Psalm 13

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ How long will You forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?

² How long must I lay up cares within me and have sorrow in my heart day after day? How long shall my enemy exalt himself over me?

³ Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; lighten the eyes [of my faith to behold Your face in the pitchlike darkness], lest I sleep the sleep of death,

⁴ Lest my enemy say, I have prevailed over him, and those that trouble me rejoice when I am shaken.

⁵ But I have trusted, leaned on, and been confident in Your mercy and loving-kindness; my heart shall rejoice and be in high spirits in Your salvation.

⁶ I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

1 The burden or oracle (the thing to be lifted up) which Habakkuk the prophet saw.

² O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and You will not hear? Or cry out to You of violence and You will not save?

³ Why do You show me iniquity and wrong, and Yourself look upon or cause me to see perverseness and trouble? For destruction and violence are before me; and there is strife, and contention arises.

⁴ Therefore the law is slackened and justice and a righteous sentence never go forth, for the [hostility of the] wicked surrounds the [uncompromisingly] righteous; therefore justice goes forth perverted.

⁵ Look around [you, Habakkuk, replied the Lord] among the nations and see! And be astonished! Astounded! For I am putting into effect a work in your days [such] that you would not believe it if it were told you.^(A)

⁶ For behold, I am rousing up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation who march through the breadth of the earth to take possession of dwelling places that do not belong to them.^(B)

⁷ [The Chaldeans] are terrible and dreadful; their justice and dignity proceed [only] from themselves.

⁸ Their horses also are swifter than leopards and are fiercer than the evening wolves, and their horsemen spread themselves and press on proudly; yes, their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle that hastens to devour.

⁹ They all come for violence; their faces turn eagerly forward, and they gather prisoners together like sand.

¹⁰ They scoff at kings, and rulers are a derision to them; they ridicule every stronghold, for they heap up dust [for earth mounds] and take it.

¹¹ Then they sweep by like a wind and pass on, and they load themselves with guilt, [as do all men] whose own power is their god.

¹² Are not You from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, You have appointed [the Chaldean] to execute [Your] judgment, and You, O Rock, have established him for chastisement and correction.^(C)

¹³ You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and can not look [inactively] upon injustice. Why then do You look upon the plunderer? Why are you silent when the wicked one destroys him who is more righteous than [the Chaldean oppressor] is?

¹⁴ Why do You make men like the fish of the sea, like reptiles and creeping things that have no ruler [and are defenseless against their foes]?

¹⁵ [The Chaldean] brings all of them up with his hook; he catches and drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is in high spirits.

¹⁶ Therefore he sacrifices [offerings] to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because from them he lives luxuriously and his food is plentiful and rich.

¹⁷ Shall he therefore continue to empty his net and mercilessly go on slaying the nations forever?