Habukkuk 2:5-8

God hates pride and arrogance. 

The Babylonians’ greed is as insatiable as the appetite of death.The Hebrew word used here, mashal, is the common term for a proverb. The taunt song was used as a derogatory proverbial chant against an object of scorn. Your creditors refers to those nations that suffered oppression at the hands of the Babylonians you shall be as plunder for them. Faithlife Bible.

This arrogant and boastful person is a personification of Babylon. The term hell is used here as a personification of death which, like a greedy person, is never satisfied. These peoples of the earth should have been gathered together before the Lord in holy worship; instead, they became morsels for the rapacious appetite of Babylon.

A woe oracle is an oracle of judgment consisting of two parts: a declaration of the wrong and a notice of impending judgment. The judgment usually applies the principle of the law of retaliation: a wrong would come back to haunt the wrongdoer.

The practice of pledging something as a guarantee for repayment was permitted under the Law, but with limitations to ensure the humane treatment of people. NKJ Bible.

Habakkuk 2:5–8 (NKJV)

Woe to the Wicked

⁵ “Indeed, because he transgresses by wine,

He is a proud man,

And he does not stay at home.

Because he enlarges his desire as hell,

And he is like death, and cannot be satisfied,

He gathers to himself all nations

And heaps up for himself all peoples.

⁶ “Will not all these take up a proverb against him,

And a taunting riddle against him, and say,

‘Woe to him who increases

What is not his—how long?

And to him who loads himself with many pledges’?

⁷ Will not your creditors rise up suddenly?

Will they not awaken who oppress you?

And you will become their booty.

⁸ Because you have plundered many nations,

All the remnant of the people shall plunder you,

Because of men’s blood

And the violence of the land and the city,

And of all who dwell in it.

Micah 2:4 (NKJV)

⁴ In that day one shall take up a proverb against you,

And lament with a bitter lamentation, saying:

‘We are utterly destroyed!

He has changed the heritage of my people;

How He has removed it from me!

To a turncoat He has divided our fields.’ ”

Proverbs 27:20 (NKJV)

²⁰ Hell and Destruction are never full;

So the eyes of man are never satisfied.