What follows the watch and vision?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Patient faith accompanies five woes against wealth, bloodshed, shame and idols.

Chapter breakdown

Habacuc stands on his watch and tower to hear what is said and what to answer his reprover. The edition describes his complaint that the Chaldeans, worse than the Jews, prevail through strength and idols, and explains the answer as patient waiting with faith for deserved punishment. God commands a plain vision on tables for the reader to run over it. The vision concerns a distant appointed time and will not lie; though delayed, it surely comes. The unbelieving soul is not right, but the just lives in faith.

Wine deceives and pride is dishonored; appetite like hell and death gathers nations without satisfaction. The edition explains wine as passing worldly pleasures, drunkenness and attendant evils, and contrasts brief success with ensuing evils. A taunt gives five woes. Others’ wealth and thick clay become a burden; the edition calls ill-gotten goods defiling. Those who bite and tear arise, and surviving peoples spoil the spoiler because of bloodshed against land, city and inhabitants. Covetous wealth seeks a high nest for the house but brings confusion and sin; stone and timber testify. A city built with blood and iniquity faces labor for fire and vanity; knowledge of God’s glory fills earth like water the sea. The edition identifies the guilty as enemies of God’s people.

Giving a friend gall and drink to expose nakedness returns shame, drinking and sleep, the Lord’s right-hand cup and shameful vomiting upon the giver’s glory. Libanus’s iniquity and devastation of beasts accompany bloodshed; the edition identifies Libanus here with the temple profaned by Chaldeans. Graven and molten false images cannot teach: wood is told to awake and stone arise, though gilded and silvered images lack spirit. God is in his holy temple and earth is commanded to silence.

The story inside

The just lives in faith. The drinking woe includes shameful vomiting. Images have no spirit and earth must be silent.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The just lives in faith.
2
The drinking woe includes shameful vomiting.
3
Images have no spirit and earth must be silent.

Test your recall

How does the edition explain Libanus?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 102349–102359
2:1. I will stand upon my watch, and fix my foot upon the tower: and I will watch, to see what will be said to me, and what I may answer to him that reproveth me. Will stand, etc.... Waiting to see what the Lord will answer to my complaint, viz., that the Chaldeans, who are worse than the Jews, and who attribute all their success to their own strength, or to their idols, should nevertheless prevail over the people of the Lord. The Lord’s answer is, that the prophet must wait with patience and faith: that all should be set right in due time; and the enemies of God and his people punished according to their deserts.
Lines 102361–102370
2:2. And the Lord answered me, and said: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables: that he that readeth it may run over it. 2:3. For as yet the vision is far off, and it shall appear at the end, and shall not lie: if it make any delay, wait for it: for it shall surely come, and it shall not be slack. 2:4. Behold, he that is unbelieving, his soul shall not be right in himself: but the just shall live in his faith.
Lines 102371–102389
2:5. And as wine deceiveth him that drinketh it: so shall the proud man be, and he shall not be honoured: who hath enlarged his desire like hell: and is himself like death, and he is never satisfied: but will gather together unto him all nations, and heap together unto him all people. As wine deceiveth, etc.... Viz., by affording only a short passing pleasure; followed by the evils and disgrace that are the usual consequences of drunkenness; so shall it be with the proud enemies of the people of God; whose success affordeth them only a momentary pleasure, followed by innumerable and everlasting evils. 2:6. Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a dark speech concerning him: and it shall be said: Woe to him that heapeth together that which is not his own? how long also doth he load himself with thick clay? Thick clay.... Ill-gotten goods, that, like mire, both burden and defile the soul.
Lines 102405–102420
2:11. For the stone shall cry out of the wall: and the timber that is between the joints of the building, shall answer. 2:12. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and prepareth a city by iniquity. 2:13. Are not these things from the Lord of hosts? for the people shall labour in a great fire: and the nations in vain, and they shall faint. Are not these things, etc.... That is, shall not these punishments that are here recorded, come from the Lord upon him that is guilty of such crimes.—Ibid. The people shall labour, etc.... Viz., the enemies of God’s people. 2:14. For the earth shall be filled, that men may know the glory of the Lord, as waters covering the sea.
Lines 102422–102435
2:15. Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk, that he may behold his nakedness. 2:16. Thou art filled with shame instead of glory: drink thou also, and fall fast asleep: the cup of the right hand of the Lord shall compass thee, and shameful vomiting shall be on thy glory. 2:17. For the iniquity of Libanus shall cover thee, and the ravaging of beasts shall terrify them because of the blood of men, and the iniquity of the land, and of the city, and of all that dwell therein. The iniquity of Libanus.... That is, the iniquity committed by the Chaldeans against the temple of God, signified here by the name of Libanus.