Therefore he sacrifices to his net
Habakkuk 1:16
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
Last week we saw how Habakkuk compares people to fish and their Chaldean attackers to fishermen out to catch them. They get rich off the plunder. What does a life of luxury look like in the Bible?
A Rich Life
I want to focus on the final two lines of verse 16. More literally, it says, “For in them his portion is שָׁמֵן (shamen) and his food is בָּרִיא (ba’ri).” English translations give a good general sense of wealth and prosperity, but I want to dive into the nuances of these two words. They both carry the concept of being rich (like a rich dessert) or fat.
The Western world considers being fat as bad and unhealthy. Being skinny is the ideal. This is not the case everywhere. When food is scarce, being fat is considered a blessing because it means you have enough food. Contrast sitting back and relaxing in luxury rather than toiling in hard labor every day on meager meals. In the ancient world, you were blessed if you had those extra pounds!
For example, think of Daniel and his friends in exile in Babylon. As they began their training, they ran into a problem: they could not eat the king’s food in good conscience. They requested to eat only vegetables and water for ten days as a test. “At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter (ba’ri) in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food” (Daniel 1:15). As a result of their diet, they looked healthier and gained more weight than the others!
The Blessing of Bounty
As in our passage in Habakkuk, “fatness” goes beyond people. Food and even the land are described as “fat”, meaning fertile or bountiful. For instance, when Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, Pharaoh saw in a dream seven plump (ba’ri) cows and seven plump (ba’ri) heads of grain (Genesis 41:2, 5).
The land of Israel is called a rich land multiple times. Isaac blessed Jacob with “the fatness (mishman, a related noun) of the earth” (Genesis 27:28). In Jacob’s blessing over his son Asher, he predicted that his “food shall be rich (shamen)” (Genesis 49:20). When Moses sent the spies to explore the land, he asked them to report on what they saw, including “whether the land is rich (shamen) or poor” (Numbers 13:20). In Nehemiah, they recount what God had done for them, bringing them into the “rich (shamen) land” (Nehemiah 9:25, 35). Isaiah promises that when the people turn back to the Lord, he will bless their crops, “which will be rich and plenteous (shamen)” (Isaiah 30:23).
The word shemen, oil (particularly olive oil), occurs a couple hundred times through the Bible. Rich olive oil remains a staple of the Mediterranean diet from Biblical times down to today. When Moses blessed Asher, he said, “let him dip his foot in oil (shemen)” (Deuteronomy 33:24).
Fat and Lazy
While fatness has a sense of prosperity and fertility, it can also have a negative sense. Before Moses died, God gave him a song to sing to the people, predicting how they would fall away. In it, he says:
But Jeshurun grew fat (shamen), and kicked;
Deuteronomy 32:15
you grew fat (shamen), stout, and sleek;
then he forsook God who made him
and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.
Jeshurun is a name for Israel, meaning “straight one”. When Israel grew fat (prosperous, wealthy, lazy), they forsook God. Prosperity is the unfortunate enemy of faith. It bends the straight out of alignment.
We see this happening in the book of Judges soon after the conquest of the land. After turning from the Lord, they were oppressed by Eglon, the king of Moab, who was described as “a very fat (ba’ri) man” (Judges 3:17). Ehud killed Eglon and led Israel to slay “10,000 of the Moabites, all strong (shamen), able-bodied men” (Judges 3:29). Is it a coincidence that the first nation to oppress them has a very fat king with fat (robust) soldiers?
The Fat Oppressors
Things got worse, however. When Eli the priest oversaw the tabernacle, his sons abused their positions as priests. Because Eli turned a blind eye to their actions, a prophet came to Eli, exclaiming, “Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening (bara, verb form of ba’ri) yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” (1 Samuel 2:29). When leaders are more concerned with their own prosperity than the well-being of others, God notices.
Ezekiel 34 uses the metaphor of shepherds with their flocks, representing Israel’s leaders over the people. The shepherds “slaughter the fat (ba’ri) ones” (Ezekiel 34:3). They don’t care for the flock, leading to their scattering. Therefore, God will shepherd the flock himself, searching for the lost sheep to bring them back, “and on rich (shamen) pasture they shall feed” (Ezekiel 34:14). “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat (shamen) and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.” (Ezekiel 34:16). God will also “judge between the fat (ba’ri) sheep and the lean sheep” (Ezekiel 34:20).
When one grows fat and prosperous at the expense of others, this displeases God.
To Ponder…
How has God blessed you? You may not consider yourself rich, but consider that the conveniences of the modern world today would amaze kings just a few centuries ago. Take some time to thank God for how he has blessed you.
How have the luxuries of our world led us astray? In what ways have we grown rich at others’ expense? How have you contributed to the problem, and what do you need to change?
What does it look like to live a rich life which pleases the Lord?