Habakkuk 2

⁸Then the lookout shouted: “Day after day, my lord, I stand on the watchtower; night after night I stay at my post.

⁶On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord shall take no rest for yourselves,

²⁴Now David was sitting between the two gates when the watchman went up to the roof of the gateway by the wall, looked out, and saw a man running alone.

⁸I will listen to what God the Lord will say; for He will surely speak peace to His people and His saints; He will not let them return to folly.

¹⁶When I tried to understand all this, it was troublesome in my sight

¹⁷until I entered God’s sanctuary; then I discerned their end.

³In the morning, O Lord, You hear my voice; at daybreak I lay my plea before You and wait in expectation.

⁸Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the days to come, a witness forever and ever.

¹³And I heard a voice from heaven telling me to write, “Blessed are the dead—those who die in the Lord from this moment on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds will follow them.”

¹⁸the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.

¹⁹Therefore write down the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that will happen after this.

²²So that very day Moses wrote down this song and taught it to the Israelites.

⁵And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.”

⁶And He told me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life.

⁴But you, Daniel, shut up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam to and fro, and knowledge will increase.”

¹⁴Wait patiently for the Lord; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the Lord!

³⁶You need to persevere, so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.

³⁷For, “In just a little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay.

²⁵because I, the Lord, will speak whatever word I speak, and it will be fulfilled without delay. For in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak a message and bring it to pass, declares the Lord God.’”

²⁵The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

²⁶It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

¹³You will rise up and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show her favor—the appointed time has come.

⁵I wait for the Lord; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope.

⁶My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.

¹⁷For the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that comes by faith from start to finish, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

³⁸But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he shrinks back, I will take no pleasure in him.”

¹¹Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.”

¹²The law, however, is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.”

¹⁶know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

³⁶Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”

¹⁰Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him; whoever does not believe God has made Him out to be a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given about His Son.

¹¹And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

¹¹Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger into the evening, to be inflamed by wine.

¹²At their feasts are the lyre and harp, tambourines and flutes and wine. They disregard the actions of the Lord and fail to see the work of His hands.

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

²⁰Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.

⁴It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to crave strong drink,

⁵lest they drink and forget what is decreed, depriving all the oppressed of justice.

¹¹The proud look of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

¹²For the Day of the Lord of Hosts will come against all the proud and lofty, against all that is exalted—it will be humbled—

⁸Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land.

¹³Because of the wrath of the Lord, she will not be inhabited; she will become completely desolate. All who pass through Babylon will be horrified and will hiss at all her wounds.

²²Because of them, all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use this curse: ‘May the Lord make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire!’

⁴you will sing this song of contempt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has ceased, and how his fury has ended!

⁵The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers.

⁷And Balaam lifted up an oracle, saying: “Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the mountains of the east. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘put a curse on Jacob for me; come and denounce Israel!’

¹⁵He swallows wealth but vomits it out; God will force it from his stomach.

¹⁶He will suck the poison of cobras; the fangs of a viper will kill him.

⁴In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’”

¹A man who remains stiff-necked after much reproof will suddenly be shattered beyond recovery.

¹⁶Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be looted, and their wives will be ravished.

¹⁷Behold, I will stir up against them the Medes, who have no regard for silver and no desire for gold.

¹⁴Come together, all of you, and listen: Which of the idols has foretold these things? The Lord’s chosen ally will carry out His desire against Babylon, and His arm will be against the Chaldeans.

¹⁵I, even I, have spoken; yes, I have called him. I have brought him, and he will succeed in his mission.

²⁵Now this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.

²⁶And this is the interpretation of the message: MENE means that God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

¹This is what the Lord says to Cyrus His anointed, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him, to disarm kings, to open the doors before him, so that the gates will not be shut:

²“I will go before you and level the mountains; I will break down the gates of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.

¹¹I summon a bird of prey from the east, a man for My purpose from a far-off land. Truly I have spoken, and truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, and I will surely do it.

¹Woe to you, O destroyer never destroyed, O traitor never betrayed! When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed. When you have finished betraying, you will be betrayed.

¹⁷For your violence against Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the destruction of animals will terrify you, because of your bloodshed against men and your violence against the land, the city, and all their dwellers.

