Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Habakkuk 2:12
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity!
12 14. Third woe: his oppression of the peoples to gratify his architectural pride
12. buildeth a town with blood ] The meaning appears to be that the means of building the city are acquired through bloodshed, conquest and slaughter of the nations, and deportation of them to be employed in forced labour. Comp. Mic 3:10, “They build up Zion with blood,” i.e. by the goods of those slain by judicial murder (1 Kings 21).
by iniquity ] Cf. Jer 22:13, where the iniquity consists in the forced labour; here it may be more general. The terms “town” and “city” refer to any city or to many. Isa 14:21.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity! – Nebuchadnezzar encircled the inner city with three walls and the outer city also with three, all of burnt brick. And having fortified the city with wondrous works, and adorned the gates like temples, he built another palace near the palace of his fathers, surpassing it in height and its great magnificence. He seemed to strengthen the city, and to establish it by outward defenses. But it was built through cruelty to conquered nations, and especially Gods people, and by oppression, against His holy Will. So there was an inward rottenness and decay in what seemed strong and majestic, and which imposed on the outward eye; it would not stand, but fell. Babylon, which had stood since the flood, being enlarged contrary to the eternal laws of God, fell in the reign of his son. Such is all empire and greatness, raised on the neglect of Gods laws, by unlawful conquests, and by the toil and sweat and hard service of the poor. Its aggrandizement and seeming strength is its fall. Daniels exhortation to Nebuchadnezzar Dan 4:27, Redeem thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy on the poor, implies that oppressiveness had been one of his chief sins.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Hab 2:12
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood.
A curse denounced against bloodshed
I. The ground or cause of this curse. The crying, crimson sin of bloodshed. In all generations it has been the care of providence, both by civil and religions means, to extinguish all principles of savageness in the minds of men, and to make friendship and tenderness over mens lives a great part of religion. By nothing has this been so highly endeavoured as by the rules and constitution of Christianity.
II. The condition of the person against whom this woe or curse is denounced. He was such an one as had actually established a government and built a city with blood. As soon as Cain had murdered his brother he presently betook himself to the building of a city. Bloodiness has usually a connection with building, which represents the setting up of government. Nebuchadnezzar seems to be the person here spoken of.
III. The latitude and extent of this woe or curse, and what is comprehended in it. It includes the miseries of both worlds, present and future.
1. It fastens a general hatred and detestation upon such men as persons. Cruelty alarms and calls up all the passions of human nature, and puts them into a posture of hostility and defiance. The tyrant is universally hated and scorned.
2. The torment of continual jealousy and suspicion.
3. The shortness and certain dissolution of the government that endeavours to establish itself with blood.
4. The sad and dismal end that usually attends such persons.
IV. The reasons why a curse or woe is so peculiarly denounced against this sin.
1. It makes the most direct breach upon human society.
2. Because of the malignity of those sins that go in conjunction with it.
V. Apply to the present occasion. All unjust bloodshed is twofold. Either public, and acted by or upon a community, as in a war. Or personal, in the assassination of any particular man. (R. South, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 12. Wo to him that buildeth a town with blood] At the expense of much slaughter. This is the answer of the beam to the stone. And these things will refer to the vast fortunes gained, and the buildings erected, by means of the slave-trade; where, to a considerate and humane mind, the walls appear as if composed of the bones of negroes, and cemented by their blood! But the towns or houses established by this iniquity soon come to ruin; and the fortunes made have, in most cases, become as chaff and dust before the whirlwind of God’s indignation. But where are the dealers in the souls and bodies of men? Ask him who has them in his keeping. He can tell.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Whosoever he be that lays foundations in blood, is here threatened, and none so great as to keep Off the woe, deserved and menaced.
A town, Heb. city.
With blood; in the guilt and with the cruelty of murdering the innocents it is the worst cement which is tempered with blood of murdered men, women, and children.
And stablisheth; goeth about or thinketh to establish the foundations of a city.
A city; Babylon in particular.
