Habakkuk 1

1The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

2How long, Yahweh, must I cry for help, and you do not listen? I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save.

3Why do you make me see wrongdoing, and why do you look on at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict rises up.

4So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. The wicked hem in the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

5Look among the nations and watch—be astonished, be amazed! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.

6For I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation, who march across the breadth of the earth to seize dwelling places that are not their own.

7They are dreadful and fearsome; their justice and their dignity come from themselves.

8Their horses are swifter than leopards and fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their horsemen gallop on; their horsemen come from far away. They fly like an eagle swooping to devour.

9They all come for violence; their faces are set forward. They gather captives like sand.

10They mock kings, and rulers are a joke to them. They laugh at every fortress; they heap up earth and capture it.

11Then they sweep past like the wind and go on—guilty men, whose own strength is their god.

12Are you not from everlasting, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Yahweh, you have appointed them to execute judgment; you, Rock, have established them to punish.

13Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing. Why then do you look on the treacherous and keep silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they are?

14You have made people like the fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler.

15He pulls them all up with a hook; he drags them away in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. So he rejoices and is glad.

16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by them he lives in luxury and enjoys the richest food.

17Will he therefore keep emptying his net and go on killing nations without mercy?