^1:1The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

²O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
     and you will not listen?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
     and you will not save?
³Why do you make me see wrongdoing
     and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
     strife and contention arise.
⁴So the law becomes slack
     and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous —
     therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

⁵Look at the nations, and see!
     Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days
     that you would not believe if you were told.
⁶For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
     that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
     to seize dwellings not their own.
⁷Dread and fearsome are they;
     their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
⁸Their horses are swifter than leopards,
     more menacing than wolves at dusk;
     their horses charge.
Their horsemen come from far away;
     they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
⁹They all come for violence,
     with faces pressing forward;
     they gather captives like sand.
¹⁰At kings they scoff,
     and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress,
     and heap up earth to take it.
¹¹Then they sweep by like the wind;
     they transgress and become guilty;
     their own might is their god!

¹²Are you not from of old,
     O LORD my God, my Holy One?
     You shall not die.
O LORD, you have marked them for judgment;
     and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
¹³Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
     and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
     and are silent when the wicked swallow
     those more righteous than they?
¹⁴You have made people like the fish of the sea,
     like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵The enemy brings all of them up with a hook;
     he drags them out with his net,
he gathers them in his seine;
so he rejoices and exults.
¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net
     and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish,
and his food is rich.
¹⁷Is he then to keep on emptying his net,
and destroying nations without mercy?

^2:1I will stand at my watchpost,
     and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
     and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. ¹⁶Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.

¹⁷Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. ¹⁸For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. ¹⁹Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. ²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. ²¹He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

¹Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

¹³"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. ¹⁵Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

¹⁶"Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.' ¹⁷You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? ¹⁸And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' ¹⁹How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? ²⁰So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; ²¹and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; ²²and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

²³"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. ²⁴You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!