The Drunkenness of Pride and the Sobering Reckoning Text: Habakkuk 2:5-8
Introduction: The Moral Physics of the Universe
We are living in an age that is drunk. Our culture is intoxicated with pride, with ambition, with a lust for power that is as insatiable as the grave. Men build their towers, their corporations, their empires, and they do so with a haughty spirit, believing that the laws of God's universe are suspended for them. They think they can sow injustice and reap prosperity, plant violence and harvest peace, build with stolen goods and live securely. But the prophet Habakkuk is here to tell us that God is not mocked. There is a moral physics to the cosmos, and what goes up must come down. Every sin has a boomerang attached to it.
Habakkuk has been wrestling with God. He sees the wickedness of Judah and cries out for justice. God answers by telling him that He is sending the Babylonians, a fierce and terrible nation, to be His instrument of judgment. This troubles the prophet even more. How can a holy God use a nation more wicked than Judah to punish Judah? It seems like a cure that is worse than the disease. God's answer begins in chapter 2, where He tells Habakkuk to write the vision down plainly: the proud man is not right within him, but the just shall live by his faith. And then, God pronounces a series of five "woes" upon the Babylonians, detailing the precise nature of their sin and the corresponding judgment that will inevitably follow.
Our text today is the preamble to those woes and the first woe itself. It is a diagnosis of the spiritual condition of all proud, expansionist, godless powers. Whether we are talking about ancient Babylon or modern globalist projects, the spiritual pathology is the same. It is a drunken, arrogant ambition that is never satisfied, that consumes everything in its path, and that foolishly believes it will never have to pay the bill. But the bill always comes due. The creditors always rise up. God's accounting is meticulous, and He always balances the books.
The Text
And indeed, wine betrays the haughty man
So that he does not stay at home.
He enlarges his appetite like Sheol,
And he is like death, never satisfied.
He also gathers to himself all nations
And assembles to himself all peoples.
"Will not all of these lift up a taunt-song against him,
Even satire and riddles against him
And say, 'Woe to him who increases what is not his,
For how long,
And makes himself rich with loans?'
Will not your creditors rise up suddenly,
And those who make you tremble awaken?
Indeed, you will become spoil for them.
Because you have taken many nations as spoil,
All that is left of the peoples will take you as spoil,
Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land,
To the town and all its inhabitants.
(Habakkuk 2:5-8 LSB)
The Insatiable Appetite of Pride (v. 5)
We begin with the diagnosis of the problem in verse 5:
"And indeed, wine betrays the haughty man So that he does not stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, And he is like death, never satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations And assembles to himself all peoples." (Habakkuk 2:5)
The haughty man, here representing the Babylonian empire, is betrayed by wine. This can be taken literally, as empires are often undone by their decadence and luxury. But the meaning is deeper. Pride itself is an intoxicant. It makes a man, or a nation, reckless. It clouds judgment. It makes one believe he is invincible. This spiritual drunkenness leads to a restless discontent. "He does not stay at home." Contentment is a Christian virtue, born of gratitude and faith. The proud man knows nothing of it. His home is never enough. His borders are never secure enough. His treasury is never full enough. He must always be expanding, conquering, acquiring.
The prophet then uses two of the most powerful images in all of Scripture to describe this lust for more. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, and he is like death, never satisfied. Sheol, the grave, is never full. It has been receiving the dead for millennia and has never once said, "Enough." Death is the ultimate predator, and it is never satiated. This is the nature of sin. This is the nature of pride. It is a black hole. It cannot be filled. The man who lives to gratify his appetites will find that his appetites only grow larger and more demanding. He thinks he is mastering the world, but he is in fact enslaved to his own bottomless lust.
This is why he "gathers to himself all nations." This is empire-building as a spiritual sickness. It is not about statecraft or security; it is about feeding an idol, the idol of self. The goal is total dominion, to assemble all peoples under one's own banner. This is the spirit of Babel, the spirit of Rome, and the spirit of every totalitarian project since. It is a blasphemous attempt to usurp the role of God, who alone will gather all nations to Himself in Christ.
The Inevitable Taunt (v. 6)
The consequences of this prideful gluttony begin to unfold in verse 6. The victims find their voice.