By iniquity; by force and fraud, by riches extorted from the just possessor.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. buildeth a town withbloodnamely, Babylon rebuilt and enlarged by blood-boughtspoils (compare Da 4:30).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity!] This is what the stone and beam should say, if others were silent. The town and city are the church of Rome, mystical Babylon, the great city, called spiritually Egypt and Sodom; the builder of this is the pope of Rome, the bishops of it in succession, who built it with blood: the pope of Rome received his title as head of the church from Phocas, that murdered the emperor Mauritius; the foundation of the church of Rome is the blood of the saints, shed in persecutions and wars; hence she is said to be drunk with the blood of them, and to have the blood of prophets and saints found in her, Re 17:5 and it is established by unjust exactions of tribute from all countries subject to it, and by indulgences, processions, and various methods taken to extort money from the people, to support its pageantry, pomp, and grandeur; but there is a “woe” denounced against such that are concerned herein, and which will take place in due time, nor can it be awarded, as follows:
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The third woe refers to the building of cities with the blood and property of strangers. Hab 2:12. “Woe to him who buildeth cities with blood, and foundeth castles with injustice. Hab 2:14. For the earth will be filled with knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.” The earnest endeavour of the Chaldaean to found his dynasty in permanency through evil gain, manifested itself also in the building of cities with the blood and sweat of the subjugated nations. and are synonymous, and are used in the singular with indefinite generality, like in Hab 2:8. The preposition , attached to and , denotes the means employed to attain the end, as in Mic 3:10 and Jer 22:13. This was murder, bloodshed, transportation, and tyranny of every kind. Konen is not a participle with the Mem dropped, but a perfect; the address, which was opened with a participle, being continued in the finite tense (cf. Ewald, 350, a). With Hab 2:13 the address takes a different turn from that which it has in the preceding woes. Whereas there the woe is always more fully expanded in the central verse by an exposition of the wrong, we have here a statement that it is of Jehovah, i.e., is ordered or inflicted by Him, that the nations weary themselves for the fire. The before introduces the declaration of what it is that comes from Jehovah. (is it not? behold!) are connected together, as in 2Ch 25:26, to point to what follows as something great that was floating before the mind of the prophet. , literally, for the need of the fire (compare Nah 2:13 and Isa 40:16). They labour for the fire, i.e., that the fire may devour the cities that have been built with severe exertion, which exhausts the strength of the nations. So far they weary themselves for vanity, since the buildings are one day to fall into ruins, or be destroyed. Jeremiah (Jer 51:58) has very suitably applied these words to the destruction of Babylon. This wearying of themselves for vanity is determined by Jehovah, for (Hab 2:14) the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah. That this may be the case, the kingdom of the world, which is hostile to the Lord and His glory, must be destroyed. This promise therefore involves a threat directed against the Chaldaean. His usurped glory shall be destroyed, that the glory of Jehovah of Sabaoth, i.e., of the God of the universe, may fill the whole earth. The thought in Hab 2:14 is formed after Isa 11:9, with trifling alterations, partly substantial, partly only formal. The choice of the niphal instead of the of Isaiah refers to the actual fact, and is induced in both passages by the different turn given to the thought. In Isaiah, for example, this thought closes the description of the glory and blessedness of the Messianic kingdom in its perfected state. The earth is then full of the knowledge of the Lord, and the peace throughout all nature which has already been promised is one fruit of that knowledge. In Habakkuk, on the other hand, this knowledge is only secured through the overthrow of the kingdom of the world, and consequently only thereby will the earth be filled with it, and that not with the knowledge of Jehovah (as in Isaiah), but with the knowledge of His glory ( ), which is manifested in the judgment and overthrow of all ungodly powers (Isa 2:12-21; Isa 6:3, compared with the primary passage, Num 14:21). is “the of Jehovah, which includes His right of majesty over the whole earth” (Delitzsch). is altered in form, but not in sense, from the of Isaiah; and is to be taken relatively, since is only used as a preposition before a noun or participle, and not like a conjunction before a whole sentence (comp. Ewald, 360, a, with 337, c). is an infinitive, not a noun, with the preposition ; for , is construed with the accus. rei, lit., the earth will be filled with the acknowledging. The water of the sea is a figure denoting overflowing abundance.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
The stone, then, from the wall shall cry, and the wood shall answer —what will it answer?— Woe to him who builds a city by blood, and who adorns his city by iniquity. By blood and by iniquity he understands the same thing; for though the avaricious do not kill innocent men, they yet suck their blood, and what else is this but to kill them by degrees, by a slow tormenting process? For it is easier at once to undergo death than to pine away in want, as it happens to helpless men when spoiled and deprived of all their property. Wherever there is wanton plundering, there is murder committed in the sight of God; for as it has been said, he who spares not the helpless, but drinks up their blood, doubtless sins no less than if he were to kill them.
But if this personification seems to any one strange, he must consider how incredible seemed to be what the Prophet here teaches, and how difficult it was to produce a conviction on the subject. We indeed confess that God is the judge of the world; nay, there is no one who does not anticipate his judgement by condemning avarice and cruelty; the very name of avarice is infamous and hated by all: the same may be said of cruelty. But yet when we see the avaricious in splendor and in esteem, we are astounded, and no one is able to foresee by faith what the Prophet here declares. Since, then our dullness is so great, or rather our sottishness, it is no wonder that the Prophet should here set before us the stones and the wood, as though he said, “When all prophecies and all warnings become frigid, and God himself obtains no credit, while openly declaring what he will do, and when his servants consume their labor in vain by warning and crying, let now the stones come forth, and be teachers to you who will not give ear to the voice of God himself, and let the wood also cry out in its turn.” This, then, is the reason why the Prophet introduces here mute things as the speakers, even to awaken our insensibility.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
MINNEAPOLIS PARK BOARD AGENTS OF THE BREWERS
Hab 2:12-16
I AM in my 37th year as pastor of this church, and minister of the Gospel in this city. In that time I have passed through the somewhat infamous regimes of such mayors as Doc Ames and Haynes, but I say, without hesitation, that in spite of the fact that we have in the office of Mayor, at this present time, one of the best, if not the best man that has held that office in this entire time, the city itself has never been so outraged by certain public officials as it is being outraged today. I refer, of course, to the action of the City Council in opening the flood gates to brewers and beer, and still more directly to the infamous conduct of the Park Board in despoiling every park in this fair city, that contains Golf Links, with this same brew of hell.
