¹The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

Habakkuk's Complaint

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

and you will not hear?

Or cry to you “Violence!”

and you will not save?

³Why do you make me see iniquity,

and why do you idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me;

strife and contention arise.

⁴So the law is paralyzed,

and justice never goes forth.

For the wicked surround the righteous;

so justice goes forth perverted.

The Lord's Answer

⁵“Look among the nations, and see;

wonder and be astounded.

For I am doing a work in your days

that you would not believe if told.

⁶For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,

that bitter and hasty nation,

who march through the breadth of the earth,

to seize dwellings not their own.

⁷They are dreaded and fearsome;

their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.

⁸Their horses are swifter than leopards,

more fierce than the evening wolves;

their horsemen press proudly on.

Their horsemen come from afar;

they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

⁹They all come for violence,

all their faces forward.

They gather captives like sand.

¹⁰At kings they scoff,

and at rulers they laugh.

They laugh at every fortress,

for they pile up earth and take it.

¹¹Then they sweep by like the wind and go on,

guilty men, whose own might is their god!”

Habakkuk's Second Complaint

¹²Are you not from everlasting,

O Lord my God, my Holy One?

We shall not die.

O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment,

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

¹³You who are of purer eyes than to see evil

and cannot look at wrong,

why do you idly look at traitors

and remain silent when the wicked swallows up

the man more righteous than he?

¹⁴You make mankind like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵He1 brings all of them up with a hook;

he drags them out with his net;

he gathers them in his dragnet;

so he rejoices and is glad.

¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net

and makes offerings to his dragnet;

for by them he lives in luxury,2

and his food is rich.

¹⁷Is he then to keep on emptying his net

and mercilessly killing nations forever?

¹I will take my stand at my watchpost

and station myself on the tower,

and look out to see what he will say to me,

and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

The Righteous Shall Live by His Faith

²And the Lord answered me:

“Write the vision;

make it plain on tablets,

so he may run who reads it.

³For still the vision awaits its appointed time;

it hastens to the end—it will not lie.

If it seems slow, wait for it;

it will surely come; it will not delay.

⁴“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,

but the righteous shall live by his faith.1

⁵“Moreover, wine2 is a traitor,

an arrogant man who is never at rest.3

His greed is as wide as Sheol;

like death he has never enough.

He gathers for himself all nations

and collects as his own all peoples.”

Woe to the Chaldeans

⁶Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say,

“Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—

for how long?—

and loads himself with pledges!”

⁷Will not your debtors suddenly arise,

and those awake who will make you tremble?

Then you will be spoil for them.

⁸Because you have plundered many nations,

all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you,

for the blood of man and violence to the earth,

to cities and all who dwell in them.

⁹“Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house,

to set his nest on high,

to be safe from the reach of harm!

¹⁰You have devised shame for your house

by cutting off many peoples;

you have forfeited your life.

¹¹For the stone will cry out from the wall,

and the beam from the woodwork respond.

¹²“Woe to him who builds a town with blood

and founds a city on iniquity!

¹³Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts

that peoples labor merely for fire,

and nations weary themselves for nothing?

¹⁴For the earth will be filled

with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

¹⁵“Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—

you pour out your wrath and make them drunk,

in order to gaze at their nakedness!

¹⁶You will have your fill of shame instead of glory.

Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision!

The cup in the Lord's right hand

will come around to you,

and utter shame will come upon your glory!

¹⁷The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,

as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them,

for the blood of man and violence to the earth,

to cities and all who dwell in them.

¹⁸“What profit is an idol

when its maker has shaped it,

a metal image, a teacher of lies?

For its maker trusts in his own creation

when he makes speechless idols!

¹⁹Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake;

to a silent stone, Arise!

Can this teach?

Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,

and there is no breath at all in it.

²⁰But the Lord is in his holy temple;

let all the earth keep silence before him.”

Habakkuk's Prayer

¹A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.

²O Lord, I have heard the report of you,

and your work, O Lord, do I fear.

In the midst of the years revive it;

in the midst of the years make it known;

in wrath remember mercy.

³God came from Teman,

and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah

His splendor covered the heavens,

and the earth was full of his praise.

⁴His brightness was like the light;

rays flashed from his hand;

and there he veiled his power.

⁵Before him went pestilence,

and plague followed at his heels.1

⁶He stood and measured the earth;

he looked and shook the nations;

then the eternal mountains were scattered;

the everlasting hills sank low.

His were the everlasting ways.

⁷I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction;

the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.

⁸Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord?

Was your anger against the rivers,

or your indignation against the sea,

when you rode on your horses,

on your chariot of salvation?

⁹You stripped the sheath from your bow,

calling for many arrows.2 Selah

You split the earth with rivers.

¹⁰The mountains saw you and writhed;

the raging waters swept on;

the deep gave forth its voice;

it lifted its hands on high.

¹¹The sun and moon stood still in their place

at the light of your arrows as they sped,

at the flash of your glittering spear.

¹²You marched through the earth in fury;

you threshed the nations in anger.

¹³You went out for the salvation of your people,

for the salvation of your anointed.

You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,

laying him bare from thigh to neck.3 Selah

¹⁴You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors,

who came like a whirlwind to scatter me,

rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret.

¹⁵You trampled the sea with your horses,

the surging of mighty waters.

¹⁶I hear, and my body trembles;

my lips quiver at the sound;

rottenness enters into my bones;

my legs tremble beneath me.

Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble

to come upon people who invade us.

Habakkuk Rejoices in the Lord

¹⁷Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

¹⁸yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

¹⁹God, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer's;

he makes me tread on my high places.

To the choirmaster: with stringed4 instruments.