Habakkuk 2:14

2:5-14 The prophet reads the doom of all proud and oppressive powers that bear hard upon God's people. The lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, are the entangling snares of men; and we find him that led Israel captive, himself led captive by each of these. No more of what we have is to be reckoned ours, than what we come honestly by. Riches are but clay, thick clay; what are gold and silver but white and yellow earth? Those who travel through thick clay, are hindered and dirtied in their journey; so are those who go through the world in the midst of abundance of wealth. And what fools are those that burden themselves with continual care about it; with a great deal of guilt in getting, saving, and spending it, and with a heavy account which they must give another day! They overload themselves with this thick clay, and so sink themselves down into destruction and perdition. See what will be the end hereof; what is gotten by violence from others, others shall take away by violence. Covetousness brings disquiet and uneasiness into a family; he that is greedy of gain troubles his own house; what is worse, it brings the curse of God upon all the affairs of it. There is a lawful gain, which, by the blessing of God, may be a comfort to a house; but what is got by fraud and injustice, will bring poverty and ruin upon a family. Yet that is not the worst; Thou hast sinned against thine own soul, hast endangered it.

Those who wrong their neighbours, do much greater wrong to their own souls. If the sinner thinks he has managed his frauds and violence with art and contrivance, the riches and possessions he heaped together will witness against him. There are not greater drudges in the world than those who are slaves to mere wordly pursuits. And what comes of it? They find themselves disappointed of it, and disappointed in it; they will own it is worse than vanity, it is vexation of spirit. By staining and sinking earthly glory, God manifests and magnifies his own glory, and fills the earth with the knowledge of it, as plentifully as waters cover the sea, which are deep, and spread far and wide.

(14) With the knowledge. —Better, as concerns the knowledge. See the same promise in Isaiah 11:9 . It is here introduced in contrast to the short-lived glory of Babylon. The enslaved nations raised the Babylonian palaces only for the fire to destroy them. But Jehovah’s glory shall be made known all the world over, and shall not be effaced.

14. Adapted from Isa 11:9. Here the sense is, "The Jews shall be restored and the temple rebuilt, so that God's glory in saving His people, and punishing their Chaldean foe, shall be manifested throughout the world," of which the Babylonian empire formed the greatest part; a type of the ultimate full manifestation of His glory in the final salvation of Israel and His Church, and the destruction of all their foes. waters cover the sea—namely, the bottom of the sea; the sea-bed.

14 . As the waters cover ] Or, like the waters which cover the (bed of the) sea . The knowledge shall be not only universal but deep. Isaiah 11:9 . The verse explains the preceding. The Lord of Hosts, God Omnipotent, whose purposes overrule all, shall bring in His kingdom, and in the judgments that precede its coming the great fabrics reared by heathenism for its idolatries and its oppressions shall become fuel for the fire ( Isaiah 9:5 ). This is the line of thought most natural. Another might be that when the reign of peace in Jehovah’s kingdom shall come in men themselves shall burn to the ground their strongholds of war and their edifices of pride, just as they shall beat their swords to ploughshares ( Isaiah 2:4 ).

The earth; the land of Chaldea, of the Medes and Persians, and their confederates, the lands oppressed by the Chaldeans, but Judea more particularly. Shall be filled; every eye shall see, or ear hear, or tongue speak what they know. With the knowledge, sight and sense, of the glory, just and glorious proceedings of God against Babylon; for when God shall appear to execute his just judgments upon his own and his church’s enemies, he will appear glorious indeed. The Lord; the God of Israel, their Holy One, as Habakkuk 1:12 . As the waters cover the sea: it is a proverbial speech, expressing the general notice and deep sense all should have of God’s justice, truth, power, and zeal against mighty oppressors, such as Babylon was full of.

Verse 14. - The prophet now gives the reason of the vanity of these human undertakings. For the earth shall be filled, etc. The words are from Isaiah 11:9 , with some little alterations (comp. Numbers 14:21 ). This is cue of the passages which attests "the community of testimony," as it is called, among the prophets. To take a few out of many cases that offer, Isaiah 2:2-4 compared with Micah 4:1-4 ; Isaiah 13:19-22 with Jeremiah 50:39 , etc.; Isaiah 52:7 with Nahum 1:15 ; Jeremiah 49:7-22 with Obadiah 1:1-4 ; Amos 9:13 with Joel 3:18 (Ladd, 'Doctrine of Scripture,' 1:145). All the earth is to be filled with, and to recognize, the glory of God as manifested in the overthrow of ungodliness; and therefore Babylon, and the world power of which she is a type, must be subdued and perish. This announcement looks forward to the establishment of Messiah's kingdom, which "shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and shall stand forever" ( Daniel 2:44 ). We must remember how intimately in the minds of Eastern heathens the prosperity of a nation was connected with its local deities. Nothing in their eyes could show more perfectly the impotence of a god than his failing to protect his worshippers from destruction (comp. 2 Kings 18:33 , etc.). The glory of Jehovah and his sovereignty over the earth would be seen and acknowledged in the overthrow of Babylon, the powerful, victorious nation. As the waters cover the sea.

For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord - Habakkuk modifies in a degree the words of Isaiah which he embodies, marking that the destruction of Babylon was a stage only toward the coming of those good things which God taught His people to long for, not their very coming. All the world should be then full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, not, as yet, wholly of Himself Jerome: "When Babylon shall be overthrown, then shall the power of the might of the Lord be known unto all. So shall the whole earth be filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the bottom of the sea. This as to the letter. But it is plain, that the Devil also and antichrist, and the perverse teaching of heretics, built a city in blood; i. e, their own Church, with the destruction of those whom they deceive ...

But when they fail in the fire (either this fire which is felt, or consumed in the fire of the devil their prince, or burned up with the fire whereof the Lord says, 'I came to send a fire upon the earth,' and so brought back from their former course, and doing penitence), the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, when, at the preaching of the apostles, their 'sound shall go out into all the world,' as waters covering the sea, i. e., all the saltness and bitterness of the world which Satan had rained down and the earth had drunk, the waters of the Lord shall cover, and cause the place of their ancient bitterness not to appear." Rup.: "'For the Spirit of the Lord filled the earth,' and when He filled it, 'the earth was filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,' so that unlearned and ignorant men became wise and eloquent, and earthly became heavenly, yea, they who were earth became heaven, knowing the glory of the Lord, declaring the glory of God, not any how, but as waters cover the sea.