The first Sunday I ever spent in this city there was a protest meeting in the theater on Hennepin Avenue between 8th and 9th streets. The great throng assembled, and Dr. Pleasant Hunter of Westminster Presbyterian Church and Father Cleary, Catholic, were the spokesmen. They were deploring the city conditions and demanding reform, in course and conduct, on the part of the then Mayor.
But never before in its history have the city fathers so completely sold out to the low element, and never has the Park Board descended to such depths as now! Fortunately for us, in a few days we shall have opportunity to voice ourselves at the polls, and if every wet Board member, who is up for re-election,viz. Wm. Bovey, Francis Gross, and John Jepson, is not left at home and his place supplied by a man who loves sobriety, it will indicate that our citizenship has descended to kindred depths with our office holders.
That is why I have Chosen the text of this night, and I propose to talk to you for a time on The Building of a City, The Burden of Citizens, and The Bottle of Shame.
THE BUILDING OF A CITY
A city is a social necessity. Men cannot all live in the country; farming cannot be the sole occupation. The reason is not far to seek. Farm implements are a necessity to farming itself. That compels factories, and factories call men to a common center. Furthermore, the farmer must have some place to which he can go for his supplies, and at which he can market his products. That also demands a center. The village is the first response; the town later, and finally the city.
There are a great many of us who would prefer rural life, but duty demands instead that we dwell where our fellows are thickest, and where opportunity of service is greatest.
We recall that popular poem:
I said, Let me walk in the fields,
He said, No, walk in the town.
I said, There are no flowers there.
He said, No flowers, but a crown.
I said, But the skies are black;
There is nothing but noise and din.
And He wept as He sent me back,
There is more, He said, there is sin.
I said, But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.
He answered, Yet souls are sick;
And souls in the dark undone.
I said, I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say.
He answered, Choose to-night
If I am to miss you, or they.
I pleaded for time to be given.
He said, Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in Heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.
I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town.
He said, My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?
Then into His hands went mine,
And into my heart came He;
And I walk in the light Divine,
The path I had feared to see.
City building, then, is essential service. This text recognizes that fact. It is unfortunate and suggestive that the first city was built by the first murderer, and ever since that time vice of every sort, iniquity of every kind has infested the city, until one Englishman said, Hell is a city much like London. But not so much like London, as like New York or Chicago, and like Minneapolis will become if such politicians as have recently determined our conduct are continued in office.
The only explanation for the conduct of the Park Board that found any voice while we protestants were in their presence was that the public wanted beer. Evidently these gentlemen are still going on the old Latin Proverb,Vox populi, vox dei. They are not astute enough to know that vox populi is vox diaboli.
There is absolutely nothing so vaccillating, so non-dependable, so eternally on the down-grade, so often opposed to God, as the popular whim, the current opinion or desire of the day.
Our Mayor is discerning enough to see that; but our City Council, and our Park Board, are so blinded by beer-foam that they can see nothing else, and they have imagined that they can build a city of the same, ignoring the significant passage in this text,Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood.
The city walls are laid in blood. Life is in the blood we are told, and blood is life. It is the only thing, then, with which you can build a city. But, the Prophet here is talking about building a city out of the blood of the sacrificed, and that is exactly what the City Council and the City Park Board seemed determined to do. The opinions of the best people in this city carry no weight with them. They are only concerned in the majority vote; they are concerned alone to retain office and, believing that the majority prefer beer, they ignore even the existence of the minority.
The newspapers faithfully recorded the fact that several of us pleaded the other day with the Park Board to give us two of the four Parks containing Golf Links; and then we finally urged that if that were not their will they should at least give us one set of Links where sobriety-loving citizens could play without the sight of beer guzzlers, or the dangerous presence of disgusting drunks, and where our church and Sunday School people, our wives and our children might walk or play unmolested!
We had as well have talked to wooden Indians. They never heard a word of what we said. It went in one ear and out at the other. We would have been better off had we gone direct to the Brewers; in fact, Mayor Anderson frankly said, and in their meeting and presence It might be worth your while, ladies and gentlemen, to investigate the investments and offices of some of the members of this Board, to see whether they hold stock and place with the Brewing companies.
If they were judged by their actions, one could not conclude other than that they were salaried agents for Anheuser-Busch, or some other Brewers.
