Habakkuk Chapters

Why Do You Make Me See Injustice?

1 | • ¹This is the message and the vision of Habakkuk, the prophet.

²O Lord, how long will I cry for help while you do not listen to me? I denounce the oppression, and you do not save.

³Why do you make me see injustice?

Are you pleased to look at tyranny? All I see is outrage, violence, and quarrels.

⁴That is why the law has been put aside, and just decrees are no longer issued. The wicked overrule the upright, and they receive crooked sentences.

First Reply

⁵Look, traitors, and pay attention; be amazed and astounded, for I will do something you would not believe if you were told in your own days.

⁶I am going to call the Chaldeans terrifying and violent people who raid the ends of the earth to seize the lands of others. ⁷I call a terrible and dangerous nation that obeys no other law but its own will. ⁸Their horses are speedier than leopards, fiercer than wolves on the plain; their riders gallop on and come from afar; they swoop like the eagle descending on its prey.

⁹When they launch themselves for an attack, pushed forward by the desert wind, they round up prisoners like sand. ¹⁰These people make fun of kings and laugh at princes; they make light of fortified cities, for they build up an embankment and seize them. ¹¹Thus they come and go like the wind! Their strength is their god! 

¹²But you, are you not the Lord from past ages? You, my holy God, cannot die. You have set these people to serve your justice and made them firm as a rock to fulfill your punishment.

¹³The Lord, your eyes are too pure to tolerate wickedness, and you cannot look on oppression. Why do you look on treacherous people and watch silently while the evildoer swallows up one better than himself?

¹⁴You treat human beings like the fish in the sea, like reptiles who are nobody’s concern. ¹⁵This nation catches all on its hook, pulls them out with its net, and piles them up in its dragnet. ¹⁶Pleased and delighted at their catch, they offer sacrifices to their net and burn incense to their dragnets since these supplied them with abundant fish and food. ¹⁷Will they continue, then, to constantly empty their nets, slaughtering nations without mercy?

Second Reply: The Upright Will Live by His Faithfulness

2 | • ¹I will stand in my watchtower and take up position on my battlements; I will see what he replies if there is an answer to my question.

²Then the Lord answered me and said,

“Write down the vision, inscribe it on tablets so it can be easily read; 3 since this is a vision for an appointed time, it will not fail but will be fulfilled in due time. If it is delayed, wait for it, for it will come and not be deferred. Look:

⁴I don’t look with favor on the one who gives way; the upright, on the other hand, will live by his faithfulness.”

⁵The grasping conqueror is always ready to devour; he enlarges his mouth like the netherworld; he is as insatiable as death; he seizes on all the nations and monopolizes all the people for himself. ⁶But will not all the people mock him, as with one voice? Will they not write fierce satires to show him up? They will say,

Against the Oppressor

•  Woe to him who amasses what is not his and fills himself with extorted pledges. ⁷Your creditors will come suddenly; your money collectors will awaken and take away all your goods.

⁸Since you have plundered so many nations, shedding blood, stripping the land, their cities, and homes, all the remaining nations will turn on you.

⁹Woe to him who raises his house on unjust profits and fixes his nest so high that he thinks he can escape misfortune!

¹⁰You have willed the disgrace of your house; you draw evil on your head. ¹¹The very stones of your walls cry out against you, and the rafters reply from the roof.

¹²Woe to the one who builds a city on bloody foundations and sets up a town employing evil! ¹³Has the Lord of hosts not willed that the work of the nations go to the fire and the people toil for nothing?

(¹⁴For as the waters fill the sea, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.) ¹⁵Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors and drugs them to make them drunk so that everyone looks at their nakedness! ¹⁶This will bring you more shame than glory. You will also drink and uncover your foreskin. The cup turns over in the Lord’s hand and pours out onto you: disgrace will swallow your glory.

¹⁷The violence you did in Lebanon will befall you, and the animals will devour you since you slaughtered human beings, destroyed the country with its cities, and put an end to all who lived there.

¹⁸What use is a statue? Why do the sculptors make them? Why these images and deceiving answers? Why do their makers trust them and produce mute idols? ¹⁹Woe to the one who says to a piece of wood, “Wake up,” and to a dumb stone, “Get up.” Can it give any answer? Even though it is plated with gold and silver, there is not a single breath of life in it.

²⁰But the Lord lives in his holy temple: let the whole earth be silent before him!

Prayer of Habakkuk

3 | • ¹Prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet. To the tune of a lament.

²I have heard, the Lord, of your renown;

I stand in awe of your work, O Lord.

In the middle of the years, make it known;

in your wrath even, remember mercy.

³God comes from Teman,

the Holy One from Mount Paran.

His glory shrouds the heavens,

his praise fills the earth,

⁴his splendor is like the daylight

with rays flashing from his hand,

radiating from his hidden power.

⁵Pestilence goes before him,

And plague follows close behind.

⁶He stands, and the earth sways;

he looks, and the nations tremble.

The ancient mountains crumble,

and the time-honored hills collapse.

⁷I saw the tents of Cushan in distress

and Midian's pavilions in anguish.

⁸Was your anger against the rivers, Lord?

Was your wrath against the sea

that you drive your steeds

with your invincible chariots?

⁹You bare and ready your bow

and set upon it your arrow.

With rivers, you cleave the earth.

¹⁰At your sight, the mountains writhe.

Torrents of water ragingly sweep by,

the deep roaring lifting its waves high.

¹¹The sun and moon stood still

at the glint of your flying arrows,

at the gleam of your flashing spears.

¹²You stride the earth in wrath;

you trample the nations in rage.

¹³You came out to redeem your people,

to save your anointed one—

you crush the head of the wicked,

you lay him bare from head to foot.

¹⁴You pierce with your shafts his warriors,

who came like a whirlwind to scatter us in joy,

to devour the wretched quietly.

¹⁵You trample the waters with your horses,

amid the churning of the great seas.

¹⁶I heard, and my heart pounded,

my lips quivered at the sound.

Decay crept into my bones;

my legs tottered under my body.

Yet I wait confidently for the day of distress

when we face the people coming against us.

¹⁷For though the fig trees blossom not,

nor grapes be on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though the flock be lost from the fold,

and the herd be gone from the stalls,

¹⁸yet in the Lord will I rejoice,

in God, my savior, will I exult.

¹⁹My Lord God is my stronghold;

he makes my feet as fleeting as the hinds;

he steadies my steps upon the heights.

For the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.