1The divine revelation that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

2How long, O LORD, am I to cry for help, but you will not listen? I cry out to you, "There's violence!" yet you will not come to the rescue.

3Why do you make me see wrongdoing? And why do you watch wickedness? Destruction and violence are in front of me. Quarrels and disputes arise.

4That is why your teaching is numbed, and justice is never carried out. Wicked people surround righteous people so that when justice is carried out, it's perverted.

5Look among the nations and watch. Be amazed and astonished. I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if it were reported to you.

6I am going to send the Babylonians, that fierce and reckless nation. They will march throughout the earth to take possession of lands that don't belong to them.

7They will be terrifying and fearsome. They will carry out their own kind of justice and honor.

8Their horses will be faster than leopards and quicker than wolves in the evening. Their riders will gallop along proudly. Their riders will come from far away. They will fly like an eagle that swoops down for its prey.

9They will all come for violence. Every face will be directed forward. They will gather prisoners like sand.

10They will make fun of kings and treat rulers as a joke. They will laugh at every fortified city and build a dirt ramp to capture it.

11They will move quickly and pass through like the wind. So they will be guilty, because their own strength is their god.

12Didn't you exist before time began, O LORD, my God, my Holy One? We will not die! O LORD, you have appointed the Babylonians to bring judgment. O Rock, you have destined them to correct us.

13Your eyes are too pure to look at evil. You can't watch wickedness. Why do you keep watching treacherous people? Why are you silent when wicked people swallow those who are more righteous than they are?

14You make all people like the fish in the sea, like schools of sea life that have no ruler.

15The Babylonians pull them all up with fishhooks, drag them away in nets, and gather them in dragnets. So they rejoice and are happy.

16That is why they sacrifice to their nets and burn incense to their dragnets. They are rich and well fed because of them.

17Will they keep on emptying their nets and always kill nations without mercy?