Habakkuk 2

1 At my guard post I will stand, and I will take my stand on the rampart, and I will watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will return upon my reproof.

2 And YHWH answered me and said, “Write the vision, and make [it] plain upon the tablets, that the one calling may run with it.

3 For [is] yet the vision for an appointed time, and it breathes of the end, and it will not lie; if it lingers, wait for it, because it will surely come and will not delay.

4 Behold, one is not puffed up whose soul is upright within him, and the righteous one will live by his faith.

5 And indeed because wealth is treacherous, a proud man who does not stay at home, who enlarges his appetite like Sheol and he [is] like death, and is not satisfied, and he gathers to himself all the nations, and he collects for himself all the peoples.

6 Will not these, all of them, take up a clever saying against him, and a taunt [with] riddles against him, and say, ‘Woe [to] the one multiplying [what is] not unto him. Until when will will he load on humself many pledges?’

7 Will not your creditors suddenly rise up, and your oppressors awaken? And you will become as plunder for them!

8 Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples will plunder you for the bloodshed of man and the violence to the land, [to] the city and all those dwelling in it!

9 Woe [to] the one biting off evil gain for his house, to set his nest in the heights, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil!

10 You have devised shame for your house, cutting off many peoples, and sinning against your soul.

11 For a stone from the wall will cry out, and a beam from the timbers will answer it:

12 Woe [to] the one building a city with bloodshed, and who establishes a town by injustice!

13 Behold, Is [it] not from YHWH of Hosts that the labor of the people is for feeding the fire, and nations only in vain weary themselves?

14 For the earth will be filled to know the glory of YHWH, as the waters cover over the sea.

15 Woe [to] the one giving drink to his neighbor, pouring out your rage and even to make [him] drunk, in order to look upon his nakedness!

16 You have been filled with shame instead of glory. Drink, you also, and expose your uncircumcision. It will turn around upon you—the cup of the right hand of YHWH, and disgrace [be] upon your glory.

17 For the violence to Lebanon will cover you, and the destruction of the beasts will terrify them, from the bloodshed of man and the violence to the land, to the city and all those dwelling in it.

18 What profit [is] an image when its fashioner has carved it, a molten image and a teacher of falsehood? For the one fashioning trusts upon it [in] his fashioning, making mute idols.

19 Woe [to] the one saying to the wood, ‘Awake!’ Or to a stone of silence, ‘Arise!’ Can it give instruction? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and not any breath [is] within it.”

20 And YHWH [is] in the temple of His holiness; let all the earth be silent before Him.