LEB HAB Chapter 1

Habakkuk’s Complaint

• 2 O Yahweh, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?
• How long will I cry out to you, “Violence!”
  • and you will not save?
  • 3 Why do you cause me to see evil while you look at trouble?
• Destruction and violence happen before me;
  • contention and strife arise.
  • 4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, 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 “Look among the nations and see; 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 For look! I am raising up the Chaldeans, 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 They[fn] are dreadful and awesome; their[fn] justice and their[fn] dignity proceed from themselves.[fn]
  • 8 Their[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 All of them[fn] come for violence, their faces pressing forward.
  • They gather captives like the sand.
  • 10 And they themselves scoff at kings and rulers are a joke to them.
• They laugh at every fortification,
  • and they heap up earth and take it.
  • 11 Then they sweep like the wind and pass on; they become guilty, whose might is their[fn] god!”

Habakkuk’s Second Complaint

• 12 Are you not from of old, 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 Your eyes 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 You make humankind like fish of the sea, like crawling creatures that have no ruler among them.
  • 15 He brings up all of them with a fishhook; he drags them up with a fishnet;
• he gathers them in his dragnet.
  • Therefore, he rejoices and exults.
  • 16 Therefore he sacrifices to his fishnet and makes offerings to his dragnet,
• for by them he makes a good living[fn]
  • and his food is rich.
  • 17 Will he therefore empty his fishnet and continually kill nations without showing mercy?