The Book of Habakkuk

Chapter 1
1 The load which Habakkuk the prophet perceived:
2 How long O Yahweh, must I implore, and You are not hearkening? I am crying out to You of violence, and You are not saving!
3 Why are You showing me lawlessness, And at misery are You looking? Devastation and violence are in front of me, And there is contention, And quarreling, it is being sustained.
4 Therefore the law is torpid, And right judgment is not going forth permanently, For the wicked one is compassing about the righteous one; Therefore tortuous judgment is going forth.
5 See, treacherous ones, and look, And be amazed, be stunned, For I effect a deed in your days You would not believe though it were being related.
6 For, behold Me raising the Chaldeans, That bitter and hasty nation, Going the widths of the earth to tenant tabernacles not his own.
7 Dreadful and fearful is he! His judgment and his dignity go forth from him.
8 His horses are fleeter than leopards And are sharper than evening wolves; His horsemen rush about; His horsemen are coming from afar; They are flying like a vulture that hurries to devour.
9 All of them are coming for violence; In unison, their faces turn forward, And he is gathering up captives like sand.
10 He is scoffing at kings, And chancellors are objects of sport to him; He is making sport of every fortress And heaps up soil and seizes it.
11 Then he passes on like the wind, And he is trespassing and becomes guilty, This one whose vigor is his eloah.
12 Are You not from aforetime, O Yahweh? My Eloah, my Holy One, You shall not die. O Yahweh, You have placed him for judgment, And, O Rock, You have founded him for correction.
13 You are of cleaner eyes than to see evil, And to look at misery You are not able. Why are You looking at the treacherous, Are silent when the wicked person is swallowing up one more righteous than he?
14 You are making humanity like the fish of the sea, Like the moving creature with no ruler over it.
15 All of them he brings up with a fishhook; He is impounding them in his seine net And is gathering them in his dragnet; Therefore he is rejoicing and exulting.
16 Therefore he is sacrificing to his seine net And is fuming incense to his dragnet, For his portion is stout by them, and his food is plump.
17 Will he therefore keep on emptying his seine net, And not be sparing in killing the nations continually?

Chapter 2
1 I am standing on my guard, And I am stationing myself on the siege work; I am watching to see what He shall speak to me, And what I shall reply concerning His correcting of me.
2 Then Yahweh is answering me and saying, Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, That he may run who is reading it.
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; And it shall bud at the end, and it shall not prove a lie; If it be dallying, tarry for it, For it shall come, yea come, and it shall not be late.
4 Behold, it is made presumptuous: his soul is not upright in him. Yet the just one by his faith shall live.
5 And, indeed, seeing that the wine is treacherous; The master is ostentatious, and he does not lie still, Who widens his soul’s desire like the unseen, And he is like death and is not satisfied. He is gathering to himself all the nations, And he is convening to himself all the peoples.
6 Shall not these, all of them, take up a proverb against him, And mocking enigmas for him? And they shall say: Woe to the one increasing what is not his! How long? And making himself heavy with security!
7 Shall not those paying you interest rise in an instant, And those stirring about for you awake? Then you will become robbed goods for them.
8 Seeing that you loot many nations, All the rest of the peoples shall loot you Because of human bloodshed and violence to the land, To the town and all dwelling in it.
9 Woe to him gaining an evil gain for his house In order to place his nest in the height, To be rescued from the clutch of evil!
10 You counsel shame for your house By cutting away many peoples, And by sinning against your soul,
11 For the stone from the sidewall, it shall cry out, And the knot from the timber, it shall answer it.
12 Woe to him who is building a city by bloodshed, And establishes a town by iniquity!
13 Behold, is it not from Yahweh of hosts That peoples shall labor only for fire, And folk shall faint only for nought?
14 For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of Yahweh’s glory, As the waters are covering the sea.
15 Woe to him giving his associate to drink, from the basin of your fury, And, indeed, making them drunk in order to look on their nakedness.
16 You are surfeited with dishonor rather than glory; You, moreover, drink and be shown uncircumcised. The cup of Yahweh’s right hand shall come around to you, And ignominy cover over your glory.
17 For the violence to Lebanon, it shall cover you, And the devastation of beasts, it shall dismay you, Because of human bloodshed and violence to the land, To the town and all dwelling in it.
18 What does a carving benefit, that its former has carved it, A molten image and a false apparition, That the former of its form trusts in it, When he makes mute, useless idols?
19 Woe to him saying to the wood, Awake! To the still stone, Rouse! It is an apparition; Behold it is superimposed with gold and silver, Yet there is no spirit at all within it.
20 Yet Yahweh is in His holy temple! Be quelled, all the earth, before Him!

Chapter 3
1 A Prayer of Habakkuk, the Prophet Concerning Overtakings
2 O Yahweh, I hear the report of You; I fear, O Yahweh, Your deeds; Within the years revive them; Within the years make them known; In disturbance remember compassion.
3 Eloah, He is coming from Teman, And the Holy One from Mount Paran. Interlude His splendor covers the heavens, And His praise, it fills the earth.
4 The brightness is arising like the lightning; He has gleams shining from His hand, Where is the hiding of His strength.
5 Before Him the plague is going, And the sirocco is going forth at His feet.
6 He stands and is measuring the earth; He looks and is making the nations leap up. And the mountain ranges of long ago are scattered; The eonian hills bow down; His goings are eonian.
7 I saw the tents of Cushan under lawlessness; The tent sheets of the land of Midian were disturbed.
8 Was Yahweh hot against the streams? Or was Your anger against the streams? Or was Your rage against the sea, That You were riding on Your horses, Your chariots of salvation?
9 Your bow was made naked, yea naked; Oaths of rods were the words. Interlude You were rending the earth with streams;
10 The mountains saw You and were travailing; The storm of waters, it overflowed; The abyss sounded forth its voice; It lifted its hands on high.
11 Sun and moon stood still in their residence, At the light of Your arrows as they flew, At the brightness of the flashing of Your spear.
12 With indignation You are marching through the earth; In anger You are threshing the nations.
13 You go forth for the salvation of Your people, For the salvation of Your anointed ones. You transfix the head of the house of the wicked one, Making him naked from the foundation unto the neck. Interlude
14 You pierce the head of his hordes with his own rods; They were tempestuous, seeking to scatter me; Their gladness was as though to devour the humble in concealment.
15 You tread in the sea with Your horses, The turbid mass of vast waters.
16 I heard, and my belly was disturbed; At the sound my lips quivered; Rottenness entered into my bones, And under me I was disturbed in my progress. I shall wait for the day of distress To come up upon the people who are raiding us.
17 Though the fig tree, it is not budding, And there is no crop on the vines, Though the yield of the olive is emaciated, And the plantations yield no food, Though the flock is severed from the fold, And there is no herd in the paddocks,
18 Yet I shall be joyous in Yahweh; I shall exult in the Elohim of my salvation.
19 Yahweh, my Lord, is my valor, And He will make my feet like hinds’; And on my high-places He is causing me to tread. Permanent, With Accompaniments