Habakkuk 2:12-14

The Third Woe (Habakkuk 2:12).

Habakkuk 2:12

‘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 Jeremiah 22:13; Jeremiah 22:17; Micah 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 (James 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 Isaiah 11:9 from where Habakkuk partly obtained this idea). Babylon the Great will fall (Isaiah 13:19; 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.