Translation:Habakkuk

For other English-language translations of this work, see Habakkuk (Bible).

Chapter 1

¹ The vision which was foreseen by the prophet Chavakuk(Habakkuk).

² How long, Yahweh, will I entreat and you will not hear? I cry to you "Violence!" Yet you will not save. ³ Why do you make me look at wickedness, and stare at evil deeds? Plunder and violence are in front of me. There is strife, and contention rises up.^[1]

⁴ For this reason, the law is powerless, and justice never emerges, because the wicked overpower the righteous. For this reason a perversion of justice emerges. ⁵ Look among the nations, and stare, and be dumbstruck, because he is doing a deed in your days that you would not believe if it were told.

⁶ Because now I am raising up the Kasdim(Chaldeans), the bitter and swift nation, that walk the width of the Earth, to take dwellings not their own. ⁷ They are terrifying and dreadful; their judgment and majesty proceed from them.

⁸ His horses are fleeter than leopards, and fiercer than the wolves of the evening. His horsemen spread out, and his horsemen will come from a distance, they will fly as the eagle that feels hungry.^[2]

⁹ He will come all for violence, their faces determination forward, and will gather captives as the sand. ¹⁰ And he in the kings will scoff, and princes are a game for him, he onto every fort will play, will gather dust and bind it.

¹¹ Then he changed spirit and passed, and guilty: this is his strength, to his god. ¹² For you are from the east, Yahweh, God of my holiness, we shall not die. Yahweh, for a judgment put him, and a rock to demonstrate his foundations.

¹³ Pure of eyes for seeing evil, to view ill-labor you will not be able: why view the traitors? You will deafen, when the wicked swallows one more just than he.

¹⁴ And you will make man as the fish of the sea, as the crawlers, nothing to govern him. ¹⁵ All, he lifted in a trap, they were caught in his net, he will gather them in his fishnet, at this he'll become happy and rejoice. ¹⁶ For this he will sacrifice to his net, and will make offer to his fishnet, because in these his portion fattens, and he bulges with food. ¹⁷ So for this, he will empty his net, and keep killing nations, will not pity.

Chapter 2

¹ On my watch I will stand guard, and I will post on the fortification, and I will watch to see what he will speak in me, and what will I reply on my reproof.

² And Yahweh answered me and said "write a vision, clarify it on the boards, so that it will glide for the one that reads it." ³ Because this is still a vision of the event, and it foreshadows the end and it will not fail. If you procrastinate, wait for it, then come it will come, it won't be late. ⁴ See, fogged, dishonest, is his soul within him, and the upright in his faith will live.

⁵ And even as the wine betrays, a guy will be haughty and not foresee, that who widened his soul as the underworld, and he, like death, will not be sated, and will gather to him all the nations, and will cluster around him all the peoples. ⁶ For these, all of them, to him will carry up a proverb, and will challenge him with riddles: and he said "Woe to that who gathers much to him, til when? And his pledges weigh upon him." ⁷ All of a sudden, those that bite you will rise, those that overwhelm you will sting, and you would become plunder for them. ⁸ Because you are controlled by many nations, the cast-off of all the other peoples, from man's blood and Earth's violence, the village and all that settle it.

⁹ Woe for him that enacts an evil act to his house: To place his nest on high, to escape from an evil palm. ¹⁰ You have advised shame to your house, the ends of many people, and your soul is sinning.

¹¹ Because a stone from the wall will cry, and the timber from the tree will answer. ¹² Woe to him that builds a city in blood, and readies a county in wrongdoing.

¹³ For here are Yahweh's armies, and they will touch peoples with fire fabric, and nations with fabric of void, they tire. ¹⁴ Because the Earth will be filled to know the honor of Yahweh, as the water, and they will cover the sea.

¹⁵ Woe to him that gives his neighbor drinks, provides your wrath and even drunkenness, for viewing their naked skin. ¹⁶ You are filled with ridicule rather than honer, drink you also, and be poisoned. It shall return to you, the cup of the right-hand of Yahweh, and humiliation upon your honor. ¹⁷ Because the violence of Lebanon will cover you, the beastly plunder supports them, from man's blood and Earth's violence, the village and all that settle it.

