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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?