The World Awaits

One of the verses that is a missions classic is Habakkuk 2:14

“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

There are themes in the Bible about God’s glory already being present and other times where it is a future event. I got curious one day to see how this verse fit into its context in Habakkuk chapter 2. It is in a series of “woes” being pronounced by the prophet and for the life of me I could not figure out what the “for” connected to. The woe it sits in starts out with pronouncing woe on one who build a city with bloodshed.

So I went back and picked up the thread in 2:4 and followed it through the series of woes 2:6, 2:9, 2:12, 2:15, 2:19. This is part of the Lord’s answer to the inquiry of the prophet as to why God is allowing the wicked Bablyonians to be  his instrument of judgment while they themselves remain unjudged and act with impunity.

So the one who is puffed up and arrogant here is Babylon personified in 2:4-5 and God says that he will be taunted and ridiculed, and this starts the series of woes pronouncements.

What helped me make sense of the passage is the final woe that mocks the person who has to call out to lifeless idols to come to life and wake up. By contrast, the God of the earth does not need people to wake him up, the whole earth instead should be silent before him.

So the classic verse in 2:14 starts to make more sense when see in terms of the judgment on this arrogant one (Babylon personified) and his program of greed, extortion, destruction, violence, plunder, building by unjust gain, bloodshed, drinking, and trust in idols. God is saying that he is going to take all forms of human aggrandizement and self-centered seeking of personal (or ethnic group, state, and so on) gain, and instead see that his glory will cover the earth. And in this he reminds us that he is the active agent, and there are times where it is completely appropriate to be silent before him, to tremble in his presence, and to listen for his guidance that puts us on a trajectory for his glory and not that of our own human projects.