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Habakkuk

1The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

The Prophet’s Complaint

² O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
   and you will not save?
³ Why do you make me see wrongdoing
   and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
   strife and contention arise.
⁴ So the law becomes slack
   and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
   therefore judgement comes forth perverted.

⁵ Look 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.
⁶ For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
   that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
   to seize dwellings not their own.
⁷ Dread and fearsome are they;
   their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
⁸ Their 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.
⁹ They all come for violence,
   with faces pressing^* forward;
   they gather captives like sand.
¹⁰ At kings they scoff,
   and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress,
   and heap up earth to take it.
¹¹ Then they sweep by like the wind;
   they transgress and become guilty;
   their own might is their god!

¹² Are you not from of old,
   O Lord my God, my Holy One?
   You^* shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
   and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
¹³ Your 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?
¹⁴ You have made people like the fish of the sea,
   like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵ The 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.
¹⁶ Therefore he sacrifices to his net
   and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish,
   and his food is rich.
¹⁷ Is he then to keep on emptying his net,
   and destroying nations without mercy?

God’s Reply to the Prophet’s Complaint

2I will stand at my watch-post,
   and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
   and what he^* will answer concerning my complaint.
² Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
   make it plain on tablets,
   so that a runner may read it.
³ For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
   it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
   it will surely come, it will not delay.
⁴ Look at the proud!
   Their spirit is not right in them,
   but the righteous live by their faith.^*
5 Moreover, wealth^* is treacherous;
   the arrogant do not endure.
They open their throats wide as Sheol;
   like Death they never have enough.
They gather all nations for themselves,
   and collect all peoples as their own.

The Woes of the Wicked

6 Shall not everyone taunt such people and, with mocking riddles, say about them,
‘Alas for you who heap up what is not your own!’
   How long will you load yourselves with goods taken in pledge?
⁷ Will not your own creditors suddenly rise,
   and those who make you tremble wake up?
   Then you will be booty for them.
⁸ Because you have plundered many nations,
   all that survive of the peoples shall plunder you—
because of human bloodshed, and violence to the earth,
   to cities and all who live in them.

⁹ ‘Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses,
   setting your nest on high
   to be safe from the reach of harm!’
¹⁰ You have devised shame for your house
   by cutting off many peoples;
   you have forfeited your life.
¹¹ The very stones will cry out from the wall,
   and the plaster^* will respond from the woodwork.