Habakkuk 1:10

1:1-11 The servants of the Lord are deeply afflicted by seeing ungodliness and violence prevail; especially among those who profess the truth. No man scrupled doing wrong to his neighbour. We should long to remove to the world where holiness and love reign for ever, and no violence shall be before us. God has good reasons for his long-suffering towards bad men, and the rebukes of good men. The day will come when the cry of sin will be heard against those that do wrong, and the cry of prayer for those that suffer wrong. They were to notice what was going forward among the heathen by the Chaldeans, and to consider themselves a nation to be scourged by them. But most men presume on continued prosperity, or that calamities will not come in their days. They are a bitter and hasty nation, fierce, cruel, and bearing down all before them. They shall overcome all that oppose them. But it is a great offence, and the common offence of proud people, to take glory to themselves. The closing words give a glimpse of comfort.

Habakkuk 1:10-11 . And they shall scoff at the kings, &c. — The Hebrew use the singular number here, ( He shall scoff, &c.,) as well as in the following verse, and it is to be understood of the king of Babylon, who treated the kings he conquered with scorn and contempt: so he used Zedekiah and his princes. They shall deride every strong hold — They shall contemn, or count as nothing, the most strongly fortified places. They shall heap dust and take it — They shall cast up mounds against them, and so take them. Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over — Rather, And shall pass over, (without the personal pronoun he, ) that is, his mind shall change, and pass beyond the bounds of moderation. By this and the next clause, imputing this his power unto his god, was foretold that the king of Babylon should be made arrogant by his victories, and should impute them to the power of the false gods he worshipped. This was remarkably true of Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s successor, who, with his thousand lords, when he was drinking wine in the golden and silver vessels taken out of God’s temple, and was thereby triumphing over Jehovah and his people, praised the gods of gold and silver, &c., as the authors of their successes and victories. It was also remarkably verified in Nebuchadnezzar himself, who, as we find from Daniel 3., cast three otherwise innocent persons, and faithful to him, into a furnace of fire, because they would not fall down before the idol which he had set up.

But Grotius, and many others, interpret the latter part of the verse thus: Saying this his strength is his god; that is, imputing all his success to his own skill and prowess; a sense of the words which answers remarkably to the character of Nebuchadnezzar, as given in the book of Daniel: see chapter Daniel 3:17 , and Daniel 4:30 , and Daniel 5:20 . Probably the extraordinary insanity which befell Nebuchadnezzar, as the punishment of his pride and arrogance, might be also here intended in the first clause of this verse, which in the Hebrew is, Then shall his spirit change and pass over, &c. Here, then, is a remarkable proof of what the psalmist says, namely, that God understandeth our thoughts afar off: for here the alteration that should in after times be made in Nebuchadnezzar’s mind by his prosperity is expressly foretold, together with the punishment that should follow upon it.

(10) Kings and princes are deposed or enthroned at the invader’s pleasure. Thus Nebuchadnezzar set Jehoiakim as a tributary sovereign on the throne of Jerusalem and three years later deposed his son and successor Jehciaohin and made Zedekiah king. For they shall heap dust, and take it.—This means that they shall besiege and carry all strongholds by means of the mounds of earth commonly used in sieges. These mounds were employed either to place the besieger on a level with the besieged, and so facilitate the operations of siege engines, or to form an inclined plane, up which the besieger might march his men, and so take the place by escalade. We find they were used by the Egyptians (Ezekiel 17:17) and the Assyrians (2Kings 19:32), as well as by the Babylonians (Jeremiah 6:6, and passim). They are mentioned as employed by the Spartan king Archidamus in the celebrated siege of Platæa in B.C. 429 (Thucydides, lib. 2). In the present passage the term “dust” is used to indicate these mounds of earth, as expressing the contemptuous ease with which the invader effects his capture of strongholds.

