Habakkuk 1

²O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,

and you will not listen?

Or cry to you “Violence!”

and you will not save?

³Why do you make me see wrongdoing

and look at trouble?

Destruction and violence are before me;

strife and contention arise.

⁴So the law becomes slack

and justice never prevails.

The wicked surround the righteous—

therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

⁵Look 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.

⁶For I am rousing the Chaldeans,

that fierce and impetuous nation,

who march through the breadth of the earth

to seize dwellings not their own.

⁷Dread and fearsome are they;

their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.

⁸Their 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.

⁹They all come for violence,

with faces pressing forward;

they gather captives like sand.

¹⁰At kings they scoff,

and of rulers they make sport.

They laugh at every fortress,

and heap up earth to take it.

¹¹Then they sweep by like the wind;

they transgress and become guilty;

their own might is their god!

¹²Are you not from of old,

O Lord my God, my Holy One?

You shall not die.

O Lord, you have marked them for judgment;

and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.

¹³Your 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?

¹⁴You have made people like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵The 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.

¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net

and makes offerings to his seine;

for by them his portion is lavish,

and his food is rich.

¹⁷Is he then to keep on emptying his net,

and destroying nations without mercy?