Habakkuk 1:1-17
1 The boding that the prophet Hambakuk beheld.
2 How long, Jehovah, shall I have been clamoring and you not listen, shall I cry foul play and you not interfere?
3 * why do you show me villainy and look on at mischief, and I am confronted with rapine and outrage, and disputes break out and raise quarrels?
4 * Therefore religion is numbed, and justice comes out nevermore, because a criminal brings numbers against the one who has right on his side and therefore justice comes out on the wrong track.
5 * See among the nations, look, be mystified, be mazed: for he is doing a deed in your days that you will not believe when it is told;
6 *** for here he is setting in motion the Chaldeans, the truculent and hasty nation that goes through the length and breadth of earth to take possession of abodes that do not belong to it.
7 * It is terrible and formidable; it looks to itself for its laws and its standing;
8 * and its ponies are swifter than leopards and brisker than evening wolves, and its horsemen come from far, they fly. Like vultures hurrying to eat,
9 * it all comes for outrage; their massed faces are toward the east; and it has gathered up slaves like the sand,
10 while it gibes at kings and takes potentates for its butt; it laughs at every fortification and has piled up earth and taken it,
11 ** then taken breath and passed on, and made this strength of its own its god.
12 ** Are you not from of old, Jehovah? God of my devotion, you will not die. Jehovah, you established him for judgment and planted him as a rock for correction.
13 * Why should you, too clean-eyed to see wickedness and unable to look at mischief, look on at faithless men, lie still while a rascal chews up a more honest man,
14 * and have made mankind like fish in the sea, like insects without a government?
15 * he brings them all up with a hook, hauls them in in his net, gathers them in his seine. Therefore he is glad and gay;
16 therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his seine, because by those his takings are fat and his diet rich;
17 is he therefore to empty his net and be always killing nations unsparingly?
Footnotes
^ Hab 1:3 Var. and I look on
^ 1:4 Lit. a criminal surrounds the one
^ 1:5 Var. I am doing
^ 1:6 Codd. I am setting
^ 1:6 Conj. the Macedonians or omit the name of the nation
^ 1:6 Lit. goes by the breadths of earth
^ 1:7 Lit. its right and its standing go out from it
^ 1:8 Codd. and its horses curvet, its horses come from far (var. they come from far)
^ 1:9 (their massed faces are toward the east) Susp.
^ 1:11 Unc.; susp.
^ 1:11 Codd. passed on and become guilty, whose strength is its goad
^ 1:12 Codd.* my God, my Holy One, we shall (var. you will)
^ 1:12 (end) Susp.
^ 1:13 (chews up) Lit. swallows
^ 1:14 Lit. without a ruler
^ 1:15 Or with a spear
