Habakkuk 2
2
1What’s God going to say to my questions? I’m braced for the worst.
I’ll climb to the lookout tower and scan the horizon.
I’ll wait to see what God says,
how he’ll answer my complaint.
Full of Self, but Soul-Empty
2-3And then God answered: “Write this.
Write what you see.
Write it out in big block letters
so that it can be read on the run.
This vision-message is a witness
pointing to what’s coming.
It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!
And it doesn’t lie.
If it seems slow in coming, wait.
It’s on its way. It will come right on time.
* * *
4“Look at that man, bloated by self-importance—
full of himself but soul-empty.
But the person in right standing before God
through loyal and steady believing
is fully alive, really alive.
5-6a “Note well: Money deceives.
The arrogant rich don’t last.
They are more hungry for wealth
than the grave is for cadavers.
Like death, they always want more,
but the ‘more’ they get is dead bodies.
They are cemeteries filled with dead nations,
graveyards filled with corpses.
Don’t give people like this a second thought.
Soon the whole world will be taunting them:
6b-8 “‘Who do you think you are—
getting rich by stealing and extortion?
How long do you think
you can get away with this?’
Indeed, how long before your victims wake up,
stand up and make you the victim?
You’ve plundered nation after nation.
Now you’ll get a taste of your own medicine.
All the survivors are out to plunder you,
a payback for all your murders and massacres.
9-11“Who do you think you are—
recklessly grabbing and looting,
Living it up, acting like king of the mountain,
acting above it all, above trials and troubles?
You’ve engineered the ruin of your own house.
In ruining others you’ve ruined yourself.
You’ve undermined your foundations,
rotted out your own soul.
The bricks of your house will speak up and accuse you.
The woodwork will step forward with evidence.
12-14“Who do you think you are—
building a town by murder, a city with crime?
Don’t you know that God-of-the-Angel-Armies
makes sure nothing comes of that but ashes,
Makes sure the harder you work
at that kind of thing, the less you are?
Meanwhile the earth fills up
with awareness of God’s glory
as the waters cover the sea.
15-17“Who do you think you are—
inviting your neighbors to your drunken parties,
Giving them too much to drink,
roping them into your sexual orgies?
You thought you were having the time of your life.
Wrong! It’s a time of disgrace.
All the time you were drinking,
you were drinking from the cup of God’s wrath.
You’ll wake up holding your throbbing head, hung over—
hung over from Lebanon violence,
Hung over from animal massacres,
hung over from murder and mayhem,
From multiple violations
of place and people.
18-19“What’s the use of a carved god
so skillfully carved by its sculptor?
What good is a fancy cast god
when all it tells is lies?
What sense does it make to be a pious god-maker
who makes gods that can’t even talk?
Who do you think you are—
saying to a stick of wood, ‘Wake up,’
Or to a dumb stone, ‘Get up’?
Can they teach you anything about anything?
There’s nothing to them but surface.
There’s nothing on the inside.
20“But oh! God is in his holy Temple!
Quiet everyone—a holy silence. Listen!”
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Habakkuk 2: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Habakkuk 2
2
Habakkuk 2
1¶ I will stand upon my watch and affirm my foot upon the fortress and will watch to see what he will say in me and what I shall answer to my question.
2And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision and make it plain upon tables that he may run that reads it.
3For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it because it will surely come; wait for it.
4Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him will become filled with pride, but the just in his faith shall live.
5¶ Even more than he who is given over to wine, the transposer, the proud man, shall not remain, who enlarges his desire as Sheol and is as death and cannot be satisfied, but gathered unto him all the Gentiles and heaps unto him all the peoples;
6Shall not all these take up a parable against him and a taunting enigma against him and say, Woe to him that multiplied that which was not his! And for how long would he pile thick clay upon himself?
7Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee and awake those that shall take thy place, and thou shalt be for a prey unto them?
8Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the other peoples shall spoil thee because of human blood and for the robberies of the land, of the cities, and of all that dwell therein.
9Woe to him that covets ill-gotten gain by violence for his house that he may set his nest on high, that he may escape from the power of evil!
10Thou hast taken shameful counsel for thy house by cutting off many peoples and hast committed a sin against thy life.
11For the stone shall cry out from the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.
12Woe to him that builds the city with blood and founds the village with iniquity!
13 Is this not of the Lord of the hosts? Therefore the peoples shall labour for the fire, and the Gentiles shall weary themselves in vain.
14For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
15¶ Woe unto him that gives his neighbours drink, that puts thy bottle to them, and makes them drunken also, that thou may look on their nakedness!
16Thou hast filled thyself with dishonour instead of honour; drink thou also, and thy foreskin shall be uncovered; the cup of the Lord’s right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful vomit shall fall upon thy glory.
17For the violence of Lebanon shall fall upon thee and the destruction of the wild beasts shall break thee, because of the human blood, and of the robbery of the land, of the cities, and of all that dwell therein.
18Of what profit is the graven image that its maker has sculpted; the molten image, that teaches lies, so that in making dumb images the maker trusts in his work?
19Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise! Can it ever teach? Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all within it.
20But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.
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The Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB) by Ransom Press International