How long, LORD, have I cried for help and you do not hear? I cry out to you, “Violence!” and you do not save.
Why do you make me see iniquity, and look on trouble? And devastation and violence are before me, and there is dispute, and strife rises.
Therefore instruction grows slack and judgment never goes out; for the wicked surrounds the righteous, therefore crooked judgment goes out.
The LORD’s Answer
Look among the nations and see, and be astonished, astonished — for a work is being worked in your days that you would not believe if it were told.
For see, I am raising up the Chaldeans, the bitter and hasty nation, the one going to the broad places of the earth to possess dwellings not his own.
Terrible and dreadful is he; from himself his judgment and his dignity go out.
And his horses are swifter than leopards and keener than the wolves of the evening; and his horsemen spread out, and his horsemen come from far off. They fly like an eagle hurrying to devour.
All of him comes for violence; the gathering of their faces is eastward, and he gathers captives like the sand.
And he derides kings, and rulers are a laughingstock to him. He laughs at every fortification; he heaps up dust and captures it.
Then the wind sweeps past and he passes on, and he is guilty — this one whose power is his god.
Habakkuk’s Second Complaint
Are you not from of old, LORD my God, my Holy One? We will not die. LORD, you have set him for judgment; and Rock, you have established him to rebuke.
You are too pure of eyes to see evil, and you are not able to look on trouble. Why do you look on the treacherous, and stay silent when the wicked swallows one more righteous than he?
And you make mankind like the fish of the sea, like a creeping thing that has no ruler over it.
He brings up all of him with a hook; he drags him in his dragnet and gathers him in his net. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his dragnet and burns incense to his net, for by them his portion is fat and his food rich.
Will he therefore empty his dragnet, and continually kill nations without sparing?
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