1 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.
2 How long, LORD, must I call for help while you do not listen? I shout to you, "Violence!" and you do not rescue.
3 Why do you make me look at wickedness, and why do you gaze on misery? Ruin and violence are in front of me; there is quarreling, and conflict springs up.
4 That is why the law goes slack and justice never comes out to win; the wicked hem in the righteous, so justice comes out bent.
5 Look at the nations and observe; be amazed, be stunned! For in your own days I am carrying out a deed you would not believe if someone told you.
6 Look, I am stirring up the Chaldeans, a fierce and impetuous nation that sweeps across the wide spaces of the earth to seize homes that belong to others.
7 It is terrifying and dreadful; it makes its own law and sets up its own honor.
8 Its horses are faster than leopards, keener than wolves at dusk; its steeds paw the ground, and its riders come from far off; they swoop like an eagle rushing to feed.
9 Every one of them comes bent on violence; their faces are set like the east wind, and they scoop up captives like sand.
10 Kings are something it mocks, and rulers something to joke about; it laughs at every stronghold, throws up a ramp of earth and captures it.
11 Then it rushes past like the wind and moves on, and it becomes guilty, the one whose strength is his god.
12 Are you not from of old, LORD, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. LORD, you have set them in place to carry out judgment; you, my Rock, have appointed them to bring correction.
13 Your eyes are too pure to watch evil; you cannot bear to look at wrongdoing. Why then do you watch the treacherous and say nothing while the wicked devours someone more righteous than himself?
14 You have made people like fish in the sea, like creatures that swarm with no ruler over them.
15 He hauls them all up with a hook, sweeps them away in his net, collects them in his seine; and so he is happy and glad.
16 So he offers sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his seine, since they bring him a fat share and choice food.
17 Is he to go on emptying his net, never sparing, always slaughtering nations?