Habakkuk 2:5

Yea, also.... — Better, Add, too, that wine is treacherous (and that) he is a braggart and cannot be quiet, whose appetite is large as (that of) Hades. The rest of the verse illustrates this last-named characteristic — restless, rapacious ambition. Two more charges are thus added to the gravamen of Habakkuk 2:4. Not only are the Chaldæans arrogant, but drunkards, and insatiably covetous. The former charge is expressed in a kind of proverb, “(It is a known fact that) wine is treacherous.” Perhaps the aphorisms of Proverbs 20:1 are in Habakkuk’s mind: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is noisy.” The other charge, that of rapacity, also recalls the Book of Proverbs, where the insatiable appetite of death and Hades is twice described. (See Proverbs 27:20; Proverbs 30:16.) The charge of drunkenness is illustrated in Rawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, vol. 2, 504-507.