Habakkuk 2:4 Part 4–Out With the Old And In With The New
In the previous posts in this series we have seen the prophet’s complaint about the injustice (violence) that Yahweh has allowed to take place within his home country of Judah. His fellow Judeans are abusing and misusing their kinsmen. To make matters worse, the Law covenant of Yahweh with Israel through Moses in not only powerless to stop it, the Law covenant is actually a tool to advance the injustice (Habakkuk 1:1-4
)! Then we looked at Yahweh’s response to Habakkuk’s complaint. His solution is to let loose the Babylonians upon the nations of the earth, and Judah is one of those nations (Habakkuk 1:5-11). Habakkuk stands in disbelief of the fact that Yahweh would let this happen to the Judeans. They are the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Habakkuk and the Jews are more righteous than the Babylonians so how could they be God’s instrument of judgment upon the wicked Judeans (Habakkuk 1:12-2:1)? And we come to Yahweh’s answer in Habakkuk 2:2-20, reading from the ESV,
2 And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. 3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. 4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. 5 “Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.” 6 Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—for how long?—and loads himself with pledges!” 7 Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them. 8 Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them. 9 “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm! 10 You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life. 11 For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond. 12 “Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity! 13 Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing? 14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. 15 “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness! 16 You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory! 17 The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them. 18 “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols! 19 Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. 20 But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”
Yahweh’s answer to Habakkuk’s cry of God being unfair is simply: “Shut up. Habakkuk, shut up.” Read Habakkuk 2:20 again, “the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” The last phrase is imperative. It is a command to be silent. Yahweh tells Habakkuk’s racism to go away and the prophet to shut up if he is going to complain.
Now on what basis does Yahweh conclude that Habakkuk needs to shut it? What has our Lord said that we must be silent before him? I believe he has told Habakkuk of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the New Covenant in his blood. In this post, I want to argue for this conclusion. This will help us to really zero in on Habakkuk 2:4 in its literary context as well as help us move from the OT into the NT and see how Paul and the author of Hebrews utilize this text. This post will look at the larger literary unit and my next post will look at Habakkuk 2:4 specifically.
What is it about this oracle or message from Yahweh that leads me to believe that it refers to the good news about Jesus Christ? There are several reasons for it and I want to delve into them.
The first reason will help establish what my next post will be about. That is, this text is Yahweh speaking and not the prophet! This is important in that it helps identify what the words wesadiq means. Yahweh’s definition of this term is not what the prophet means by it. The prophet bases wesadiq upon his Jewishness and the Babylonians are not sadiq because they are Babylonian. This is not what Yahweh has already said in Deuteronomy 7:7-8 where Israel was not elected because they were Israel. Israel was elected because of God’s oath to the patriarchs and his unconditional love that had already been set upon them. In Deuteronomy 9 Yahweh tells Israel that they are getting the land of Canaan because they are righteous, indeed they are not righteous but stubborn (Deuteronomy 9:4); it is because the Canaanites are wicked and Yahweh promised to drive out the Canaanites to the forefathers. Read Deuteronomy 9:4-8 to see what Yahweh thinks of Israel’s “righteousness.” In Deuteronomy 10:17 where Yahweh is god over all gods and lord over all lords and thus doesn’t take bribes or show partiality. I reference Deuteronomy because during the time Habakkuk is a prophet, the book of Deuteronomy was rediscovered in the Temple and King Josiah launched a reformation using this book of Torah. He enacted policies to overturn and combat the paganism in Israel. Jeremiah preached a message pleading with the people to abandon their pseudogods and return to the one true God, Yahweh. This was the theology of Habakkuk’s day. It was the message being preached to the people. Moses has returned to bring the people back. Yet Habakkuk has missed a sermon or two as he doesn’t get his own unrighteousness and the Babylonians unrighteousness. It isn’t based upon race it is something else. For God to reaffirm Habakkuk’s view of sadiq then he is contradicting himself in what he says to Habakkuk and to Jeremiah!
The second reason has to do with what was the “vision” (Habakkuk 2:2) Habakkuk saw. Most commentators will say that it refers to Yahweh’s judgment of the Babylonians. When one reads Habakkuk 2:6-20, they will find a spitting image of a typical Babylonians in Habakkuk’s day. God pronounces six woes upon this Babylonian. But if this is true, then we end up right back where we were in the previous paragraph. All of a sudden sadiq is something based upon race and God does not judge upon that basis (cf Psalm 96:10).
But notice what Yahweh does say about the vision in Habakkuk 2:2, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.” The vision, whatever it is, must be written down on tablets of stone. This recalls the other time something was required by Yahweh to write down on stone: the giving of the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments (cf. Exodus 24:12; Exodus 32; Exodus 34). The language here in Habakkuk 2:2 is that of the giving of the covenant. Yet now some millennia later, God is having the prophet engrave something new that is superceding the old. The Law is failing so Yahweh is having the prophet write something new down in stone, legibly so that one can read it.
Now this vision anticipates something later to come that is replacing that which is. A good case can be made that this vision can be the destruction of Babylon by God in judgment of her sin. But I think that is not what is anticipated here. I think it is something, according to Habakkuk 2:3, that is yet to come describes the end (click here for a list of translations that confirm this reading against the ESV, NASB, and NET). It isn’t a sad end. It doesn’t have to be a terrible end. It could be a joyful end. It could be a happy end. It could be an end in which our primary problem is gone. The tone of this verse can be just as easily taken to be happy and it is woeful. Yes it could speak of the day when Judah returns from her exile in Babylon at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. But the langugae isn’t lending itself that way. The anticipation is not the restoration of the old but anticipating the new! The end is in light of something new.
It is primarily these three reasons that I find this passage to refer to the New Covenant. Now the question becomes who is the man that Yahweh is pronouncing woes upon? The man is most definitely a Babylonian. But in light of the vision of Habakkuk 2:2 being of the New Covenant, this “Babylonian” becomes typological of all men. We all have our idols that we fashion with our own hands (Habakkuk 2:18-19). We shame others in order to show forth our own glory (Habakkuk 2:15-17). We build our lives around iniquity and upon iniquity, taking advantage of whoever we can to advance ourselves (Habakkuk 2:9-14). We are all seeking what we can take for ourselves without having to pay for it. We are always trying to one up the other person, being more shrewd than the next guy up to take his position of power (Habakkuk 2:6-8). We are just like this Babylonian. Therefore, we all must be silent before the LORD who sits in his holy temple (Habakkuk 2:20). We have no room to complain. We are not more righteous than the other person is (Habakkuk 1:13).
The Law will not help us. It is weak and powerless. If it does anything, it worsens the problem. It causes the violence to become worse! And in the end, God will destroy us with it. We need something new. We need something that won’t kill us but save us! And God reveals to the prophet here exactly what will come, “the righteous shall live by faith.” A new covenant will emerge that will save us not because of law-keeping but because Yahweh will act in a mighty way to save us so that his glory may cover the earth like water the seas (Habakkuk 2:14).
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