Habakkuk 1

1The burden that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

2How long, Yahweh, must I cry out while you do not hear? I cry to you of violence, but you do not save.

3Why do you make me see evil and trouble? You look on destruction and violence before me; strife and contention rise up.

4Therefore the law fails, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice prevails perverted.

5Look among the nations and observe; be astonished and marvel, for I am doing a work in your days that you will not believe even if it is declared.

6Indeed, look, I am rousing the Chaldeans, the fierce and impetuous nation advancing across the earth's broad reaches to seize habitations not their own.

7They are terrible and dreadful; their judgment and dignity arise from themselves.

8Their horses outrun leopards and grow fiercer than evening wolves, while their horsemen press ahead—yes, their horsemen come from afar, flying like an eagle hastening to devour.

9All come for violence, their faces devouring as they press eastward, gathering captives like sand.

10He scorns kings, and princes are a scorn to him; he laughs at every fortress, heaping up dust and capturing it.

11Then his spirit changes, he passes by and becomes guilty—this one whose strength is his god.

12Aren't you from of old, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Yahweh, you set him for judgment; Rock, you established him for correction.

13Your eyes are too pure to see evil, unable to look on iniquity—why do you gaze at traitors, stay silent while the wicked devours one more righteous than himself?

14You make humans like fish in the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them?

15He hauls them all up with the hook, drags them in his net, and gathers them in his dragnet; thus he rejoices and exults.

16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his portion is fat and his food rich.

17Will he therefore draw his net continually to kill nations without pity?