Habakkuk 3

¹A prayer of David. Incline Your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.

²Preserve my soul, for I am godly. You are my God; save Your servant who trusts in You.

¹A prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, You have been our dwelling place through all generations.

²Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

¹A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjamite. O Lord my God, I take refuge in You; save me and deliver me from all my pursuers,

²or they will shred my soul like a lion and tear me to pieces with no one to rescue me.

⁶Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?

¹³Return, O Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on Your servants.

¹⁴Satisfy us in the morning with Your loving devotion, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

²After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence.

³So let us know—let us press on to know the Lord. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the earth.

⁹Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Wake up as in days past, as in generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced through the dragon?

¹⁰Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea for the redeemed to cross over?

³²Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion according to His abundant loving devotion.

¹⁶I heard and trembled within; my lips quivered at the sound. Decay entered my bones; I trembled where I stood. Yet I must wait patiently for the day of distress to come upon the people who invade us.

²He said: “The Lord came from Sinai and dawned upon us from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran and came with myriads of holy ones, with flaming fire at His right hand.

⁹Then your mighty men, O Teman, will be terrified, so that everyone in the mountains of Esau will be cut down in the slaughter.

¹²So I will send fire upon Teman to consume the citadels of Bozrah.”

⁴Be angry, yet do not sin; on your bed, search your heart and be still. Selah

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

¹⁷The chariots of God are tens of thousands—thousands of thousands are they; the Lord is in His sanctuary as He was at Sinai.

²There He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.

¹⁹No longer will the sun be your light by day, nor the brightness of the moon shine on your night; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your splendor.

²⁰Your sun will no longer set, and your moon will not wane; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and the days of your sorrow will cease.

⁵There will be no more night in the city, and they will have no need for the light of a lamp or of the sun. For the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.

²⁰so that it came between the camps of Egypt and Israel. The cloud was there in the darkness, but it lit up the night. So all night long neither camp went near the other.

¹⁴Indeed, these are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”

²He wraps Himself in light as with a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a tent,

²⁹Now at midnight the Lord struck down every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon, as well as all the firstborn among the livestock.

³⁰During the night Pharaoh got up—he and all his officials and all the Egyptians—and there was loud wailing in Egypt; for there was no house without someone dead.

²The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and full of wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on His foes and reserves wrath for His enemies.

³The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

⁴⁶Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, place fire from the altar in it, and add incense. Go quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them, because wrath has come out from the Lord; the plague has begun.”

⁴⁷So Aaron took the censer as Moses had ordered and ran into the midst of the assembly. And seeing that the plague had begun among the people, he offered the incense and made atonement for the people.

¹²I will strike them with a plague and destroy them—and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are.”

⁵⁰He cleared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but delivered their lives to the plague.

⁵¹He struck all the firstborn of Egypt, the virility in the tents of Ham.

⁷Then the earth shook and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains trembled; they were shaken because He burned with anger.

⁸Smoke rose from His nostrils, and consuming fire came from His mouth; glowing coals blazed forth.

²⁶The blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills. May they rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince of his brothers.

⁵The mountains quake before Him, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles at His presence—the world and all its dwellers.

¹⁵with the best of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills,

¹If only You would rend the heavens and come down, so that mountains would quake at Your presence,

²as fire kindles the brushwood and causes the water to boil, to make Your name known to Your enemies, so that the nations will tremble at Your presence!

⁶Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth below; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will die like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail.

⁸Then the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which tramples and tears as it passes through, with no one to rescue them.

¹⁴The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the dwellers of Philistia.

¹⁵Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; trembling will seize the leaders of Moab; those who dwell in Canaan will melt away,

¹Now Abraham had taken another wife, named Keturah,

²and she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

³and Moab was terrified of the people because they were numerous. Indeed, Moab dreaded the Israelites.

⁴So the Moabites said to the elders of Midian, “This horde will devour everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.” Since Balak son of Zippor was king of Moab at that time,

⁵For with one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against You—

⁶the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites,

⁶The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.

⁷The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. And the sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan.

¹⁰For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites across the Jordan, whom you devoted to destruction.

¹⁷The chariots of God are tens of thousands—thousands of thousands are they; the Lord is in His sanctuary as He was at Sinai.

²⁶“There is none like the God of Jeshurun, who rides the heavens to your aid, and the clouds in His majesty.

²⁷The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He drives out the enemy before you, giving the command, ‘Destroy him!’

²¹Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind that turned it into dry land. So the waters were divided,

²²and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with walls of water on their right and on their left.

³The sea observed and fled; the Jordan turned back;

⁵Why was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back,

¹⁰He mounted a cherub and flew; He soared on the wings of the wind.

¹²If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow.

¹³He has prepared His deadly weapons; He ordains His arrows with fire.

⁴¹He opened a rock, and water gushed out; it flowed like a river in the desert.

¹⁵He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.

¹⁶He brought streams from the stone and made water flow down like rivers.

⁷²to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant,

⁷³the oath He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

⁶Behold, I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. And when you strike the rock, water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.

²³I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend My arrows against them.

⁷Let the sea resound, and all that fills it, the world, and all who dwell in it.

⁸Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy

²⁴I looked at the mountains, and behold, they were quaking; all the hills were swaying.

³The floodwaters have risen, O Lord; the rivers have raised their voice; the seas lift up their pounding waves.

²³For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, just as He did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over.

²⁴He did this so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and so that you may always fear the Lord your God.”

