Habakkuk 2

Then God replied to me, “Write plainly on tablets what I am revealing to you in this vision, and then read it to a messenger so he can run with it to tell it to other people. 3 In this vision I will talk about things that will happen when I decide. They will certainly happen in the future, I do not lie. You want those things to happen immediately, but they are not happening. But wait patiently for them to happen! When they occur, they will occur quickly, and not slowly. \* 4 Think about the people in that proud nation! They are certainly not doing what is righteous. But people who are righteous will live because they faithfully do what I want them to do. 5 Drunk armies are foolish, they cannot stop pillaging. No matter how much they kill and steal, they want more. They will conquer every people group they encounter. \* 6 But soon all those whom they have captured will ridicule the soldiers from Babylonia! They will make fun of them, saying, ‘Terrible things will happen to you who have stolen things from other countries! You got many things by forcing people to give them to you. But you certainly will not keep those things for long!’ 7 Suddenly those you owe a debt to because you pillaged them will come to pillage you. You will be afraid. They will recapture all the things that you stole from them. 8 You stole things from the people of many nations. You murdered people of many people groups, and you destroyed their land and their cities. So those who are still alive will steal valuable things from you. \* 9 Terrible things will happen to you people of Babylonia who build big houses with money that you got by forcing others to give it to you. You are proud, and you think that your houses will be safe because you have built them in places where you can easily defend them. 10 But because you have destroyed others, you have harmed yourself and disgraced your own family! 11 The very stones in the walls of your houses and the wooden beams in your ceilings show that you did evil things to get them \* 12 Terrible things will happen to you people of Babylonia who kill people in order to build cities, cities that you build by using money that you have gotten by committing crimes. 13 But God, commander of the angel armies, has declared that fire will destroy everything built by people who do things like that; they will have worked hard uselessly. 14 But in contrast, just as water fills the oceans, God will fill the earth with people who know how glorious he is. \* 15 Terrible things will happen to you people of Babylonia, who cause people who live in nearby countries to become drunk. You force them to drink a lot of drugged wine until they are drunk and then they walk around naked because you are happy when you see that. 16 But you are the ones whom God will soon disgrace instead of honor. God will make you drink so much wine that you will also stagger around drunk and naked. God will powerfully judge and curse you, and everyone will see that you are weak and not strong. \* 17 You did violent things to the people in Lebanon, and you killed the wild animals there, so you will be punished severely for doing that. You have killed many people and you have destroyed their lands and their cities. \* 18 An idol that someone carves or casts from metal does not help anyone at all; it only deceives the people who trust it. The person who makes an idol trusts something that he himself created, something that cannot even speak!

Terrible things will happen to you who say to lifeless idols that are made of wood or rock, ‘Wake up!’ Stone idols certainly cannot tell you what you should do; they look nice because they are covered with silver and gold, but they are not alive. 20 But God is in his holy temple; everyone on the earth should be silent in his presence!” \*