Habakkuk 1:6

1:6 Look, I am about to empower ¹  the Babylonians,

that ruthless ²  and greedy ³  nation.

They sweep across the surface ⁴  of the earth,

seizing dwelling places that do not belong to them.

Deuteronomy 28:49-52

28:49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth ⁵  as the eagle flies, ⁶  a nation whose language you will not understand, 28:50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 28:51 They ⁷  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ⁸  or lambs of your flocks ⁹  until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ¹⁰  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

Deuteronomy 28:2

28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance ¹¹  if you obey the Lord your God:

Deuteronomy 24:1-2

24:1 If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive ¹²  in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house. 24:2 When she has left him ¹³  she may go and become someone else’s wife.

Jeremiah 25:9-11

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ¹⁴  I will send for all the peoples of the north ¹⁵  and my servant, ¹⁶  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ¹⁷  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ¹⁸  and make them everlasting ruins. ¹⁹  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ²⁰  25:10 I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in these lands. ²¹  I will put an end to the sound of people grinding meal. I will put an end to lamps shining in their houses. ²²  25:11 This whole area ²³  will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ ²⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “raise up” (so KJV, ASV).

² tn Heb “bitter.” Other translation options for this word in this context include “fierce” (NASB, NRSV); “savage” (NEB); or “grim.”

³ tn Heb “hasty, quick.” Some translate here “impetuous” (so NEB, NASB, NIV, NRSV) or “rash,” but in this context greed may very well be the idea. The Babylonians move quickly and recklessly ahead in their greedy quest to expand their empire.

⁴ tn Heb “the open spaces.”

⁵ tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”

⁶ tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.

⁷ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

⁸ tn Heb “increase of herds.”

⁹ tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

¹¹ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

¹² tn Heb “nakedness of a thing.” The Hebrew phrase עֶרְוַת דָּבָר (’ervat davar) refers here to some gross sexual impropriety (see note on “indecent” in Deut 23:14). Though the term usually has to do only with indecent exposure of the genitals, it can also include such behavior as adultery (cf. Lev 18:6-18; 20:11, 17, 20-21; Ezek 22:10; 23:29; Hos 2:10).

¹³ tn Heb “his house.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁵ sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

¹⁶ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

¹⁷ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

¹⁸ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

¹⁹ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

²⁰ tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

²¹ sn Compare Jer 7:24 and 16:9 for this same dire prediction limited to Judah and Jerusalem.

²² sn The sound of people grinding meal and the presence of lamps shining in their houses were signs of everyday life. The Lord is going to make these lands desolate (v. 11) destroying all signs of life. (The statement is, of course, hyperbolic or poetic exaggeration; even after the destruction of Jerusalem many people were left in the land.) For these same descriptions of everyday life applying to the end of life see the allegory in Eccl 12:3-6.

²³ tn Heb “All this land.”

²⁴ sn It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2; 2 Kgs 24:1) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)