¹⁸ How is a statue useful? Because its sculptor made it a mask, and a lying teacher: because the creator trusts his own creator over him to make idols dumb. ¹⁹ Woe to he who tells the wood, "Awake!", "Arise!" to the still stone. He will teach--"Here it is wrapped in gold and silver." And there is no spirit within it. ²⁰ And to Yahweh, in his holy temple, the whole Earth mutes.

Chapter 3

⁰ A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet over Shigyonoth^[3][4].

¹ Yahweh, I heard what's heard of you: I feared. Yahweh, your works make live in the next years, inform in the next years, in hot temper, remember kindness.

² A god from Teyman came, the holy from mount Pa'aran. Selah.^[5] The chair of the skies they thanked, and his psalms filled the Earth.

³ And his glow as light will be, rays from his own hands, and there is his hidden strength.

⁴ Before him, the pox will go, and sparks will come from his feet.^[6]

⁵ He stood and measured the Earth, he saw and loosened the nations, the mountains of time exploded, the eternal heights of the world lowered down, the ways of all times to him.

⁶ Under a misery, I saw the tents of Chushan(Kushan); they will anger, the curtains of the land of Midyan(Midean).

⁷ Oh, is it in the rivers, Yahweh's distemper, even in the rivers your snarl, even in the sea, your wrath? Because you shall ride on your horses, your chariots, in salvation.

⁸ Your bow is bare skin, the rods are sworn is said. Selah. The rivers, you shall split the Earth.

⁹ The mountains shiver to see you, the stream of water passed, gave to the abyss its voice, to the heights carried his hands.

¹⁰ The sun, moon, stood rent, to half-light they will walk, to the glow of the lightning of your spear.

¹¹ In fury, you will stride the earth, snarling, you will tread on the nations.

¹² You came out the the salvation of your nation, to save your anointed (your Messiah), you pressed the head of a wicked house, denuding the foundations onto the neck. Selah.

¹³ You struck with his staff, the head of his chieftains, they will rush to scatter me, their fun is to consume a poor man in secret.

¹⁴ You stepped your horses on the sea, a mound of much water.

¹⁵ I heard, and my stomach upset, to a voice my lips tingled, a rot entered my bones, and under me, upset: so that I will rest on a troubled day, to rise up to the nation that opposes us.

¹⁶ because the fig will not bloom, and there is no harvest in the grapevines, denied is the olive-work, and the fields will not make food, the sheep will be stripped from the keep, and there is no cattle in the stalls.

¹⁷ And I in Yahweh will make joy, I will celebrate in my God, my salvation.

¹⁸ Yahweh, my lord, my soldier, and he will put my legs like does', and onto platforms will guide me, to the champion in my music-making.

Notes

1. There is some disagreement among translators as to whether the verb nbt (here "stare") is causative. If it is causative, the question is, "Why do you (Yahweh) make me (Habakkuk) look at wickedness, and (make me) stare at evil deeds." If it is not causative, nbt has the sense of "look idly at" or "tolerate." The question would then mean, "Why do you make me look at wickedness, and why do you look idly at evil deeds?" Both of these options assume that the traditional (Masoretic) division of the verse is correct. If the words are parsed differently, the beginning of the verse may be read "Why do you make me look at wickedness and evil deeds? You look idly at the plunder and violence before me." For this last construal, see J. J. M. Roberts (1991). Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 978-0-664-22362-5. 
2. Reading different vowels gives "wolves of the desert" or "wolves of Arabia" instead of "wolves of the evening."
3. This might be the plural of Shiggayon in Psalms.
4. verse 0,like psalm intros.
5. musical pause.
6. These are d-b-r and r-shin-p or the ambiguously-agentic "Plague-and-pestilence" that pop up in a number of places in the Tanakh.