There are some of us who have been up against the salaried agents, and we know their common course, their usual conduct; and these gentlemen behaved exactly so. They said but little; they voted on every question incident to this subject,a solid block of nine. There was every indication of collusion in the matter of definite and distinct agreement to stand together, and flood with beer every park, even including our Flying Field. These gentlemen were:A. C. Andrews, F. A. Gross, Frank A. Gustafson, William Bovey, Anthony W. Ingenhutt, John H. Jepson, Joseph J. Oys, Clinton L. Stacy, Washington Yale, and Alfred F. Pillsbury, President;men that we have honored by office, but who dishonor their own offices; men that we have elected to represent us, but who care to represent no section of society except the beer-guzzling and liquor-drinking.
Who will say that such conduct is not [building] a town with blood, and laying its mortar in the cement of the same; and who will say that the blood so sacrificially shed in this interest is not the best blood that Minneapolis has, the cleanest blood, the most sober blood, the blood of its decent citizens ruthlessly slain in the interest of office-holding?
These gentlemen believe that the majority are with them. That is the reason they treat what they imagine to be the minority with such contempt; and contempt it was.
I am 72 years of age. For fifty odd years I have been in public office, dealing with the public daily, and I never, in that entire time, addressed myself to such wooden heads, or, to change the figure, to such adamant hearts as I faced last Monday. If we were in New York or Chicago we could understand it better.
In 1922 there were in New York 946,139 Hebrews, 803,048 Italians, 690,789 Germans, 231,153 Russians, 161,310 Poles, and only 297,452 English and Celtic descendants. The American minority was so hopeless that one would not expect officers chosen by popular vote to represent it at all.
But in this city, made up so largely by Scandinavians, the best immigration that America knows, by Englishmen, Scotchmen, Canadians,an ideal American city, it is humiliating to find ourselves treated to a New York brew, and to know that our city is being built in the sacrificial blood of its best.
It was Geo. A. Pillsbury, a member of this church, who did the courageous and far-sighted thing of limiting the liquor traffic below 6th street. What a travesty to have a descendant preside over a company of men who ruthlessly tear away all this, and, after having given every inch of the city over to beer sales, invade our parks, and so flood them with the same that the Christian citizenship can no longer conscientiously, if at all, enter there.
Only Thursday of this week a Mission Sunday School Superintendent,a Sunday School of one hundred and sixty boys and girls, in one of the most neglected sections of the city of Minneapolis, on the East Side said, We do not know what to do about our Annual picnic this year. We have been accustomed to go to Columbia Heights. It was not difficult for us to reach that point, but now that no city park is left us without exposing the children to the sight of beer sales, and the possible insult of drunks; and, by the circumstance that our children are too poor to pay for transportation to an outside county point, we are troubled as to what course to take and hardly know how to give them a picnic at all. It is unimaginable! It is, beyond question, the most infamous onslaught that I have ever seen handed to a Christian citizenship! It indicates that Adoniram Judson Gordon was right when he said,
The earthly city that John saw was Babylon the great, which had become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird; which had made all nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
The strange thing is that with such examples of immorality and moral break-down, and final financial bankruptcy before our very eyes as exist in Chicago and New York today, our blind officials lead us as blindly toward the precipice, over which they have already gone, as though they had never heard of either catastrophe.
This text is further significant. It reveals the fact that such building of a city is
THE BURDEN OF CITIZENS
Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Hab 3:13-14).
How significant the phrase, Is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?
The burden of city dwelling is increasingly heavy. Taxes at the present time are a practical confiscation of property.
Twenty-two years ago I went to Linden Hills, which at that time was a sparsely settled suburb, and selecting a beautiful spot, a spot that looked quiet and restful, I constructed a home in which to bring up my six babes.
I was assured, by the few neighbors who lived along that street, at that time, that the street was not subject to park taxation. Only a few years after my house was finished, the Park narrowed the street to half its former width, and against the protest of ninety per cent of the people living along it, paved the same, creating, thereby, a thoroughfare for automobiles, and, taking the traffic off its own former Driveway, along the Lake, threw it in front of our residences. That taxation cost me over $800.00. Ninety per cent of the neighbors who had opposed it, and begged the Park Board not to convert their quiet dwelling street into a highway, took the case to court, and lost it. Then the city stepped in,a city that exists not half so much in the interest of its citizens as in behalf of its office holders the chief occupation of many of whom is to draw a salary,and the taxation upon that property has become so intolerable that I have decided deliberately to surrender it on mortgage, being unable to sell the same on account of high taxation.
The people shall labour in the very fire.
I have friends now who work in Minneapolis and build their homes in St. Paul to escape this excessive taxation, and I have still other friends who are quitting both places and dwelling in the country that they may have enough left upon which to live.
