Habakkuk 1

World English Bible 86 include this book

1 The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw.

2 LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save?

3 Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up.

4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.

5 “Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not believe though it is told you.

6 For, behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.

7 They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.

8 Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.

9 All of them come for violence. Their hordes face forward. They gather prisoners like sand.

10 Yes, they scoff at kings, and princes are a derision to them. They laugh at every stronghold, for they build up an earthen ramp and take it.

11 Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. They are indeed guilty, whose strength is their god.”

12 Aren’t you from everlasting, LORD my God, my Holy One? We will not die. LORD, you have appointed them for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish.

13 You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he,

14 and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them?

15 He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.

16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good.

17 Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?

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No place is named in this book. Shown instead is where it is thought to have been written.

Where this was written

Jerusalem traditional Judean, as Babylon rises.

When this was written

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 610 BC–598 BC Habakkuk
The rise of Babylon is present and the fall of Jerusalem is not.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (610 BC–598 BC).

1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
624 BC–546 BC Greek philosophy begins at Miletus Greece
Thales sought natural rather than mythic explanations, the beginning of Greek science.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.
600 BC–500 BC Daoism takes shape in China China
The teaching associated with Laozi, emphasising harmony with the natural order.
599 BC–527 BC Mahavira and the rise of Jainism India
A contemporary of the Buddha whose teaching centred on non-violence toward every living thing.

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