10 . shall scoff at the kings ] he scoffeth at kings . The Chaldean is referred to. All the verbs in the verse should be in the present: are a scorn, he derideth, he heapeth up . shall heap dust ] he heapeth up . The phrase refers to the dykes or “mounts” which the besiegers cast up in order to be on a level with the walls of the besieged fortress and command them, 2 Samuel 20:15 ; Jeremiah 32:24 . The ease and rapidity of the Chaldean operations is forcibly expressed. Nothing can withstand their impetuosity. Kings with their armies who might oppose them, and fortresses which might arrest their progress, they laugh at.

They, both the king of Babylon and his soldiers, shall scoff, deride and contemn, at the kings, which either confederated with the Jews, or else opposed the designs of the Chaldeans; as the kings of Egypt, of Tyre, &c.; or the kings of the Jews, as Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. The princes, governors, counsellors, valiant commanders, and officers, shall be a scorn unto them, to the whole army of the Chaldeans. They shall heap dust, and take it; by mighty mounts cast up, or by filling up the trenches about your cities and fortresses, shall master them.

Verse 10. - And they shall scoff, etc.; it , or he, scoffeth at kings. The Chaldean nation makes light of the power and persons of kings. Compare Nebuchadnezzar's treatment of Jehoiakim ( 2 Chronicles 36:6 ; 2 Kings 24:1, 3 ; Jeremiah 22:19 ) and Jehoiachin ( 2 Kings 24:12, 15 ). They shall deride every strong hold. The strongest fortress is no impediment to them. They shall heap dust. This refers to the raising of a mound or embankment for the purpose of attacking a city (comp. 2 Samuel 20:15 ; 2 Kings 19:32 ; 2 Kings 25:1 ). In the Assyrian monuments one often sees representations of these mounds, or of inclined planes constructed to facilitate the approach of the battering ram (see Bonomi, 'Nineveh and its Palaces,' pp. 181, 188, etc.; Layard, 'Nineveh,' etc., 2:369). Habakkuk 1:10

And they - literally, "he," the word stands emphatically, he, alone against all the kings of the earth Shall scoff at the kings - and all their might taking them away or setting them up at his pleasure and caprice, subduing them as though in sport And princes - literally, grave and majestic Shall be a scorn unto them - i. e. him. Compare Job 41:29. So Nebuchadnezzar bound Jehoiakim 2 Chronicles 36:6; Daniel 1:2 "in fetters to carry him to Babylon;" then, on his submission made him for three years a tributary king 2 Kings 24:1, then on his rebellion sent bands of Chaldees and other tributaries against him 2 Kings 24:2; and then, or when Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin, Jeremiah's prophecy was fulfilled, that he should "be buried with the burial of an ass, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem Jeremiah 22:19, his dead body cast out in the day to the heat and in the night to the frost" Jeremiah 36:30. On the one hand, the expression "slept with his fathers" does not necessarily imply that Jehoiakim died a peaceful death, since it is used of Ahab 1 Kings 22:40 and Amaziah 2 Kings 14:20, 2 Kings 14:22 (in the other, Jeremiah's prophecy was equally fulfilled, if the insult to his corpse took place when Nebuchadnezzar took away Jehoiachin three months after his father's death. See Daniel. Josephus attributes both the death and disgrace to Nebuchadnezzar: Ant. x. 6. 3), then Nebuchadnezzar took away Jehoiachin; then Zedekiah.

He had also many kings captive with him in Babylon. For on his decease Evil-Merodach brought Jehoiachin out of his prison after 27 years of imprisonment, "and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon" 2 Kings 25:27-28. Daniel says also to Nebuchadnezzar Daniel 2:37-38; Daniel 4:22, "Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power and strength and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven hath He given into thine hand and hath made thee ruler over all." They (he) shall deride every strong hold - as, aforetime, when God helped her, Jerusalem laughed the Assyrian to scorn Isaiah 38:22. For they (he) shall heap dust, and take it - as Nebuchadnezzar did Tyre, whose very name (Rock) betokened its strength. Jerome: "He shall come to Tyre, and, casting a mound in the sea, shall make an island a peninsula, and, amid the waves of the sea, land shall give an entrance to the city." The mount, or heaped-up earth, by which the besiegers fought on a level with the besieged, or planted their engines at advantage, was an old and simple form of siege, especially adapted to the great masses of the Eastern armies.