1The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.
2How long, Yahweh, shall I cry for help and you do not hear? I call out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save.
3Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you look upon trouble? Devastation and violence are before me; there is strife, and contention arises.
4Therefore the law grows numb, and justice never goes forth; for the wicked surrounds the righteous, therefore justice goes forth perverted.
5Look among the nations and observe; be utterly astonished! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if it were told.
6For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
7Dreadful and fearsome is he; from himself his justice and his dignity go forth.
8Swifter than leopards are his horses, keener than wolves at evening; his horsemen charge, his horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swooping to devour.
9All of them come for violence; the direction of their faces is forward, and he gathers captives like sand.
10He himself mocks kings, and rulers are a laughingstock to him; he laughs at every fortress, for he heaps up dirt and captures it.
11Then he sweeps on like the wind and passes over — and he is guilty, this one whose strength is his god.
12Are you not from of old, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. Yahweh, you have appointed him for judgment, and you, O Rock, have established him for correction.
13Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you are unable to gaze upon trouble. Why do you gaze upon the treacherous and stay silent when the wicked swallows one more righteous than he?
14You have made humanity like the fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them.
15All of them he brings up with a hook; he drags them off in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.
16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by them his portion is rich and his food fat.
17Shall he therefore keep emptying his net, and slay nations continually without pity?
Open in the interactive reader →