Habakkuk had now been brought to a realisation of the fundamental causes underlying human distress, man's own sinful, fallen condition, and of the way of escape therefrom, repentance and justification through faith. The details of the process of reconciliation could not yet be revealed; that had to wait for the advent of Jesus, but sufficient was given the prophet to show him that God had devised a way, that the oppression and injustice from which his soul revolted would not endure for ever. Now God had something else to show him, the inflexibility of Divine judgment upon evil; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. That law is as true in the case of nations as in individuals, a lesson that needs to be brought home today and indeed is being brought home to those who have regard to the significance of current events. And in order to impress this lesson with all the sharpness it required, the Holy Spirit cast it in the mould of a "taunt-song", a form of poetic composition in which the Hebrews excelled. One of the earliest "taunt-songs" is that of Miriam the sister of Moses, composed to rejoice over the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea (Exo.15). This one in Habakkuk is directed primarily against the Babylonians, exulting over their coming fall, in veiled language touching upon the great moments in their history when their arrogance and opposition to God's holiness was thrown up in sharp relief, dwelling upon the "poetic justice" of the retribution that was surely coming upon them at the hands of the Persians. But the taunt-song has a wider scope of application than that, for its principles also fit the greater world system which, built on the same basis as Babylon of old, has by reason of its greater magnitude and extent infinitely excelled the empire of Nebuchadnezzar in the weight of its oppression and the cruelty of its yoke. And that greater system also must fall with the weight of' its own corruption, perishing in the fires of retribution which follow inevitably upon the filling up the full measure of its evil course, to be succeeded by the glorious Kingdom of Christ in which the hand of the oppressor will be felt no more. The terms of' this taunt-song, framed at first to fit the Babylon of Habakkuk's day, can be suited very easily to this present world order in which we live.

"Shall not all these take up a parable against him (Babylon), and a taunting proverb against him, and say, WOE to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and that ladeth himself with pledges." (Hab.2.6 R.V.). This is the first of the five "woes" of the song, each describing one outstanding sin of Babylon. Here it is the sin of usury, consistently condemned in the Scriptures. Much of the distress of our modern world is due to the place of usury in its financial system, and the opportunity thus given the unscrupulous to exploit the needy and defenceless. In the case of Babylon the prevalence and practice of usury is known to go right back to the beginning of the city's existence, prior to the time of Abraham. In Habakkuk's day Babylon was the centre and controlling power of the world's commerce and trade. But "shall they not rise up suddenly that bite thee", cries Habakkuk, "and thou shalt be for booties unto them?" (vs.7 R.V.). The Persians were destined to destroy Babylon's usurious practices, and Babylon, that had preyed for so long on others, would in turn become the prey of others. "Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee;" (vs.8). Babylon steadily declined in commercial importance after its capture by Cyrus, its trade being transferred in later days to the new city of Seleucia on the Tigris, and it never recovered its place among the nations.

The second "woe" may very well contain a veiled allusion to Babylon's first great crime against God, the building of the great Tower from which God might be defied (Gen.11). "WOE to him that gaineth an evil (dishonest) gain to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil (calamity ‑ Moffatt)" (vs.9). The word for "nest" denotes an eagle's or other bird's nest set high up in the crags of the rocks, and also any kind of sanctuary or abiding place built on high. Speaking to Edom, God says "though thou exalt…thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down" (Obad.4) and to Bozrah "though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence" (Jer.49.16). Those godless men of early times set out to build a tower whose top should scale the heavens; they would challenge God in his own realm. Men are doing that today, and the fate of their work will be as catastrophic as was that of their predecessors. In Daniel's time, the tower, still standing, enlarged and beautified by almost every successive king since its erection, was crowned with a golden sanctuary dedicated to the Babylonian god Bel, the god to whom was devoted the treasure looted by Nebuchadnezzar from the Temple (see Dan.1.2). The literal Bel has been destroyed as was prophesied of him (Jer.51.44, Isa.46.1); and his modern counterpart is fast meeting the same fate.

"WOE to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity" (Hab.2.12). That is an apt description of the building of great Babylon, one of the mightiest cities the world has ever seen, largely in the blood and tears of the helpless captives taken from other lands, its gigantic walls, magnificent palaces and stately temples monuments of oppression and iniquity. WOE to it all, cries Habakkuk, for it will all come to naught. "Behold, is it not of the LORD of hosts that the people shall labour for (Heb.) the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity (nothing)? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (vs.13-14). In other words, man has erected this great edifice of evil on the misery and sorrow of his fellows; and when it is completed the Lord will sweep it away as by fire and the labour will have been for nothing, for it is the Divine intention to fill the earth with Divine glory, a glory which will brook neither sorrow nor sighing, neither unhappiness nor pain, but demands that the former things shall pass away (Rev.21.4). So "Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons,…without an inhabitant" (Jer.51.37). Today, the Baghdad-Basra railway crosses a wind swept waste of broken brickwork and heaps of rubble, inhabited only by jackals and scorpions, all that is left of proud Babylon. That is a flitting picture of the end of this world. The rule of unrighteousness will perish, and the evil that man has created be swept away, as God arises to "turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent" (Zeph.3.8-9). In the midst of the darkness and gloom of these five woes, with their dark recapitulation of human sin this fourteenth verse shines like a beam of light piercing the storm clouds. It is an assertion of the inflexible Divine purpose that cannot be frustrated. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea—a universal, world-wide knowledge of the glorious gospel of Christ, the ultimate fruit of the work of the Millennial Age.

