Bible Strands
Habakkuk 2:10
You have plotted shame for your house by cutting off many peoples and forfeiting your life.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet delivers a divine woe against a ruler who constructed his household through unjust gain and attempted to evade disaster by elevating his position. This declaration occurs within a sequence of prophetic judgments targeting arrogant violence and self-preservation.
The words — The Hebrew יָעַצְתָּ (ya.'Atz.ta) literally means "you have planned," paired with בֹּשֶׁת (Bo.shet), meaning "shame." These terms specify the deliberate nature of the scheme to bring dishonor upon the ruler's own house.
The thread — The pattern of forfeiting one's life through violent ambition recurs in 2 Kings 9:26, where blood guilt demands direct repayment, and in Nahum 1:14, where cutting off a lineage functions as divine judgment. Numbers 16:38 similarly connects sin to the forfeiture of one's own life.
Why it lands — The text states that schemes built on exploitation will ultimately produce shame for the architect's household and cost him his life. It requires the reader to acknowledge that human strategy cannot override the consequence of violent gain.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 9:26 ‘As surely as I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons yesterday, declares the LORD, so will I repay you on this plot of ground, declares the LORD.’ Now then, according to the word of the LORD, pick him up and throw him on the plot of ground.”
- Nahum 1:14 The LORD has issued a command concerning you, O Nineveh: “There will be no descendants to carry on your name. I will cut off the carved image and cast idol from the house of your gods; I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.”
- Numbers 16:38 As for the censers of those who sinned at the cost of their own lives, hammer them into sheets to overlay the altar, for these were presented before the LORD, and so have become holy. They will serve as a sign to the Israelites.”
- 1 Kings 2:23 Then King Solomon swore by the LORD: “May God punish me, and ever so severely, if Adonijah has not made this request at the expense of his life.
- 2 Kings 10:7 And when the letter arrived, they took the sons of the king and slaughtered all seventy of them. They put their heads in baskets and sent them to Jehu at Jezreel.
- Proverbs 1:18 But they lie in wait for their own blood; they ambush their own lives.
- Proverbs 8:36 But he who fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”
- Isaiah 14:20 You will not join them in burial, since you have destroyed your land and slaughtered your own people. The offspring of the wicked will never again be mentioned.
- Isaiah 33:11 You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble. Your breath is a fire that will consume you.
- Jeremiah 22:30 This is what the LORD says: “Enroll this man as childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime. None of his descendants will prosper to sit on the throne of David or to rule again in Judah.”