⁷All nations will serve him and his son and grandson, until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings will enslave him.

¹⁷Israel is a scattered flock, chased away by lions. The first to devour him was the king of Assyria; the last to crush his bones was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.”

¹⁸Therefore this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “I will punish the king of Babylon and his land as I punished the king of Assyria.

²⁸Listen to the fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon, declaring in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, the vengeance for His temple.

¹⁰Chaldea will be plundered; all who plunder her will have their fill,” declares the Lord.

¹¹“Because you rejoice, because you sing in triumph—you who plunder My inheritance—because you frolic like a heifer treading grain and neigh like stallions,

¹⁶The terror you cause and the pride of your heart have deceived you, O dwellers in the clefts of the rocks, O occupiers of the mountain summit. Though you elevate your nest like the eagle, even from there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord.

¹³“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

¹⁴who says, ‘I will build myself a great palace, with spacious upper rooms.’ So he cuts windows in it, panels it with cedar, and paints it with vermilion.

¹¹A rich man’s wealth is his fortified city; it is like a high wall in his imagination.

¹²Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.

²So Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard to use as a vegetable garden, since it is next to my palace. I will give you a better vineyard in its place—or if you prefer, I will give you its value in silver.”

³But Naboth replied, “The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.”

⁴Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord.

¹⁹Tell him that this is what the Lord says: ‘Have you not murdered a man and seized his land?’ Then tell him that this is also what the Lord says: ‘In the place where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, there also the dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!’”

²⁰When Elijah arrived, Ahab said to him, “So you have found me out, my enemy.” He replied, “I have found you out because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord.

¹⁴The Lord has issued a command concerning you, O Nineveh: “There will be no descendants to carry on your name. I will cut off the carved image and cast idol from the house of your gods; I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.”

²⁶‘As surely as I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons yesterday, declares the Lord, so will I repay you on this plot of ground, declares the Lord.’ Now then, according to the word of the Lord, pick him up and throw him on the plot of ground.”

³⁸As for the censers of those who sinned at the cost of their own lives, hammer them into sheets to overlay the altar, for these were presented before the Lord, and so have become holy. They will serve as a sign to the Israelites.”

⁷And when the letter arrived, they took the sons of the king and slaughtered all seventy of them. They put their heads in baskets and sent them to Jehu at Jezreel.

³¹I will punish him and his descendants and servants for their iniquity. I will bring on them, on the residents of Jerusalem, and on the men of Judah, all the calamity about which I warned them but they did not listen.”

²⁰You will not join them in burial, since you have destroyed your land and slaughtered your own people. The offspring of the wicked will never again be mentioned.

²¹Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the iniquities of their forefathers. They will never rise up to possess a land or cover the earth with their cities.

⁴⁰“I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”

²⁷And Joshua said to all the people, “You see this stone. It will be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words the Lord has spoken to us, and it will be a witness against you if you ever deny your God.”

³Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and consume your flesh like fire. You have hoarded treasure in the last days.

⁴Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

³⁸if my land cries out against me and its furrows weep together,

³⁹if I have devoured its produce without payment or broken the spirit of its tenants,

¹⁰“What have you done?” replied the Lord. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.

¹⁰And they cried out in a loud voice, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge those who dwell upon the earth and avenge our blood?”

¹⁰who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.

¹Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without prey.

²⁷Therefore, may my advice be pleasing to you, O king. Break away from your sins by doing what is right, and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed. Perhaps there will be an extension of your prosperity.”

²⁸All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar.

¹³“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

¹⁴who says, ‘I will build myself a great palace, with spacious upper rooms.’ So he cuts windows in it, panels it with cedar, and paints it with vermilion.

⁶I could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses for Jesus. And I was utterly amazed at the sight of her.

²⁶At that time Joshua invoked this solemn oath: “Cursed before the Lord is the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho; at the cost of his firstborn he will lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates.”

⁵⁸This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Babylon’s thick walls will be leveled, and her high gates consumed by fire. So the labor of the people will be for nothing; the nations will exhaust themselves to fuel the flames.”