If there is any single action for which Mayor Anderson ought to be appreciated by the public, it is his attitude on this matter of taxation; his dual attempt to reduce the average citizens taxation on the one side, and his successful endeavor to dig up such tax-evaders as the Gas Light Company and the Commonwealth Power Corporation. It was a magnificent contribution to the citizens of Minneapolis when he added those sixty-two millions in the form of money in Credit Assessment Lists, bringing into our treasury in new taxes $186, 000.00 With which to keep open our schools at a time when the schools of rum-ridden Chicago are only kept open by the living stream of teacher-blood, for which these noble teachers have received not a cent in two years.
You let the lower element of this city elect your next Mayor; you ignore what Mayor Anderson has done and turn him down, and your honest tax-payers and noble teachers will be the saintly victims of such political insanity.
Our text should read, if correctly translated, Is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?
Their suffering is the product of popular sin. It is the result of vox populi supremacy. When the blind lead the blind both go into the ditch. The Christian citizenship of this day are not extremists; in fact they have mingled with the citizenship of the world so long that even the majority of them have caught the contagion of compromise, and there are men on church rolls who will line up in the coming election with the lowest. One of the men who refused to give a moments consideration to the thousands of petitions before the Park Board, that begged for at least one Golf Park free from this curse, boasted that he was a church deacon.
John G. Woolley, made a drunkard in this city forty odd years ago, by the brews that were then sold, and later saved by the Blood of the Son of God, said,
Three small boys were walking home from school.
One said to the other, My dad is a democrat, The second one said, Mine is a republican. What is yours, Ben? addressing himself to the third. He aint neither; he is a Methodist.
So little school children exalt the Christian confession, but oftentimes their fathers, who have made it, are disgracing it, not only by loyalty to godless political parties but by fellowship with godless institutions and godless customs.
It may be that John Calvin, when he ruled in Florence, went too far when he arrested the citizens that indulged themselves in gaieties. We do not contend that morals can be created by the best of laws; they can only be protected and encouraged thereby; but we do insist that disregard of human laws, and contempt for Divine laws, tend to licentiousness, violence, drunkenness, gambling, murder, and every other crime of which the human mind and hand are capable.
Such a course is a contrast to the will of God. Our text tells us plainly what that will is. He would have the earth filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Our City Council and Park Board would float it in beer instead. While we stand amazed, perhaps we should not be; history is replete with illustrations of people who choose sin vs righteousness, and exalt iniquity while despising justice. Savonarola sought to save Florence, and for a time it looked as though he might succeed; but, like his Savior, he was crucified by the very city for whose safety he prayed, and in whose behalf he died. The liberty that he secured for its citizens was denied him, and when his sacrifice was finished, and the gibbet and the flame had killed and consumed him, Italy, as Herrick says, Sank back once more into the old and indolent slavery of the mediaeval centuries.
I look upon my beautiful Minneapolis,I think of Gods marvelous gifts to her, of her crystal dear river, her deep and limpid lakes, her wide, shaded avenues, her picturesque hills and vales, her neat clean-looking homes; and while I look, lo, I see a senseless set of city officials poisoning her river, muddying her lakes, defacing her landscapes, disgracing her parks, drowning with drunkenness her youth by a deliberate deluge of beer, and I marvel not that God, speaking by the mouth of His Prophet, sees our glory displaced by our shame!
THE BOTTLE OF SHAME
Here is His word,Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! Thou art filled with shame for glory: * * the cup of the Lords right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory (Hab 2:15-16).
There are some things that are certified by this Scripture.
The drink-giver is Divinely condemned.
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him.
How senseless the excuse of these beer-defenders, and how false to fact when they say,If we can have beer it will save the country from the stronger liquors.
They wilfully lie! If there were a semblance of truth in what they say they would not be moving now to the repeal of the 18th Amendment. They have beer by the glass, by the keg, by the barrel, by the hogshead; there is beer to swim in, but they are not satisfied with it, and they are not confining themselves to it, intoxicating though it be.
We were told that when beer was given them it would be an end to the hard liquors, and yet, I have a house at the edge of the city which had been vacant for three days only, when it was broken into and four empty whisky quart bottles were left behind by the marauders.
Only two days ago your newspaper, the very paper that has been telling us that legalizing the traffic would end illegal sales, reported that a car containing 84 drums of 55 gallons each of alcohol arrived in Minneapolis, billed as Castor Oil, from Newark, N. J. Its market price was valued at $13,000.00. Fortunately the Government agents were lying in wait for it, and shortly after when four gentlemen arrived with five-ton trucks to take it away, the agents stepped forward and put them under arrest, and landed them in the city jail. They gave their names and addresses as:
Roy Rogers, 13 Willow St.,
Eddie Dramer, 2460 Girard Ave., N.,
Victor Wallace Seven Corners, Park Hotel,
Andrew Carlson Park Hotel.
They ought to announce themselves now as candidates for the four vacancies in the Park Board. Doubtless they would be elected.
The day of woe, however, awaits the drunkard-maker. It is as impossible for the city fathers of this Municipality, who voted this deluge upon us, and the nine members of the Park Board who turned a deaf ear to all that sober Christian citizenship had to say, to escape the consequences of their action as it is to separate sin from judgment.
