Habakkuk 2
2
1I will stand like a guard and watch.
I will wait to see what the Lord will say to me.
I will wait and learn how he answers my questions.
God Answers Habakkuk
2The Lord answered me, “Write down what I show you. Write it clearly on a sign so that the message will be easy to read.#2:2 Write down … easy to read Or “Write the vision clearly on tablets so that the person who reads it can run and tell other people.” 3This message is about a special time in the future. This message is about the end, and it will come true. Just be patient and wait for it. That time will come; it will not be late. 4This message cannot help those who refuse to listen to it, but those who are good will live because they believe it.
5“Wine can trick a person. In the same way a strong man’s pride can fool him, but he will not find peace. He is like death—he always wants more and more. And, like death, he will never be satisfied. He will continue to defeat other nations and to make those people his prisoners. 6But soon enough, all those people will laugh at him and tell stories about his defeat. They will laugh and say, ‘It’s too bad that the man who took so many things will not get to keep them! He made himself rich by collecting debts.’
7“Strong man, you have taken money from people. One day they will wake up and realize what is happening, and they will stand against you. Then they will take things from you, and you will be very afraid. 8You have stolen things from many nations, so they will take much from you. You have killed many people and destroyed lands and cities. You have killed all the people there.
9“Look at you people! You get rich by cheating people, and it hurts your own family! You build your houses high on the cliffs to protect yourself from danger. 10You planned shameful things, and that will bring shame to your own family. You have done wrong, and it will cost you your life. 11The stones of the walls will cry out against you. Even the wooden rafters#2:11 rafters Boards that support the roof. in your own house will prove that you are wrong.
12“Look at them! They kill people to build their city and do wicked things to make their walled city strong. 13But the Lord All-Powerful has decided that a fire will destroy everything that those people worked to build. All their work will be for nothing. 14Then people everywhere will know about the Glory of the Lord. This news will spread just as water spreads out into the sea. 15It will be very bad for those who become angry and make other people suffer. Like an angry drunk, they knock others to the ground and strip them naked, just to see their naked bodies.#2:15 Like an angry drunk … bodies The Hebrew text here is hard to understand.
16“But they will know the Lord’s anger. It will be like a cup of poison in the Lord’s right hand. They will taste that anger, and then they will fall to the ground like drunks.
“Evil ruler, you will drink from that cup. You will get shame, not honor. 17You hurt many people in Lebanon and stole many animals there. So you will be afraid because of the people who died and because of the bad things you did to that country. You will be afraid because of what you did to those cities and to the people who lived there.”
The Message About Idols
18Their false god will not help them, because it is only a statue that someone covered with metal. It is only a statue, so whoever made it cannot expect it to help. That statue cannot even speak! 19Look at them! They speak to a wooden statue and tell it, “Get up! Rescue me.” They talk to a stone that cannot speak and say, “Wake up!” Don’t you know those things cannot help you? That statue may be covered with gold and silver, but there is no life in it.
20But the Lord is in his holy temple, so the whole earth should be silent in his presence and show him respect.
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© 1987, 2004 Bible League International
Ḥaḇaqquq (Habakkuk) 2
2
1I stand at my watch, and station myself on the watch-tower, and wait to see what He says to me, and what to answer when I am reproved.
2And יהוה answered me and said, “Write the vision and inscribe it on tablets, so that he who reads it runs.
3“For the vision is yet for an appointed time, and it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it lingers, wait for it, for it shall certainly come, it shall not delay.
4“See, he whose being is not upright in him is puffed up. But the righteous one lives by his steadfastness.
5“And also, because wine betrays him, a man is proud, and he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his appetite as She’ol, and he is like death, and is not satisfied, and gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples.
6“Shall not all these lift up a proverb against him, and a mocking riddle against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases what is not his! Till when is he to load on himself many pledges’?
7“Do not your creditors rise up suddenly? And those who make you tremble wake up and you be plunder for them?
8“Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the people shall plunder you, because of men’s blood, and doing violence to the land, to the city, and to all who dwell in it.
9“Woe to him who is getting evil gain for his house, in order to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of evil!
10“You have counselled shame for your house, to cut off many peoples, and your being is sinning.
11“For a stone from the wall cries out, and a beam from the timbers answers it.
12“Woe to him who builds a town by blood, and establishes a city by unrighteousness!
13“See, it is not from יהוה of hosts that peoples labour only for fire, and nations weary themselves for naught,
14for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the esteem of יהוה, as the waters cover the sea!#See Isa. 11:9
15“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbour, pouring out your wineskin, and also making him drunk – in order to look on their nakedness!
16“You shall be filled with shame instead of esteem. Drink, you too, and be exposed as uncircumcised! The cup of the right hand of יהוה shall come around to you, and great shame upon your esteem.
17“For the violence done to Leḇanon is to overwhelm you – and the ravaging of beasts by which you made them afraid – because of men’s blood and the violence to the land, to the city and of all who dwell in it.
18“Of what use shall a carved image be? For its maker has carved it: a moulded image and teacher of falsehood! For the maker trusts what he has made: to make dumb idols!
19“Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ to silent stone, ‘Arise!’ Is it a teacher? See, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no spirit at all inside it.
20“But יהוה is in His set-apart Hĕḵal. Let all the earth be silent before Him.”
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