Habakkuk 2:2

The Lord Assures Habakkuk

2:2 The Lord responded: ¹ 

“Write down this message! ²  Record it legibly on tablets,

so the one who announces ³  it may read it easily. ⁴ 

Habakkuk 2:6

The Proud Babylonians are as Good as Dead

2:6 “But all these nations will someday taunt him ⁵ 

and ridicule him with proverbial sayings: ⁶ 

‘The one who accumulates what does not belong to him is as good as dead ⁷ 

(How long will this go on?) ⁸  –

he who gets rich by extortion!’ ⁹ 

¹ tn Heb “the Lord answered and said.” The redundant expression “answered and said” has been simplified in the translation as “responded.”

² tn Heb “[the] vision.”

³ tn Or “reads from.”

⁴ tn Heb “might run,” which here probably means “run [through it quickly with one’s eyes],” that is, read it easily.

⁵ 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.

⁶ tn Heb “and a mocking song, riddles, against him? And one will say.”

⁷ 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.

⁸ tn This question is interjected parenthetically, perhaps to express rhetorically the pain and despair felt by the Babylonians’ victims.

⁹ 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.