"Will not all of these lift up a taunt-song against him, Even satire and riddles against him And say, 'Woe to him who increases what is not his, For how long, And makes himself rich with loans?'" (Habakkuk 2:6 LSB)
There is a great reversal coming. The oppressed will not remain silent forever. God will see to it that they have the last laugh. They will lift up a "taunt-song," a proverb, a satire against their former master. Tyrants live in fear of being mocked. They can handle hatred, but they cannot endure ridicule because it punctures their balloon of self-importance. The song of the oppressed is a "woe," the first of five that will bring this empire to its knees.
And what is the substance of this woe? "Woe to him who increases what is not his." This is the fundamental crime: theft on an international scale. The Babylonian empire was built on plunder. They took what did not belong to them. But the taunt includes a crucial question: "For how long?" The thief always thinks his run of luck will last forever. But God has set a limit. The clock is ticking. The patience of God, which is meant to lead to repentance, is being stored up as wrath.
The second part of the taunt is that he "makes himself rich with loans." The Hebrew here is vivid; it means to load oneself with pledges, or thick clay. The plunder he has gathered is not an asset; it is a crushing weight of debt. He thinks he is getting rich, but he is actually going into debt to God's justice. Every stolen artifact, every enslaved person, every conquered city is a loan from the bank of God's righteousness, and the interest rates are steep. The more he steals, the heavier the burden of his future judgment becomes.
The Sudden Reversal (v. 7)
The taunt-song continues by predicting the sudden and shocking nature of the coming judgment.
"Will not your creditors rise up suddenly, And those who make you tremble awaken? Indeed, you will become spoil for them." (Habakkuk 2:7 LSB)
The language of debt continues. The "creditors" are the very nations Babylon has plundered. God will raise them up. The judgment will not be a slow, predictable decline. It will come "suddenly." When God decides to act, He does not dawdle. The oppressor who made everyone else tremble will awaken one morning to find that the tables have turned, and now it is his turn to tremble. The fear he inflicted on others will come back upon his own head.
And the result is a perfect, symmetrical justice: "Indeed, you will become spoil for them." The plunderer will be plundered. The looter will be looted. The one who took everything will have everything taken. This is not karma; this is the personal, covenantal justice of a holy God who sees and remembers every act of violence and theft.
The Law of Just Recompense (v. 8)
Verse 8 summarizes the principle at work, the great law of divine retribution, or lex talionis.
"Because you have taken many nations as spoil, All that is left of the peoples will take you as spoil, Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, To the town and all its inhabitants." (Habakkuk 2:8 LSB)
The reason for this judgment is stated with courtroom clarity. "Because you have taken many nations as spoil..." therefore, "...all that is left of the peoples will take you as spoil." The punishment fits the crime, not just in kind but in proportion. It is a harvest principle. You reap what you sow. If you sow the wind of violence, you will reap the whirlwind of destruction. God's justice is not arbitrary; it is poetic and precise.
And the specific crimes are named: "human bloodshed and violence." God is not an abstract force. He cares about spilled blood. He cares about violence done to the land, to the cities, and to the people who live in them. The pagan thinks of conquest in terms of glory and power. God thinks of it in terms of broken families, burned homes, and dead bodies. He is the avenger of blood, the defender of the weak, and the judge of all the earth.
Conclusion: The Sobering Gospel
This passage is a terrifying warning to the proud and a profound comfort to the faithful. The warning is that no one gets away with anything. If you build your life, your business, or your nation on pride, greed, and violence, you are not building on rock. You are building on a mountain of debt that will one day collapse upon you.
But where is the gospel in this? It is right here, in the character of the God who judges. Our God is a God who hates evil and will not tolerate it forever. The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of this principle. At the cross, the greatest act of violence and injustice in human history took place. The Son of God was plundered, stripped, and murdered. But God turned it into the greatest victory. The grave, Sheol, which is never satisfied, had to give up its prize. Death itself was conquered.
And at the cross, the great transaction took place. All of our moral debt, our thick clay of sin, was loaded onto Jesus. He paid the loan in full. And in return, we who believe are credited with His perfect righteousness. The woe that was upon us was placed upon Him, so that the blessing that was His might be given to us.
Therefore, the just do not live by their own strength or their own conquests. They live by faith. They trust in the God who brings down the proud and lifts up the humble. They know that the empires of men are temporary, but the kingdom of our God and of His Christ will endure forever. And in that kingdom, all the taunt-songs will cease, because all the debts will have been paid, and all the violence will be undone, and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.