Text -- Habakkuk 2:6 (NET)

The Proud Babylonians are as Good as Dead

2:6 “But all these nations will someday taunt him and ridicule him with proverbial sayings: ‘The one who accumulates what does not belong to him is as good as dead (How long will this go on?)– he who gets rich by extortion!’

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Hab 2:6

¹ tn Heb “Will not these, all of them, take up a taunt against him…?” The rhetorical question assumes the response, “Yes, they will.” The present translation brings out the rhetorical force of the question by rendering it as an affirmation.

² tn Heb “and a mocking song, riddles, against him? And one will say.”

³ tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who increases [what is] not his.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe,” “ah”) was used in funeral laments and carries the connotation of death.

⁴ tn This question is interjected parenthetically, perhaps to express rhetorically the pain and despair felt by the Babylonians’ victims.

⁵ tn Heb “and the one who makes himself heavy [i.e., wealthy] [by] debts.” Though only appearing in the first line, the term הוֹי (hoy) is to be understood as elliptical in the second line.