The Cup of Fury and the Uncovering of Shame Text: Habakkuk 2:15-17
Introduction: The Intoxication of Pride
The prophet Habakkuk has been wrestling with God. He has seen the wickedness of his own people, Judah, and has cried out for justice. God answered him, but the answer was terrifying. God was going to use the Chaldeans, a nation even more wicked than Judah, as His instrument of judgment. This was a hard providence, a bitter pill to swallow. How can a holy God use a wicked hammer to smash a less-wicked nail? Habakkuk takes his stand on the watchtower, and God answers him again, this time with a series of five woes against the proud and rapacious Babylonians. God assures His prophet that the proud will not stand, and that their day of reckoning is coming.
Our text today is the fourth of these five woes. It is a woe against a particular kind of predatory wickedness, a calculated debauchery that is a perfect picture of how proud and godless nations operate. They are not content with their own sin; they seek to export it. They are not satisfied with their own strength; they must first weaken their neighbors in order to exploit them. They are intoxicated with their own glory, and so they seek to intoxicate others with poison in order to strip them bare and mock their shame.
We live in such a time. We are surrounded by a culture that is drunk on its own rebellion. It brews its venomous doctrines in the universities, it pours them out through the media, and it urges, cajoles, and pressures everyone to drink. It wants to make us drunk on lies so that it can look upon our nakedness, the nakedness of a church stripped of its glory, a people stripped of their heritage, and a nation stripped of its sanity. But the Word of the Lord to Habakkuk is a timeless principle. God is not mocked. What a man, or a nation, sows, that will he also reap. The cup of poison they so gleefully serve to others will come back around to them, but when it does, it will be the cup of the fury of Almighty God.
The Text
“Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk So as to look on their nakedness!
You will be filled with disgrace rather than glory. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in Yahweh’s right hand will come around to you, And utter disgrace will come upon your glory.
For the violence done to Lebanon will cover you, And the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them, Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, To the town and all its inhabitants.”
(Habakkuk 2:15-17 LSB)
Predatory Debauchery (v. 15)
The fourth woe begins with a vivid and contemptible picture of calculated evil.
“Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk So as to look on their nakedness!” (Habakkuk 2:15)
This is not a prohibition against drinking wine, which the Scriptures commend in its proper place. This is a woe against the malicious use of it. This is a picture of a predator. He invites his neighbor over, not for fellowship, but for exploitation. He pours the drink, but he mixes it with "venom." The Hebrew word here can mean poison, or rage, or fury. The Chaldeans were not just offering a drink; they were serving up their own heated, godless ambition. They were weakening other nations through alliances, treaties, and cultural exports that were designed to stupefy them, to get them to lower their guard.
And what is the goal of this malicious intoxication? "So as to look on their nakedness." This is not just about prurient interest. In the Bible, nakedness is a symbol of shame, vulnerability, and judgment. When Adam and Eve sinned, their first realization was that they were naked, and they were ashamed (Gen. 3:7). When God judged Egypt, He uncovered her nakedness (Ezek. 23:29). Babylon's goal was to strip other nations of their dignity, their strength, their defenses, and their glory, all so that Babylon could stand over them, gloat, and mock. It is the sin of Ham, who looked upon his father Noah's drunken nakedness with contempt, instead of covering it with honor (Gen. 9:22).
This is precisely the strategy of our modern secularist projects. They pour out a cocktail of relativism, sexual liberation, and materialist comfort. They mix in the venom of critical theory, resentment, and identity politics. And they bid the church, and the nation, to drink up. They want us drunk, incoherent, and stumbling, so they can gaze upon our shame. They want to strip away every last vestige of Christian glory and laugh at our exposed weakness. This is the spirit of the age, and it is the spirit of Babylon.
The Boomerang Cup (v. 16)
But God is a God of perfect justice. The law of the harvest is inexorable. What you pour out for others will be poured out for you, but pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
“You will be filled with disgrace rather than glory. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in Yahweh’s right hand will come around to you, And utter disgrace will come upon your glory.” (Habakkuk 2:16)
The first line is a perfect reversal. Babylon was drunk on its own glory, but God promises it will be filled to the full, not with glory, but with shame, with disgrace. The very thing they sought to inflict on others will become their own portion. The tables are turned with divine authority: "Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness." The predator becomes the victim. The mocker becomes the mocked.
