Habakkuk 2:12-14 – Woe Against Those Who Perpetrate Violence

BIBLE TEXT

Habakkuk 2:12-14

SUMMARY

Habakkuk is influenced by other prophets in his oracle against those who perpetrate violence.

ANALYSIS

Habakkuk likely borrows from two other prophets in his woe oracle of 2:12-14. In verse 13, he asks a rhetorical question that quotes from and slightly modifies a similar woe oracle in Jeremiah 51:58 against Babylon. The woe oracle in Habakkuk seems to be aimed not against Babylon alone, but against all perpetrators of violence, those who “build a town by bloodshed.” The prophet echoes his near contemporary Jeremiah by asserting that such violence will not prevail, that “nations weary themselves for nothing.”

The vision of hope that contrasts with the woe oracle asserts that in the future, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” This vision of the new age is, again, almost a direct quotation of Isaiah 11:9, a verse that concludes Isaiah’s vision of a peaceable kingdom.

It is impossible to prove that Habakkuk borrowed from the other two prophets. Linguistic details, however, as well as the fact that Isaiah 11 falls in the part of the book attributed primarily to the eighth-century prophet, would give credence to such an argument. If this theory is correct, it demonstrates that the oracles of the prophets, with their concern for justice and God’s glory, influenced both their contemporaries and their successors.