Habakkuk's Complaint
2 How long, LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not save?

3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.

4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

The LORD 's Answer
5 "Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.

6 I am raising up the Babylonians, [a]
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own.

7 They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honor.

8 Their horses are swifter than leopards,
fiercer than wolves at dusk.
Their cavalry gallops headlong;
their horsemen come from afar.
They fly like a vulture swooping to devour;

9 they all come bent on violence.
Their hordes advance like a desert wind
and gather prisoners like sand.

10 They mock kings
and scoff at rulers.
They laugh at all fortified cities;
by building earthen ramps they capture them.

11 Then they sweep past like the wind and go on—
guilty people, whose own strength is their god."