¹ The charge that Habakkuk the prophet received in a vision.

² How long, Yahweh, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry, 'Violence!' in your ear while you will not save?

³ Why do you make me see wrong-doing, why do you countenance oppression? Plundering and violence confront me, contention and discord flourish.

⁴ And so the law loses its grip and justice never emerges, since the wicked outwits the upright and so justice comes out perverted.

⁵ Cast your eyes over the nations, look, and be amazed, astounded. For I am doing something in your own days which you will not believe if you are told of it.

⁶ For look, I am stirring up the Chaldaeans, that fierce and fiery nation who march miles across country to seize the homes of others.

⁷ They are dreadful and awesome, a law and authority to themselves.

⁸ Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at night; their horsemen gallop on, their horsemen advance from afar, swooping like an eagle anxious to feed.

⁹ They are all bent on violence, their faces scorching like an east wind; they scoop up prisoners like sand.

¹⁰ They scoff at kings, they despise princes. They make light of all fortresses: they heap up earth and take them.

¹¹ Then the wind changes and is gone . . . Guilty is he who makes his strength his god.

¹² Surely you, Yahweh, are from ancient times, my holy God, who never dies! Yahweh, you have appointed him to execute judgement; O Rock, you have set him firm to punish.

¹³ Your eyes are too pure to rest on evil, you cannot look on at oppression. Why do you look on at those who play the traitor, why say nothing while the wicked swallows someone more upright than himself?

¹⁴ Why treat people like fish of the sea, like gliding creatures who have no leader?

¹⁵ They haul them all up on their hook, they catch them in their net, they sweep them up in their dragnet and then make merry and rejoice.

¹⁶ And so they offer a sacrifice to their net, and burn incense to their dragnet, for by these they get a rich living and live off the fat of the land.

¹⁷ Are they to go on emptying their net unceasingly, slaughtering the nations without pity?