Habakkuk 2:6 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Habakkuk 2:6
Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay!
to lift · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
parable
מָשָׁ֣לma.Shal
H4912
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
taunting
וּמְלִיצָ֖הu.me.li.Tzah
H4426
an aphorism · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
proverb
חִיד֣וֹתchi.Dot
H2420
a puzzle · noun, common feminine plural absolute
say
וְיֹאמַ֗רve.yo.Mar
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal, 3rd person masculine singular
Woe
ה֚וֹיHo
H1945
oh! · interjection
increaseth
הַמַּרְבֶּ֣הha.mar.Beh
H7235
to increase (in whatever respect) · definite article + verb, hiphil active participle, masculine singular absolute
ladeth
וּמַכְבִּ֥ידu.makh.Bid
H3513
to be heavy · conjunction + verb, hiphil active participle, masculine singular absolute
clay
עַבְטִֽיט'av.Tit
H5671
something pledged · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 23:7 And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curs…
Job 20:15-29 He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.
Isaiah 14:4-19 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
Jeremiah 29:22 And of them shall be taken up a curse by all the captivity of Judah which are in Babylon, saying, The LORD make thee like Zedekiah and like…
Jeremiah 50:13 Because of the wrath of the LORD it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate: every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astoni…
Micah 2:4 In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed…
Numbers 23:18 And he took up his parable, and said, Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor:
Job 22:6-10 For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Habakkuk 2:5-14
The prophet having had orders to write the vision, and the people to wait for the accomplishment of it, the vision itself follows; and it is, as divers other prophecies we have met with, the burden of Babylon and Babylon's king, the same that was said to pass over and offend, Hab 1:11. It reads the doom, some think, of Nebuchadnezzar, who was principally active in the destruction of Jerusalem, or of that monarchy, or of the whole kingdom of the Chaldeans, or of all such proud and oppressive powers as bear hard upon any people, especially upon God's people. Observe,
I. The charge laid down against this enemy, upon which the sentence is grounded, Hab 1:5. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of t…
Shall not all these--the "nations" and "peoples" (Hab 2:5) "heaped unto him" by the Chaldean.
take up a parable--a derisive song. Habakkuk follows Isaiah (Isa 14:4) and Micah (Mic 2:4) in the phraseology.
against him--when dislodged from his former eminence.
Woe--The "derisive song" here begins, and continues to the end of the chapter. It is a symmetrical whole, and consists of five stanzas, the first three consisting of three verses each, the fourth of four verses, and the last of two. Each stanza has its own subject, and all except the last begin with "Woe"; and all have a closing verse introduced with "for," "because," or "but."
how long?--how long destined to retain his ill-gotte…
Shall not all these take up a parable against him - His ambition, derangement, and the final destruction of his mighty empire by the Persians, shall form the foundation of many sententious sayings among the people. "He who towered so high, behold how low he is fallen!" "He made himself a god; behold, he herds with the beasts of the field!" "The disturber of the peace of the world is now a handful of dust!"
John Gill on Habakkuk 2:6
The Church Fathers
Let your people not desire many things, for the reason that few things are many to them. Poverty and riches are names that imply want and satiety. He is not rich who wants anything, nor poor who does not want. Let no one spurn a widow or cheat an orphan or defraud his neighbor. Woe to him who has a fortune amassed by deceit and builds in blood a city, in other words, his soul. For it is this that is built like a city. Greed does not build it but sets it on fire and burns it. Do you wish to build your city well? "Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasures without fear." The riches of a person ought to work for the redemption of his soul, not to its destruction. Wealth is redemption if one uses it well; so too it is a snare if one does not know how to use it. For what is a person's money if not provision for the journey?
