Habakkuk 1:1-17
1 The pronouncement that Ha·bakʹkuk the prophet visioned:
2 How long, O Jehovah, must I cry for help, and you do not hear?+ [How long] shall I call to you for aid from violence, and you do not save?+
3 Why is it that you make me see what is hurtful, and you keep looking upon mere trouble? And [why] are despoiling and violence in front of me, and [why] does quarreling occur, and [why] is strife carried?+
4 Therefore law grows numb, and justice never goes forth.+ Because the wicked one is surrounding the righteous one, for that reason justice goes forth crooked.+
5 “See, YOU people, among the nations, and look on, and stare in amazement at one another.+ Be amazed; for there is an activity that one is carrying on* in YOUR days, [which] YOU people will not believe although it is related.*+
6 For here I am raising up the Chal·deʹans,+ the nation bitter and impetuous, which is going to the wide-open places of earth in order to take possession of residences not belonging to it.+
7 Frightful and fear-inspiring it is. From itself its own justice and its own dignity go forth.+
8 And its horses have proved swifter than leopards, and they have proved fiercer than evening wolves.+ And its steeds have pawed the ground, and from far away its own steeds* come. They fly like the eagle speeding to eat [something].+
9 In its entirety it comes for mere violence.+ The assembling of their faces is as [the] east wind,*+ and it gathers up captives just like the sand.
10 And for its part, it jeers kings themselves, and high officials are something laughable to it.+ For its part, it laughs even at every fortified place,+ and it piles up dust and captures it.
11 At that time it will certainly move onward [like] wind* and will pass through and will actually become guilty.+ This its power is due to its god.”*+
12 Are you not from long ago, O Jehovah?+ O my God,* my Holy One, you do not die.*+ O Jehovah, for a judgment you have set it; and, O Rock,+ for a reproving+ you have founded it.
13 You are too pure in eyes to see what is bad; and to look on trouble you are not able.+ Why is it that you look on those dealing treacherously,+ that you keep silent when someone wicked swallows up someone more righteous than he is?+
14 And [why] do you make earthling man like the fishes of the sea, like creeping things over whom no one is ruling?+
15 All these he has brought up with a mere fishhook;+ he drags them away in his dragnet, and he gathers them in his fishing net.+ That is why he rejoices and is joyful.+
16 That is why he offers sacrifice to his dragnet and makes sacrificial smoke to his fishing net; for by them his portion is well oiled, and his food is healthful.*+
17 Is that why he will empty out his dragnet, and does he have to kill nations constantly, while he shows no compassion?+
Footnotes
^ “One is carrying on,” M; LXXSy, “I am carrying on.”
^ “Behold it, you scorners, and look, and wonder marvelously, and vanish away, because I am working a work in your days, which you will by no means believe even if anyone relates it in detail,” LXX. See Ac 13:41.
^ Or, “horsemen.”
^ “As [the] east wind,” T and Habakkuk Commentary of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QpHab) discovered in 1947; M, “to the east”; Vg, “as a burning wind.”
^ “To its god.” Heb., leʼ·lo·hohʹ; Gr., the·oiʹ; Lat., deʹi.
^ “Wind.” Heb., ruʹach; Gr., pneuʹma; Lat., spiʹri·tus.
^ “My God.” Heb., ʼElo·haiʹ, pl.
^ “You do not die.” Heb., loʼ ta·muthʹ. This was the original reading, but the Sopherim changed it to read loʼ na·muthʹ, “we shall not die”; T, “your word [Aram., mehm·rakhʹ] will stand (endure) to times indefinite.” See App 2B.
^ Or, “fat.”
