Habakkuk 1 WEB
Summary: Unlike most prophets, Habakkuk opens by arguing with God: how long must he cry out about violence and injustice in Judah while the LORD does nothing, letting the law grow slack and the wicked surround the righteous (v. 2-4)? God's answer is startling — he is raising up the Chaldeans (Babylonians), a fierce and feared nation whose horses are swifter than leopards and who sweep in like the east wind to seize dwellings not their own. Habakkuk then voices a second, harder complaint: how can the LORD, whose eyes are too pure to look on evil, use a nation more wicked than Judah to punish it, letting them gloat and haul in people "like fish with a hook" (v. 14-15)?
1The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw.
2Yahweh, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save?
3Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up.
4Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.
5“Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days, which you will not believe though it is told you.
6For, behold, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, that march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.
7They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.
8Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.
9All of them come for violence. Their hordes face the desert. He gathers prisoners like sand.
10Yes, he scoffs at kings, and princes are a derision to him. He laughs at every stronghold, for he builds up an earthen ramp, and takes it.
11Then he sweeps by like the wind, and goes on. He is indeed guilty, whose strength is his god.”
12Aren’t you from everlasting, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Yahweh, you have appointed him for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish.
13You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously, and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he,
14and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?
15He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net, and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.
16Therefore he sacrifices to his net, and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious, and his food is good.
17Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?
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