There is a story told of a man who invented an iron cage into which certain victims were to be crowded until the door of the same could be closed and the cage locked. They could neither sit nor stand nor straighten themselves, but in this cramped position endured a thousand agonies till death should relieve. Fate so ordered it that the first man to be incarcerated was the inventor.
Personally I lived within one block of a Chicago millionaire who transported negroes from the South to that city on a cheap labor basis. He imagined he could make his millions, and he did. But their presence on the south side destroyed property of other people valued only by multiplied billions, and the time came when those same colored people took possession of the very mansion in which the millionaire lived. The mills of the gods that grind but slowly, and yet grind exceeding fine, chewed up his fortune at the rate of a million dollars a day for one hundred and fifty days, and the last year of his life, though he died in comparative youth, his income was not sufficient for him to pay income tax.
There will come a day of judgment, and the men who are selling out this Municipality to the brewers will blanch in the presence of God when that day is on.
Their present glory is to become their burning shame. They may laugh today, but there are tears ahead for them as sure as there is a God in Heaven. They may despise the Christian citizenship of Minneapolis, but the time will come when the saints shall rule the world. They may forget the Son of God for the present, but in the Great Assize He will sit as their Judge.
In the meantime, men will line up for and against this diabolical business. Some, in their worship of Mammon, will adopt, defend, and take filthy profit from it. Others will resent its imposition, refuse its bloodstained coin, and thereby save their own souls and make their contribution to a better social state.
A leading groceryman of this city had to face this proposition. He decided that when legalized beer was brought in he would have to sell it in order to retain his customers. He called together his managers, for he controls a multitude of stores, held a prayer meeting on the subject, and left it open for them to vote, promising to accept the decision of the majority as final.
Retiring from the conference, he prayed again, so he reports. His sleep was taken from him, and in the watches of the night it became increasingly clear that he must take a determined stand against it. The result was that the P. P. Hove Groceries have flung out the stuff that has made more drunkards than almost any other intoxicant, and the owner is happy accordingly.
It is easy to see why his decision was thus. In prayer he consulted the will of the Lord. That is every mans way out. Let God speak, and you will never put the bottle to your neighbors lips.
Far better be a Lazarus in Heaven, in Abrahams bosom, having perished in poverty, than a rich member of the Park Board of Minneapolis, suffering, like another Dives, forever in hell, where neither beer nor one drop of water is provided for those who, in their life time, forgot God and despised His righteous laws.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.]
Hab. 2:12. Woe] the third. Town] Babylon, rebuilt and enlarged by spoils of blood (Dan. 4:30).
Hab. 2:13. Fire] Lit. to suffice the fire; conflagration and depopulation the result of all labour and fatigue.
Hab. 2:14. For] God has determined this result; usurped glory must be destroyed that his glory may spread (Isa. 11:9). Waters] Surpassing abundance. This predictive of the gospel times.
HOMILETICS
THE CITY OF BLOOD.Hab. 2:12-14
The third stanza, naturally suggested by the preceding verse, describes the method by which they carried out their ambitious ends. They might pretend public good, and seek to establish popular government; but the wealth of the kingdom was gained by bloody wars, and the city enlarged by captive tribes from other nations. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
I. The city was built with wrong materials. It was built with blood. Gods people and heathen nations were oppressed, compelled to serve the king, and labour on the fortifications. All private fortunes gained by cruelty, all empires and greatness built and defended in contempt for God, and by the blood of men, are established by iniquity. They may impose upon the outward eye, seem strong and majestic, but they are inwardly rotten; will decay and fall to ruins. Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not.
II. The builders of the city laboured in vain.
1. God frustrated their aims. Human skill cannot succeed when God is opposed. In the Church and in the world, nothing can hinder his purposes. He is Lord of Hosts, whom the armies of heaven and the agencies of earth obey. As in building Babel of old so now can he confound the design, and frustrate the efforts, of men. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts?
2. God consumed their materials. They toiled and were disappointed. They built the city, and reared splendid palaces, only for the fire. They laboured, with intense energy and pride, to accomplish their own ends, but they wearied themselves for very vanity. Men fatigue themselves in pursuit of wealth and honour, weary themselves in sin, and the result is consumed in the fire. The people shall labour in vain (for vanity) and the folk in (for) the fire, and they shall be weary.
III. The city shall eventually be destroyed. For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. God will be known by the judgments which he executes upon wrong-doers. All violence and injustice, like that of Babylon and Antichrist, will be overturned. The name of God will be read in the punishment of the wicked, and the deliverance of his people. The glory of God, obscured by oppression and cruelty, in due time will shine forth from the clouds, and fill the earth with its splendour. As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.
A GLORIOUS DAY.Hab. 2:14
For indicates the reason for the sentence pronounced. God had determined to manifest his glory in the judgment and overthrow of all ungodly powers (cf. Isa. 2:12-21; Isa. 6:3; Num. 14:21).
