¹The burden that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

²How long, Yahweh, have I cried for help, and you do not hear? I cry out to you, "Violence!" and you do not save.

³Why do you make me see wickedness and look on trouble? Devastation and violence are before me; strife is there, and contention rises up.

⁴Therefore instruction grows numb, and justice never goes forth; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice goes forth twisted.

⁵See among the nations, and look; be astounded, be astounded! For I am doing a deed in your days that you would not believe if it were told.

⁶For look, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who go through the broad places of the land to take possession of dwellings not their own.

⁷Dreadful and fearsome is it; its justice and its dignity go forth from itself.

⁸Its horses are swifter than leopards and keener than the wolves of evening; its horsemen spring about; its horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle hurrying to devour.

⁹All of it comes for violence; the direction of their faces is eastward; it gathers captives like sand.

¹⁰As for it, it scoffs at kings, and rulers are a laughingstock to it; it laughs at every fortress, heaps up dust, and takes it.

¹¹Then the wind sweeps on and passes over, and he is guilty, this one whose strength is his god.

¹²Are you not from of old, Yahweh my God, my holy one? We will not die. Yahweh, you have appointed it for justice; and you, O Rock, have established it to reprove.

¹³Your eyes are too pure to see evil, and you cannot look at trouble. Why do you look on the treacherous, and keep silent when the wicked swallows down one more righteous than he?

¹⁴You make humankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things with no ruler over them.

¹⁵All of them he brings up with a hook; he drags them in his net and gathers them in his fishing net; therefore he rejoices and exults.

¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net and sends offerings up in smoke to his fishing net, for by them his portion is rich and his food plump.

¹⁷Is it on account of this that he empties his net, and continually kills nations without sparing?