²⁰The beasts of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I provide water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My chosen people.

²⁹By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were drowned.

⁵Part Your heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, that they may smoke.

⁶Flash forth Your lightning and scatter them; shoot Your arrows and rout them.

¹²From the brightness of His presence His clouds advanced—hailstones and coals of fire.

¹³The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded—hailstones and coals of fire.

¹¹As they fled before Israel along the descent from Beth-horon to Azekah, the Lord cast down on them large hailstones from the sky, and more of them were killed by the hailstones than by the swords of the Israelites.

¹²On the day that the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord in the presence of Israel: “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”

⁸I will make the sun’s shadow that falls on the stairway of Ahaz go back ten steps.’” So the sunlight went back the ten steps it had descended.

²¹For the Lord will rise up as at Mount Perazim. He will rouse Himself as in the Valley of Gibeon, to do His work, His strange work, and to perform His task, His disturbing task.

⁴their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun.

³³For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”

¹²But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord or understand His plan, for He has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.

¹³Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron and hooves of bronze to break to pieces many peoples. Then you will devote their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.

¹⁵Behold, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.

²²You gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner of the land. So they took the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and of Og king of Bashan.

²³You multiplied their descendants like the stars of heaven and brought them to the land You had told their fathers to enter and possess.

¹For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us the work You did in their days, in the days of old.

²With Your hand You drove out the nations and planted our fathers there; You crushed the peoples and cast them out.

¹Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.

²And the Lord said to Joshua, “Behold, I have delivered Jericho into your hand, along with its king and its mighty men of valor.

⁶He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead; He will crush the leaders far and wide.

¹⁵“Do not touch My anointed ones! Do no harm to My prophets!”

¹³But Moses told the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the Lord’s salvation, which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again.

¹⁴The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

¹²Joshua captured all these kings and their cities and put them to the sword. He devoted them to destruction, as Moses the Lord’s servant had commanded.

¹⁹Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God of our salvation. Selah

²⁰Our God is a God of deliverance; the Lord God is our rescuer from death.

¹¹As they fled before Israel along the descent from Beth-horon to Azekah, the Lord cast down on them large hailstones from the sky, and more of them were killed by the hailstones than by the swords of the Israelites.

¹⁴Then the Lord will appear over them, and His arrow will go forth like lightning. The Lord God will sound the ram’s horn and advance in the whirlwinds of the south.

⁴⁰At the time of the end, the king of the South will engage him in battle, but the king of the North will storm out against him with chariots, horsemen, and many ships, invading many countries and sweeping through them like a flood.

¹⁰All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I cut them off.

¹¹They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the Lord I cut them off.

⁴So Moses declared, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt,

⁵and every firstborn son in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the servant girl behind the hand mill, as well as the firstborn of all the cattle.

¹⁰Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase even more; and if a war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”

¹¹So the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. As a result, they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

¹²On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn male, both man and beast, and I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.

¹³The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a sign; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will fall on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

¹⁹Your path led through the sea, Your way through the mighty waters, but Your footprints were not to be found.

⁸Were You angry at the rivers, O Lord? Was Your wrath against the streams? Did You rage against the sea when You rode on Your horses, on Your chariots of salvation?

⁸At the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up; like a wall the currents stood firm; the depths congealed in the heart of the sea.

⁹As for the prophets: My heart is broken within me, and all my bones tremble. I have become like a drunkard, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord, because of His holy words.

⁵“Look at the nations and observe—be utterly astounded! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you.

⁶For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans—that ruthless and impetuous nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.

²O Lord, I have heard the report of You; I stand in awe, O Lord, of Your deeds. Revive them in these years; make them known in these years. In Your wrath, remember mercy!

⁸So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision. No strength remained in me; my face grew deathly pale, and I was powerless.

³You have said, ‘Woe is me because the Lord has added sorrow to my pain! I am worn out with groaning and have found no rest.’”

⁴Thus Jeremiah was to say to Baruch: “This is what the Lord says: Throughout the land I will demolish what I have built and uproot what I have planted.

¹²⁰My flesh trembles in awe of You; I stand in fear of Your judgments.

¹⁶Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes—joy and gladness from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.

¹⁷They will devour your harvest and food; they will consume your sons and daughters; they will eat up your flocks and herds; they will feed on your vines and fig trees. With the sword they will destroy the fortified cities in which you trust.”

⁶“I afflicted all your cities with cleanness of teeth and all your towns with lack of bread, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

⁷“I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was three months away. I sent rain on one city but withheld it from another. One field received rain; another without rain withered.

¹⁵If, however, you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

³⁰You will be pledged in marriage to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house but will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but will not enjoy its fruit.

³¹Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away and not returned to you. Your flock will be given to your enemies, and no one will save you.

¹⁶from that time, when one came expecting a heap of twenty ephahs of grain, there were but ten. When one came to the winepress to draw out fifty baths, there were but twenty.

¹⁷I struck you—all the work of your hands—with blight, mildew, and hail, but you did not turn to Me, declares the Lord.

¹⁵Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. I will still defend my ways to His face.

⁷But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

¹⁰I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom wears a priestly headdress, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He also has become my salvation.”

²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

³Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

³⁴He makes my feet like those of a deer and stations me upon the heights.

³³He makes my feet like those of a deer and stations me upon the heights.

¹³I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

¹For the choirmaster. Of the sons of Korah. According to Alamoth. A song. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.

¹³He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from the flinty crag,

¹Of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—whom shall I dread?