I. The blessing predicted. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord. God is glorious in character and procedure. And of this glory he is so jealous that he will not give it to another (Isa. 42:8). The glory here is the revelation of impartial justice and irresistible power; a manifestation condemning sin and honouring truth. Not only the glory, but the knowledge of it, shall fill the earth. Men shall recognize it, see mercy and judgment, and learn that, verily, there is a reward for the righteous: verily, he is a God that judgeth in the earth.
II. The method of revealing this blessing. In the connection of the words, we learn that God reveals and magnifies his glory, when sin is prevalent, and human glory is decayed. In the destruction of Babylon and all the powers that resemble it, and in the deliverance and restoration of the Jews, we see the glory of God. But this is only a type of the destruction of error and the spread of Gospel truth. Both judgment and mercy are requisite to fill the earth with the glory of the Lord. Everything hostile to him, and the interests of his people, must be destroyed. The kingdom of Christ set up. and the earth illuminated with his glory (Rev. 18:1).
III. The measure in which this blessing is bestowed. As the waters cover the sea. This indicates
1. Depth. Gods judgments are a mighty deep, and the knowledge of them shall not be superficial. The nations shall feel them, and be convicted by the revelation of the Divine glory.
2. Abundance. The waters cover the sea, and spread far and wide. This knowledge will fill the earth.
3. Permanence. The waters of the sea abide, can never be exhausted nor diminished. Knowledge is increasing, the Gospel is spreading, and the bright day is predicted when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Psa. 72:19; Isa. 11:9).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Hab. 2:13. Labour in the very fire. Labour which fatigues; labour in vain; labour opposed to God. Sin is labourthe gain is vanity. Then why not observe who causes this? It is the Lord that bringeth all the labours of the ungodly to loss and vanity, that when they come to thrash their crop of travail, they find nothing but straw and chaff. To express his power to do this he is here called the God of Hosts, for all things serve him, and he resisteth the proud. He layeth their honours in the dust; he disperseth their riches; he spoileth them of all their treasures: he that exalted them made them low; he that gave to them taketh away. They had need to be made to see this; therefore he saith, Is it not of the Lord? [Marbury].
Hab. 2:14. The words of God in this text are full of marrow and fatness, for God is rich in mercy, so he dilateth his favours.
1. In the latitude, all the earth over.
2. In the plenitude, the earth shall be filled.
3. In the magnitude, the knowledge of Gods glory.
4. In the profundity, as the waters cover the sea.
I. The thing to be done. The earth to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God. His moral excellencesholiness, righteousness, and grace: his natural perfectionspower, wisdom, omniscience, and omnipotence to be made known. II. The necessity of doing it. God is seen in the physical universe, and in the powers of the human mind; but sin, like a mist, hides the glory. No intellectual effort, no human light whatever, can do the work. God must shine in Christ, shine into the world, and into the soul, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God (2Co. 4:6). III. Will it ever be done? How dark the days of the prophet! How improbable the present signs! Yet how much has been done already! Sufficient to guarantee future success. God himself has pledged his word. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
So, Jesus, let thy kingdom come;
Then sin and hells terrific gloom
Shall at its brightness flee away,
The dawn of an eternal day.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Hab. 2:12-13. Vanity. To so small a purpose is it to have an erected face towards heaven, and a perpetual grovelling spirit upon earth, eating dust, as doth the serpent [Bacon]. The empire of the world is but a crust to be thrown to a dog [Luther].
Hab. 2:14. Glory. It is one of the greatest praises of Gods wisdom, that he can turn the evil of men to his own glory [Bp. Hall].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(12-14) Woe on the extension of Babylon by oppression and enforced labour.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
12. Town city Synonymous; they cannot be restricted to the capital, but include cities scattered throughout the empire, wherever building enterprises were carried on.
Blood, iniquity Blood was shed and iniquity done in subduing the nations, in tearing them from their homes and transporting them to Babylonia, and in compelling them to assist in the extensive building enterprises of which the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar give a fair idea. The sentiment expressed here is of universal application, but the prophet has in mind primarily the Chaldeans (compare Mic 3:10; Jer 22:13).
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Third Woe ( Hab 2:12-14 ).
Hab 2:12-14
‘Woe to him who builds a town with blood,
And establishes a city by iniquity.
Behold is it not of YHWH that the peoples labour for the fire,
And the nations weary themselves for vanity?
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of YHWH,
As the waters cover the sea.’
The third woe stresses his murderous and evil behaviour. Babylon has been built on the blood of the slain and the sufferings of the nations. But it will not stand for ever. Those who have been forced to build it, often in much pain and suffering, are but building it in readiness for the fire that will burn it down. All their efforts, and slaves from many peoples would have been involved in its building and restoration, will be finally vanity (uselessness) for it will be destroyed. And will it not be YHWH Who has done it? Compare here Jer 22:13; Jer 22:17; Mic 3:10, where Jerusalem is guilty of something similar.