As for the inventors of impure heresies, those profaners and apostates who have opened their mouths wide against the divine glory, "those who have uttered perverted things," we could accuse them of having slipped in their madness as low as the foolish pagans. [They have slipped] perhaps even lower, for it would have been better never to have known it than to have turned away from the sacred commandment which was handed on to them. What the book of Proverbs so rightly speaks of has indeed come about: "that the dog has returned to its vomit, and no sooner has it washed than the pig returns to wallow in the slime." They have circulated among themselves blasphemous accusations against Christ and like wild, ferocious wolves ravage the flock for which Christ died. They pillage what is his very own, "bloating themselves on what is not theirs," as it is written, and "stuffing their gorge to the full." How aptly does that saying apply to them, that "they came out from us but were not part of us."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Proverb — A trite maxim; a similitude; a parable. The Hebrew word thus rendered (mashal) has a wide signification. It comes from a root meaning “to be like,” “parable.” Rendered “proverb” in Isa. 14:4; Hab.…
Thick clay — (Hab. 2:6) is correctly rendered in the Revised Version “pledges.” The Chaldean power is here represented as a rapacious usurer, accumulating the wealth that belonged to others.
Riches · Described as: Thick clay — Described as: Thick clay
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Shall not all these take up a parable against him,.... A proverbial expression, a short sentence, a laconic speech, delivered in a few words, which contains much in them concerning the vices of these emperors, and imprecating judgments upon them for them; took up and expressed by the nations brought into subjection unto them, and especially by the Christians in those nations spoiled and persecuted by them:
and a taunting proverb against him; or, "whose explanation are riddles to him" (y); the proverb, when explained, would be a riddle to him, which he could not understand, nor would give any credit to; taking it not to belong to him or them, and in which they had no concern; though afterwar…
Habakkuk 2:6
6. Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay!
6. Annon ipsi omnes super eum parabolam (vel apophthegma) tollent? et dicterium aenigmaticum (vel aenigmatum; alii [htsylm] vertunt interpretationem; sed dicemus de vocibus) ei (vel super eum,) et dicet, Vae qui mutiplicat non sua (vel ex non suis, qui sese locupletat ex alieno); quousque? et qui accumulat (vel aggravat) super se densum lutum.
Now at length the Prophet denounces punishment on the Babylonian king and the Chaldeans; for the Lord would render them a sport to…
In Hab 2:6-20 the destruction of the Chaldaean, which has been already intimated in Hab 2:4, Hab 2:5, is announced in the form of a song composed of threatening sentences, which utters woes in five strophes consisting of three verses each: (1) upon the rapacity and plundering of the Chaldaean (Hab 2:6-8); (2) upon his attempt to establish his dynasty firmly by means of force and cunning (Hab 2:9-11); (3) upon his wicked ways of building (Hab 2:12-14); (4) upon his base treatment of the subjugated nations (Hab 2:15-17); and (5) upon his idolatry (Hab 2:18-20). These five strophes are connected together, so as to form two larger divisions, by a refrain which closes the first and fourth, as wel…
Five taunt songs (2:6-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17, 18-20) portray God’s future judgment of the Babylonians (and others who, like the Babylonians, indulge in violence and injustice). God allows them to seal their own doom. Those who suffer will be able to repeat these taunts when the wicked come to judgment (see 1:14-17). Each taunt contains a pronouncement of sorrow, a judgment, and the reason for God’s judgment.
2:6-8 In the first of Habakkuk’s taunt songs, he condemns the Babylonians for despoiling the nations. • thieves . . . extortion: The imagery compares the Babylonians to creditors whose oppressive measures cause their debtors to rise up against them. Greed can easily mar an individual’s o…
Shall not all these whom he [Belshazzar] collected for himself to pay himself tribute?
take up a parable against him and a figure they shall take up in their mouth an expression of a riddle concerning him. against him like עָלָיו, upon him.
And he shall say The one who says the figure of the riddle
Woe to him who increases what is not his! This is the figure: Woe to him who increases wealth and kingdom, and it is not his, for the kings of Media shall come and take everything.
How long? will he continue to increase when he is only loading upon himself a burden of iniquity like a beam of mud? עַב is an expression of a heavy beam, as we find concerning the Tabernacle of Ezekiel (Ezek. 41: 2…
