Habakkuk 2

¹ I will stand on my watchtower, and take up my post on my battlements, watching to see what he will say to me, what answer he will make to my complaints.

² Then Yahweh answered and said, ‘Write the vision down, inscribe it on tablets to be easily read,

³ since this vision is for its own time only: eager for its own fulfilment, it does not deceive; if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail.

⁴ ‘See how he flags, he whose soul is not at rights, but the upright man will live by his faithfulness.’

⁵ Wealth is indeed a treacherous thing. Haughty and unable to rest is he who is as greedy as Sheol, who is like death, insatiable, who assembles all the nations for his own ends, collects all the peoples to his own advantage.

⁶ On him, will not all men make satires, and turn an epigram against him? They will say:

⁷ Will not your creditors suddenly rise, will not your duns awake? Then you will be their victim.

⁸ Since you have plundered many nations, all that remains of the peoples will plunder you; for you have shed men’s blood and ravished the country, the city and all who live in it.

⁹ Trouble is coming to the man who grossly exploits others for the sake of his House, to fix his nest on high and so evade the hand of misfortune.

¹⁰ You have contrived to bring shame on your House; by making an end of many peoples you have worked your own ruin.

¹¹ For the stone from the very walls cries out, and the beam responds from the framework.

¹² Trouble is coming to the man who builds a town with blood and founds a city on crime.

¹³ Is it not the will of Yahweh Sabaoth that the labouring of peoples should end in fire, and the toiling of nations come to nothing?

¹⁴ For the country shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters swell the sea.[*a]

¹⁵ Trouble is coming to the man who makes his neighbours drink, who pours his poison until they are drunk, to look at their nakedness.

¹⁶ You are drunk with ignominy, not with glory. Your turn now to drink and show your foreskin. The cup from Yahweh’s right hand comes round to you, and disgrace will overshadow your glory.

¹⁷ For the violence done to Lebanon is going to overwhelm you, so will the slaughter of terrified beasts, for you have shed men’s blood and ravished the country, the city and all who live in it.

¹⁹ Trouble is coming to the man who says to the piece of wood, ‘Wake up!’ to the dumb stone, ‘On your feet!’ (And that is the oracle.) Plated it may be with gold and silver, but not a breath of life inside it.

¹⁸ What is the use of a carved image, or for its maker to carve it at all? lt is a thing of metal, a lying oracle. What is the use of its maker trusting this and fashioning dumb idols?

²⁰ But Yahweh is in his holy Temple: let the whole earth be silent before him.