³⁰There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel that can prevail against the Lord.

¹¹Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who array yourselves with firebrands, walk in the light of your fire and of the firebrands you have lit! This is what you will receive from My hand: You will lie down in a place of torment.

¹A song of ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the Lord protects the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain.

²In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for bread to eat—for He gives sleep to His beloved.

⁴Though Edom may say, “We have been devastated, but we will rebuild the ruins,” this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Land of Wickedness, and a people with whom the Lord is indignant forever.

²Why spend money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of foods.

⁹They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is full of water.

²⁷All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before Him.

¹⁹And blessed be His glorious name forever; may all the earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen.

³And they were calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”

⁹All the nations You have made will come and bow before You, O Lord, and they will glorify Your name.

⁸And on that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it toward the Eastern Sea and the other half toward the Western Sea, in summer and winter alike.

⁹On that day the Lord will become King over all the earth—the Lord alone, and His name alone.

⁷Babylon was a gold cup in the hand of the Lord, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad.

²²And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.

³All the nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her immorality. The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from the extravagance of her luxury.”

²The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.”

⁵The princes are inflamed with wine on the day of our king; so he joins hands with those who mock him.

⁶I could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses for Jesus. And I was utterly amazed at the sight of her.

³Your nakedness will be uncovered and your shame will be exposed. I will take vengeance; I will spare no one.”

⁵“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of Hosts. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms.

⁶I will pelt you with filth and treat you with contempt; I will make a spectacle of you.

⁶Give back to her as she has done to others; pay her back double for what she has done; mix her a double portion in her own cup.

⁸For a cup is in the hand of the Lord, full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours from His cup, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to the dregs.

⁵The princes are inflamed with wine on the day of our king; so he joins hands with those who mock him.

²⁶I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

⁸Because you have plundered many nations, the remnant of the people will plunder you—because of your bloodshed against man and your violence against the land, the city, and all their dwellers.

¹Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may consume your cedars!

²³But You, O God, will bring them down to the Pit of destruction; men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in You.

²⁰Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced for you His judgment against her.

²¹Then a mighty angel picked up a stone the size of a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying: “With such violence the great city of Babylon will be cast down, never to be seen again.

¹⁷A man burdened by bloodguilt will flee into the Pit; let no one support him.

²⁴Before your very eyes I will repay Babylon and all the dwellers of Chaldea for all the evil they have done in Zion,” declares the Lord.

⁸But they are altogether senseless and foolish, instructed by worthless idols made of wood!

²You know that when you were pagans, you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.

⁹All makers of idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Their witnesses fail to see or comprehend, so they are put to shame.

¹⁰Who fashions a god or casts an idol which profits him nothing?

²For idols speak deceit and diviners see illusions; they tell false dreams and offer empty comfort. Therefore the people wander like sheep, oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

²⁷say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’

²⁸But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up in your time of trouble and save you if they can; for your gods are as numerous as your cities, O Judah.

¹⁷But those who trust in idols and say to molten images, ‘You are our gods!’ will be turned back in utter shame.

¹⁷they have ears, but cannot hear; nor is there breath in their mouths.

⁴They adorn it with silver and gold and fasten it with hammer and nails, so that it will not totter.

⁹Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz—the work of a craftsman from the hands of a goldsmith. Their clothes are blue and purple, all fashioned by skilled workers.

²⁶And they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no sound, and no one answered as they leaped around the altar they had made.

²⁷At noon Elijah began to taunt them, saying, “Shout louder, for he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or occupied, or on a journey. Perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened!”

⁷All worshipers of images are put to shame—those who boast in idols. Worship Him, all you gods!

⁷Therefore, as soon as all the people heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, and all kinds of music, the people of every nation and language would fall down and worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

¹³Be silent before the Lord, all people, for He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling.”

⁷Be silent in the presence of the Lord God, for the Day of the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; He has consecrated His guests.

¹⁰“Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted over the earth.”

⁴The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne. His eyes are watching closely; they examine the sons of men.

¹In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; and the train of His robe filled the temple.

⁷As my life was fading away, I remembered the Lord. My prayer went up to You, to Your holy temple.