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1The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. ²O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? ³Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. ⁴So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

⁵Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. ⁶For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. ⁷Dread and fearsome are they; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves. ⁸Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge. Their horsemen come from far away; they fly like an eagle swift to devour. ⁹They all come for violence, with faces pressing forward; they gather captives like sand. ¹⁰At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress, and heap up earth to take it. ¹¹Then they sweep by like the wind; they transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god!

¹²Are you not from of old, O Lord my God, my Holy One? You shall not die. O Lord, you have marked them for judgment; and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment. ¹³Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they? ¹⁴You have made people like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. ¹⁵The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his seine; so he rejoices and exults. ¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his seine; for by them his portion is lavish, and his food is rich. ¹⁷Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy?