; whilst in the verse before us, the allusion to the Israelitish land and nation is neither indicated, nor even favoured, by the context of the words. Apart, for example, from the fact that such a thought as this, “the wickedness committed upon the holy land will cover thee, because of the wickedness committed upon the earth,” not only appears lame, but would be very difficult to sustain on biblical grounds, inasmuch as the wickedness committed upon the earth and its inhabitants would be declared to be a greater crime than that committed upon the land and people of the Lord; this view does not answer to the train of thought in the whole of the ode, since the previous strophes do not contain any special allusion to the devastation of the holy land, or the subjugation and ill-treatment of the holy people, but simply to the plundering of many nations, and the gain forced out of their sweat and blood, as being the great crime of the Chaldaean (cf. Hab 2:8, Hab 2:10, Hab 2:13), for which he would be visited with retribution and destruction. Consequently we must take the words literally, as referring to the wickedness practised by the Chaldaean upon nature and the animal world, as the glorious creation of God, represented by the cedars and cypresses of Lebanon, and the animals living in the forests upon those mountains. Not satisfied with robbing men and nations, and with oppressing and ill-treating them, the Chaldaean committed wickedness upon the cedars and cypresses also, and the wild animals of Lebanon, cutting down the wood either for military purposes or for state buildings, so that the wild animals were unsparingly exterminated. There is a parallel to this in Isa 14:8, where the cypresses and cedars of Lebanon rejoice at the fall of the Chaldaean, because they will be no more hewn down. Shōd behēmōth, devastation upon (among) the animals (with the gen. obj., as in Isa 22:4 and Psa 12:6). יְחִיתַן is a relative clause, and the subject, shōd, the devastation which terrified the animals. The form יְחִיתַן for יְחִתֵּן, from יָחֵת, hiphil of חָתַת, is anomalous, the syllable with dagesh being resolved into an extended one, like הֲתִימְךָ for הֲתִמְּךָ in Isa 33:1; and the tsere of the final syllable is exchanged for pathach because of the pause, as, for example, in הִתְעַלַּם in Psa 55:2 (see Olshausen, Gramm. p. 576). There is no necessity to alter it into יְחִיתֶךָ (Ewald and Olshausen after the lxx, Syr., and Vulg.), and it only weakens the idea of the talio. The second hemistich is repeated as a refrain from Hab 2:8.