Habakkuk’s Second Complaint

12  Are you not wfrom everlasting,

O Lord my God, my Holy One?

xWe shall not die.

O Lord, yyou have ordained them as a judgment,

and you, O zRock, have established them for reproof.

13  You who are aof purer eyes than to see evil

and cannot look at wrong,

bwhy do you idly look at traitors

and cremain silent when the wicked swallows up

the man more righteous than he?

14  You make mankind like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

15  dHe1 brings all of them up ewith a hook;

he drags them out with his net;

he gathers them in his dragnet;

so he rejoices and is glad.

16  fTherefore he sacrifices to his net

and makes offerings to his dragnet;

for by them he lives in luxury,2

and his food is rich.

17  Is he then to keep on emptying his net

gand mercilessly killing nations forever?

2 I will htake my stand at my watchpost

and station myself on the tower,

and ilook out to see jwhat he will say to me,

and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

The Righteous Shall Live by His Faith

2 And the Lord answered me:

k“Write the vision;

make it plain on tablets,

so he may run who reads it.

3  For still lthe vision awaits its appointed time;

it hastens to the end—it will not lie.

If it seems slow, mwait for it;

nit will surely come; it will not delay.

4  “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,

but othe righteous shall live by his faith.1

5  “Moreover, wine2 is pa traitor,

an arrogant man who is never at rest.3

His greed is as wide as Sheol;

like death qhe has never enough.

rHe gathers for himself all nations

and collects as his own all peoples.”