1 The message seen by the prophet Habakkuk.
2 How long, Lord , have I cried out
and without you hearing me!
I cry to you, “Violence!,”
but you do not help.
3 Why do you make me look upon wickedness
and behold trouble?
Destruction and violence are before my eyes,
and fighting and quarrelling.
4 Therefore law is relaxed,
and justice is never rendered;
for the wicked surround the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
5 Look around dealers of treason, look well,
shudder and be shocked.
For I am about to do a work in your days;
you will not believe it when it is told.
6 For I am about to raise up the Chaldeans,
a nation grim and quick of action
who go through the whole breadth of the earth
to possess dwelling places not their own.
7 Awful and terrible are they.
They write their own rules.
8 Their horses are swifter than leopards,
and their riders quicker than the wolves of evening.
From afar they come swooping down,
like the eagle which hastens to devour.
9 They all come to do violence,
the direction of their faces is straight ahead,
and they gather up captives like sand.
10 At kings they scoff,
and princes are sport to them.
They laugh at every fortress.
and heap up earth and take it.
11 Then they sweep on like the wind,
Their strength is their god.
12 Are you not eternal, Lord ,
my holy One, who does not die?
Lord you have appointed them for judgment,
you have established them for correction, my rock;
13 With eyes too pure to see evil,
can you not not look on iniquity?
Why do you regard the treacherous in silence,
while the wicked swallows the upright?
14 You have made people like the fish of the sea,
like reptiles that have no ruler.
15 The wicked sweep them all into their nets,
and gather them into their drag-nets.
16 Therefore they sacrifice to their net,
and burn offerings to their drag-net;
for by their nets are their portions generous,
and their food is rich.
17 Will they empty their nets continually,
to slaughter nations unpityingly?