Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Habakkuk · About this commentary
The Cup Comes Around
Habakkuk 2:15-17
15 “Woe to him who gives his neighbor drink, pouring your inflaming wine until they are drunk, so that you may gaze at their naked bodies! · WEB
The fourth woe is against humiliating a neighbor for the pleasure of watching — and the cup passes to the one who poured it.
Woe to him who gives his neighbor drink and makes him drunk, so that he may gaze at his nakedness. The picture is of deliberate degradation, and the motive named is spectatorship rather than gain. Something is being done to a person for the enjoyment of seeing him shamed.
The reply uses the same object. You are filled with shame and not glory; you will also drink and be exposed. The cup of Yahweh's right hand comes around to you — a rotation, as though it had been passed down a table and finally reached the host. Jeremiah is handed that cup for the nations and Babylon drinks from it too Jeremiah 25:15 Jeremiah 25:26.
Verse 17 names the victims in an unexpected order. The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the destruction of the animals will terrify you — imperial logging and the wildlife it displaced, set beside men's blood in one sentence. Then the triple charge from the first woe returns almost word for word, binding the two ends of the song together.
settled What this mark means