And notice who is serving this next drink. It is not a neighbor. It is not an equal. "The cup in Yahweh's right hand will come around to you." The right hand of God is the hand of power and authority. This is not a cup of wine mixed with human venom; this is the cup of divine fury. This is the cup of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation (Rev. 14:10). Jeremiah prophesied of this very thing: "Babylon was a golden cup in the LORD's hand, that made all the earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations are deranged" (Jer. 51:7). God used Babylon as His cup of judgment, but now Babylon herself must drink from a far more terrible cup.
And the result is "utter disgrace... upon your glory." The Hebrew is visceral; it can be translated as "a vomit of shame" upon your glory. Everything Babylon took pride in, its military might, its wealth, its seeming invincibility, will be covered in filth. God will not just defeat them; He will humiliate them. He will make their glory a thing of contempt. This is the end of all human pride that sets itself against the throne of God.
The Reason for the Reaping (v. 17)
God is never arbitrary. His judgments are always righteous and always fit the crime. Verse 17 gives the grounds for this sentence.
“For the violence done to Lebanon will cover you, And the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them, Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, To the town and all its inhabitants.” (Habakkuk 2:17)
Two specific crimes are mentioned as the basis for this judgment. First, "the violence done to Lebanon." Lebanon was famous for its magnificent cedar forests. This refers to the Chaldeans' rapacious plundering of natural resources. They stripped the land, clear-cutting these glorious forests to build their own pagan temples and palaces. This was not just environmental carelessness; it was an act of arrogant impiety. They were dismantling a part of God's glorious creation to build monuments to their own pride. That violence, that stripping of the land, will now "cover" them like a shroud.
Second, and more central, is the crime of "human bloodshed." This is the foundation of all the woes. Babylon was built on violence. They terrorized not only men but even the beasts of the field. Their cruelty was comprehensive. They had shed innocent blood, and God keeps meticulous accounts. The blood of the innocent cries out from the ground, and God always hears it. This violence was not just against one people, but against "the land, to the town and all its inhabitants." It was a corporate, national sin, and it would receive a corporate, national judgment.
Here is the lesson for us. Nations that build their prosperity on violence and theft will have to drink the cup. Nations that legalize the shedding of innocent blood in the womb will have to drink the cup. Nations that strip their own heritage and mock the glory of God will find utter disgrace poured upon their own glory. The cup in Yahweh's right hand is making its rounds, and it will not skip any address where wickedness has been sown.
The Two Cups of the Gospel
This passage is a terrifying display of God's justice. The principle is clear: you will drink what you have served. If you serve venom, you will drink fury. This is the default setting of the universe. All of us, by our sin, have served up rebellion against God. We have all, in our pride, sought our own glory. We have all participated in the violence of a fallen world. Therefore, we all deserve to drink from the cup in Yahweh's right hand.
And this is where the glory of the gospel explodes into view. For there is another cup in the Scriptures. On the night He was betrayed, as He sweat drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ prayed to His Father, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will" (Matt. 26:39). What was that cup? It was the cup of Habakkuk 2. It was the cup of God's unmixed, undiluted wrath against sin. It was the full measure of the fury that we deserved.
And on the cross, the sinless Son of God took that cup in His own hands, put it to His own lips, and He drank it down to the dregs. He drank it all. He absorbed the full measure of the violence our sins deserved. He was stripped naked, exposed to shame, so that we might be clothed in His righteousness. He was filled with the disgrace we earned, so that we might be filled with the glory He purchased. He drank the cup of wrath so that He could turn to us and offer us another cup.
This is the cup of communion. "This cup is the new covenant in My blood," He said (Luke 22:20). It is the cup of salvation, the cup of fellowship, the cup of forgiveness. Because He drank the cup of fury, we are invited to drink the cup of life.
Therefore, the choice before every person, and every nation, is simple. There are two cups. You will drink one of them. You can either drink the cup of God's wrath yourself, an eternal cup that will never be empty. Or, you can, by faith, acknowledge that Jesus Christ drank that cup for you, and receive from His hand the free and gracious cup of everlasting life. There is no third option. Flee from the coming wrath. Flee to the cross. Take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.