There is a reminder here to all who build up their own or their company’s wealth in blood, sweat and tears. God sees what we do, and the cries of the misused reach up to Him (Jas 5:4), and one day He will require it of us.
And the result of its destruction by fire will be that great glory will come to YHWH, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of His glory as the waters cover the sea (compare Isa 11:9 from where Habakkuk partly obtained this idea). Babylon the Great will fall (Isa 13:19-22; Revelation 17-18). And by it great glory will be His.
This was not fulfilled in the way that Habakkuk probably expected, and it would be many centuries before the two were connected, but it was fulfilled nevertheless. Today peoples around the world know of His glory, and know what He did to Babylon. In Abraham’s seed all the world has been blessed through the knowledge of Christ. And through His word all know of the defeat of Babylon which precipitated the return of the exiles to Jerusalem, and of the later destruction of the first Great Babylon, so that it became a mound and a heap, proof of the certainty of the judgment of God, and of its even greater destruction yet to come at the judgment, where it sums up the cities of the world. Beginning from Babel Babylon has always symbolised the world in opposition to God.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hab 2:12 Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!
Ver. 12. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood ] This seemeth to be the senseless creatures, black Cantus Song, (as they call it), chanted out against the wrong doer, by God’s own appointment, cui obscura clarent, muta respondent, silentium confitetur, saith an ancient (Juvonal),
– “ cui servi ut taceant, iumenta loquentur, ”
The very beasts have a verdict to pass upon oppressors; as the dumb ass did upon Balaam: yea, the lifeless creatures shall ring a doleful knell of woe and alas in their ears, and cry them guilty; as the earth did Cain, and the heaven did Phocas; and as the tignum e ligno logs of wood, doth here Nebuchadnezzar. His town of Babylon was built in blood by Semiramis, who slew her husband, so was Rome by Romulus, so was Alexandria, in Egypt, by Alexander, that great manslayer, the founder of populous No, of whose woe read Nah 3:8 ; Nah 3:10 . See Trapp on “ Nah 3:8 “ See Trapp on “ Nah 3:10 “ And for Alexander himself, he lay unburied thirty days together, neither did his bloody conquest above ground purchase him any title for a habitation underground. The like befell our conqueror William, who laid his foundation here upon fireworks; and was punished in his posterity for his depopulations at New Forest and elsewhere.
And stablisheth a city by iniquity
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
iniquity. Hebrew. ‘aval. App-44. Not the same word as in Hab 1:3, Hab 1:13.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
him: Gen 4:11-17, Jos 6:26, 1Ki 16:34, Jer 22:13-17, Eze 24:9, Dan 4:27-31, Mic 3:10, Nah 3:1, Joh 11:47-50, Rev 17:6
blood: Heb. bloods, Hab 2:8
Reciprocal: 1Ki 21:19 – Hast thou killed 2Ch 21:13 – hast slain Isa 10:1 – Woe Jam 1:13 – no man
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Hab 2:12. It is right to build towns for habitations of needy people, but it is wrong to do so by violence against other helpless men.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Hab 2:12-14. Wo to him that buildeth a town with blood Wo to those mighty conquerors who have augmented Babylon by unjustly spoiling and ruining many other cities, and destroying their inhabitants. Here we see that God does not approve of those mighty conquerors who ravage the world, or carry their arms into divers countries. Though he makes use of them for the wise purposes of his providence, in chastising or punishing the wicked, yet, amidst all the pomp of their victories, they are often hateful in his sight; and, while they are in the midst of their triumphs, he is preparing the sword to cut them off. What is said in this verse is applicable to all covetous, unjust, and oppressive methods whatever of raising a fortune. Behold, is it not of the Lord that the people shall labour in the very fire? &c. The latter part of the verse occurs with very little alteration Jer 51:58, where the destruction of Babylon is described: see the note there. The sense is, All the pains which the Chaldeans have taken, in enlarging and beautifying their city, shall be lost in the flames, which shall consume their stately buildings; and nothing of all that they have obtained, or collected, by their toilsome victories, shall be of any use to them. For the earth shall be filled For Gods power and providence, in governing the world, shall conspicuously appear, and be widely displayed in the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar, (Dan 4:37,) in the downfall of the Chaldean empire, and the destruction of Babylon; especially as it is described in the prophets as an earnest and type of the fall of mystical Babylon, which will be a decisive stroke of divine justice, that will thoroughly vindicate oppressed truth and innocence, and open the way for the universal spread of true religion: see note on Isa 11:9.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Judgment for oppression 2:12-14
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The Babylonians could expect distress because they had built their cities at the expense of the lives of their enemies. We speak of "blood money" as money obtained by making others suffer, even shedding their blood. Babylon was built with "blood money" and the blood, sweat, and tears of enslaved people. It was a town founded on injustice; without injustice it could not have become what it had become.