LEB HAB Chapter 1

Habakkuk’s Complaint

• 2 and you will not listen?
• How long will I cry out to you, “Violence!”
  • and you will not save?
  • 3  while you look at trouble?
• Destruction and violence happen before me;
  • contention and strife arise.
  • 4  and justice does not go forth perpetually.[fn]
• For the wicked surround the righteous;
  • therefore justice goes forth perverted.

God’s Answer to Habakkuk

• 5 be astonished and astounded.
• For a work is about to be done in your days
  • that you will not believe if it is told.
  • 6  the bitter and impetuous nation,
• the one who walks through the spacious places of earth
  • to take possession of dwellings not belonging to it.[fn]
  • 7 [fn] are dreadful and awesome; their[fn] justice and their[fn] dignity proceed from themselves.[fn]
  • 8 [fn] horses are more swift than leopards; they are more menacing than wolves at dusk.
• Their[fn] horsemen gallop; their[fn] horsemen come from afar;
  • they fly like an eagle that is swift to devour.
  • 9 [fn] come for violence, their faces pressing forward.
  • They gather captives like the sand.
  • 10  and rulers are a joke to them.
• They laugh at every fortification,
  • and they heap up earth and take it.
  • 11 like the wind and pass on; they become guilty, whose might is their[fn] god!”

Habakkuk’s Second Complaint

• 12 O Yahweh my God, my Holy One?
• You[fn] shall not die.
• O Yahweh, you have marked them[fn] for judgment;
  • O Rock, you have established them[fn] for reproof.
  • 13 are too pure to see evil, and you are not able to look at wrongdoing.[fn]
• Why do you look at the treacherous?
• Why are you silent when the wicked swallows up
  • someone more righteous than him?
  • 14  like crawling creatures that have no ruler among them.
  • 15  he drags them up with a fishnet;
• he gathers them in his dragnet.
  • Therefore, he rejoices and exults.
  • 16  and makes offerings to his dragnet,
• for by them[fn]
  • and his food is rich.
  • 17  and continually kill nations without showing mercy?