Habakkuk 1 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

The message Habakkuk the prophet saw, a weight laid on him.

How long, Yahweh, do I call for help and you do not listen? I shout to you, Violence! and you do not rescue.

Why do you make me look at wrongdoing? Why do you sit and watch the trouble? Ruin and violence are in front of me. There is fighting, and quarrels keep breaking out.

So the teaching goes numb, and a verdict never comes out straight. Corrupt men circle the just man, so justice comes out bent.

Look at the nations. Watch them. Be stunned out of your wits, because I am doing something in your own lifetime that you would not believe if someone told you.

Look, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and headlong nation, marching the whole width of the earth to take houses that are not theirs.

They are frightening to look at. The only law they answer to and the only rank they respect come from themselves.

Their horses are faster than leopards, sharper than wolves at dusk. Their riders come at a gallop. Their horsemen come from far off. They fly in like a vulture dropping on a carcass.

Every one of them comes for violence. Their faces are set straight ahead. They scoop up prisoners like sand.

They make fun of kings. Rulers are a joke to them. They laugh at every walled city, pile dirt against it, and take it.

Then they blow through like a wind and move on, guilty men who make their own strength their god.

Are you not there from the beginning, Yahweh, my God, the one like no other? We will not die. Yahweh, you gave them their assignment. Rock, you set them up to correct us.

Your eyes are too clean to look at evil. You cannot sit and stare at trouble. So why do you stare at traitors and say nothing while a corrupt man swallows someone better than himself?

You have made people like fish in the sea, like swarming things with nobody to lead them.

He hauls them all up on a hook. He drags them off in his net. He piles them into his dragnet, and then he is glad and shouts for joy.

So he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because they bring him a fat share and the richest food he eats.

Is he going to keep emptying his net, killing nations year after year and never letting one go?