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.
Ḥaḇaqquq (Habakkuk) 2
2
1I stand at my watch, and station myself on the watch-tower, and wait to see what He says to me, and what to answer when I am reproved.
2And יהוה answered me and said, “Write the vision and inscribe it on tablets, so that he who reads it runs.
3“For the vision is yet for an appointed time, and it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it lingers, wait for it, for it shall certainly come, it shall not delay.
4“See, he whose being is not upright in him is puffed up. But the righteous one lives by his steadfastness.
5“And also, because wine betrays him, a man is proud, and he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his appetite as She’ol, and he is like death, and is not satisfied, and gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples.
6“Shall not all these lift up a proverb against him, and a mocking riddle against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases what is not his! Till when is he to load on himself many pledges’?
7“Do not your creditors rise up suddenly? And those who make you tremble wake up and you be plunder for them?
8“Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the people shall plunder you, because of men’s blood, and doing violence to the land, to the city, and to all who dwell in it.
9“Woe to him who is getting evil gain for his house, in order to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of evil!
10“You have counselled shame for your house, to cut off many peoples, and your being is sinning.
11“For a stone from the wall cries out, and a beam from the timbers answers it.
12“Woe to him who builds a town by blood, and establishes a city by unrighteousness!
13“See, it is not from יהוה of hosts that peoples labour only for fire, and nations weary themselves for naught,
14for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the esteem of יהוה, as the waters cover the sea!#See Isa. 11:9
15“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbour, pouring out your wineskin, and also making him drunk – in order to look on their nakedness!
16“You shall be filled with shame instead of esteem. Drink, you too, and be exposed as uncircumcised! The cup of the right hand of יהוה shall come around to you, and great shame upon your esteem.
17“For the violence done to Leḇanon is to overwhelm you – and the ravaging of beasts by which you made them afraid – because of men’s blood and the violence to the land, to the city and of all who dwell in it.
18“Of what use shall a carved image be? For its maker has carved it: a moulded image and teacher of falsehood! For the maker trusts what he has made: to make dumb idols!
19“Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ to silent stone, ‘Arise!’ Is it a teacher? See, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no spirit at all inside it.
20“But יהוה is in His set-apart Hĕḵal. Let all the earth be silent before Him.”
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Copyright© 1993 – 2015 by the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR). All rights reserved.