"WOE unto him that giveth his neighbour drink...and makest him drunken also" (vs.15). It was literal intemperance and drunkenness that marked and contributed to the final capture of Babylon by the forces of Cyrus. The carousal at Belshazzar's feast, when the aged Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall as spelling the doom of Babylon, is well known. When the Persians laid siege to the city they effected an easy entrance because the whole city had been given over to feasting and debauchery. In a metaphorical sense Babylon had made all the nations drunken by seducing them into the worship of her own system of brute force, in much the same way that present-day materialism is seducing the people more and more away from true religious faith and belief. Both then and today the prophet's words are true: "Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD's hand, that made all the earth drunken…of her wine; therefore the nations are mad" (Jer.51.7). It was during their captivity in Babylon that the Jews, before that time mainly a pastoral people, learned the arts of trade and acquired the financial acumen for which they have since become famous—or notorious. They too have been intoxicated by the influence of Babylon. Today all the nations partake of the same "mixed wine" and in their intoxicated condition cannot see that this vast edifice of greed and gain has come at last to the point where the judgment of this woe will be executed, and that without remedy.

"For the violence done to Lebanon shall return upon thee and the slaughter of beasts shall terrify thee." (vs.17). This is the literal meaning of the verse. The cedars of Lebanon, so ruthlessly cut down by the invaders (see Isa.14.4-8) are poetically used as a symbol of God's people; there will be a dual judgment upon great Babylon, retribution for the violence done to the saints of God (Rev.16.6) and a great destruction of earthly evil powers, the "wild beasts" of the earth, which, in their fall, will involve in ruin the entire evil system which is symbolic termed "Babylon the Great" (Rev.17.5,16).

The final woe is a sentence upon idolatry. Babylon, by means of her power and ruthlessness, first intoxicated the nations and then led them into idolatry, the worship of the created thing rather than the Creator. "What profiteth the graven image...the molten image…dumb idols?" cries Habakkuk. "WOE unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it" (vs.18-19). There is a modern counterpart to all this. Men today have set up science as a god, a god of their own creating, a god to which they devote all their powers and wealth, laying it over with silver and gold, and saying to it, "Arise—it shall teach!" And the prophet scornfully regards their handiwork and says "there is no breath at all in the midst of it". Though all people in the world bow down before the image they have made and cry to it for deliverance from their distresses, there will be no answer. "They bear him upon the shoulder" says Isaiah "they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth. . . one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble" (Isa.46.7). So it was with Babylon, and so will it be at the end of this Age. Men will plan and put into execution all their schemes and devices for bringing peace and prosperity to the earth without God and without righteousness, and all their endeavours will fail, because there is no breath at all in the midst of them. There can be no peace without righteousness, no righteousness without morality, no morality without Divine law—despite all that the "moderns" say to the contrary—and no Divine law without the Holy Spirit, the "breath" which is of God to inspire and vivify. It is when all these plans have utterly failed to bring about any deliverance in the earth that God's time will come, and He will intervene in his own way to establish lasting peace amongst men.

And so Habakkuk, comforted and reassured by this revelation of Divine judgment impending over the oppressors of his people, looked up into the heavens and saw the beginnings of a new and marvellous revelation. The darkness was rapidly giving place to an effulgent golden glory. Like Elihu in the days of Job, suddenly perceiving in the heavens a light that he had never seen before (Job 37.21-22), and Isaiah, waiting to be used of God, beholding the wondrous vision of the throne (Isa.6.1), so now Habakkuk, realising at last that evil shall not always flourish but that the time of the dispensation of evil is known to, and fixed by, the Almighty, looked up into the skies and saw the temple of God open in heaven, and the Lord seated upon his throne with his attendant angels around him; and in the glory of that vision cried out in exultation "The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him" (vs.20).

And in his fervour of soul he bowed himself before that great sight and waited in silent reverence for the vision of the End Time that God, by his Spirit, was about to show him.

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Sin - justification - retribution. These three great truths had to be seen in their true relationship to each other before the necessity and nature of the Time of Trouble could be rightly understood. Now comes the great prophecy which shows God arising to perform his "strange work".

AOH