A Message about Phoenicia

¹This is a message about Tyre. Howl with grief, you sailors out on the ocean! Your home port of Tyre has been destroyed; its houses and its harbor are in ruins. As your ships return from Cyprus, you learn the news.

²Wail, you merchants of Sidon! You sent agents

³across the sea to buy and sell the grain that grew in Egypt and to do business with all the nations.

⁴City of Sidon, you are disgraced! The sea and the great ocean depths disown you and say, “I never had any children. I never raised sons or daughters.”

⁵Even the Egyptians will be shocked and dismayed when they learn that Tyre has been destroyed.

⁶Howl with grief, you people of Phoenicia! Try to escape to Spain!

⁷Can this be the joyful city of Tyre, founded so long ago? Is this the city that sent settlers across the sea to establish colonies?

⁸Who was it that planned to bring all this on Tyre, that imperial city, whose merchant princes were the most honored men on earth?

⁹The Lord Almighty planned it. He planned it in order to put an end to their pride in what they had done and to humiliate their honored ones.

¹⁰Go and farm the land, you people in the colonies in Spain! There is no one to protect you any more.

¹¹The Lord has stretched out his hand over the sea and overthrown kingdoms. He has commanded that the Phoenician centers of commerce be destroyed.

¹²City of Sidon, your happiness has ended, and your people are oppressed. Even if they escape to Cyprus, they will still not be safe.

¹³(It was the Babylonians, not the Assyrians, who let the wild animals overrun Tyre. It was the Babylonians who put up siege towers, tore down the fortifications of Tyre, and left the city in ruins.)

¹⁴Howl with grief, you sailors out on the ocean! The city you relied on has been destroyed.

¹⁵A time is coming when Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the lifetime of a king. When those years are over, Tyre will be like the prostitute in the song:

¹⁶Take your harp, go round the town, you poor forgotten whore! Play and sing your songs again to bring men back once more.

¹⁷When the seventy years are over, the Lord will let Tyre go back to her old trade, and she will hire herself out to all the kingdoms of the world.

¹⁸The money she earns by commerce will be dedicated to the Lord. She will not store it away, but those who worship the Lord will use her money to buy the food and the clothing they need.

The Lord Will Punish the Earth

¹The Lord is going to devastate the earth and leave it desolate. He will twist the earth's surface and scatter its people.

²Everyone will meet the same fate—the priests and the people, slaves and masters, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, rich and poor.

³The earth will lie shattered and ruined. The Lord has spoken and it will be done.

⁴The earth dries up and withers; the whole world grows weak; both earth and sky decay.

⁵The people have defiled the earth by breaking God's laws and by violating the covenant he made to last forever.

⁶So God has pronounced a curse on the earth. Its people are paying for what they have done. Fewer and fewer remain alive.

⁷The grapevines wither, and wine is becoming scarce. Everyone who was once happy is now sad,

⁸and the joyful music of their harps and drums has ceased.

⁹There is no more happy singing over wine; no one enjoys its taste any more.

¹⁰In the city everything is in chaos, and people lock themselves in their houses for safety.

¹¹People shout in the streets because there is no more wine. Happiness is gone forever; it has been banished from the land.

¹²The city is in ruins, and its gates have been broken down.

¹³This is what will happen in every nation all over the world. It will be like the end of harvest, when the olives have been beaten off every tree and the last grapes picked from the vines.

¹⁴Those who survive will sing for joy. Those in the West will tell how great the Lord is,

¹⁵and those in the East will praise him. The people who live along the sea will praise the Lord, the God of Israel.

¹⁶From the most distant parts of the world we will hear songs in praise of Israel, the righteous nation. But there is no hope for me! I am wasting away! Traitors continue to betray, and their treachery grows worse and worse.

¹⁷Listen to me, everyone! There are terrors, pits, and traps waiting for you.

¹⁸Anyone who tries to escape from the terror will fall in a pit, and anyone who escapes from the pit will be caught in a trap. Torrents of rain will pour from the sky, and earth's foundations will shake.

¹⁹The earth will crack and shatter and split open.

²⁰The earth itself will stagger like a drunk, sway like a hut in a storm. The world is weighed down by its sins; it will collapse and never rise again.

²¹A time is coming when the Lord will punish the powers above and the rulers of the earth.

²²God will crowd kings together like prisoners in a pit. He will shut them in prison until the time of their punishment comes.

²³The moon will grow dark, and the sun will no longer shine, for the Lord Almighty will be king. He will rule in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, and the leaders of the people will see his glory.

¹This is the message that the Lord revealed to the prophet Habakkuk.

Habakkuk Complains of Injustice

²O Lord, how long must I call for help before you listen, before you save us from violence?

³Why do you make me see such trouble? How can you stand to look on such wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are all around me, and there is fighting and quarreling everywhere.

⁴The law is weak and useless, and justice is never done. Evil people get the better of the righteous, and so justice is perverted.

The Lord's Reply

⁵Then the Lord said to his people, “Keep watching the nations around you, and you will be astonished at what you see. I am going to do something that you will not believe when you hear about it.

⁶I am bringing the Babylonians to power, those fierce, restless people. They are marching out across the world to conquer other lands.

⁷They spread fear and terror, and in their pride they are a law to themselves.

⁸“Their horses are faster than leopards, fiercer than hungry wolves. Their cavalry troops come riding from distant lands; their horses paw the ground. They come swooping down like eagles attacking their prey.

⁹“Their armies advance in violent conquest, and everyone is terrified as they approach. Their captives are as numerous as grains of sand.

¹⁰They treat kings with contempt and laugh at high officials. No fortress can stop them—they pile up earth against it and capture it.

¹¹Then they sweep on like the wind and are gone, these men whose power is their god.”

Habakkuk Complains to the Lord Again

¹²Lord, from the very beginning you are God. You are my God, holy and eternal. Lord, my God and protector, you have chosen the Babylonians and made them strong so that they can punish us.

¹³But how can you stand these treacherous, evil men? Your eyes are too holy to look at evil, and you cannot stand the sight of people doing wrong. So why are you silent while they destroy people who are more righteous than they are?

¹⁴How can you treat people like fish or like a swarm of insects that have no ruler to direct them?

¹⁵The Babylonians catch people with hooks, as though they were fish. They drag them off in nets and shout for joy over their catch!

¹⁶They even worship their nets and offer sacrifices to them, because their nets provide them with the best of everything.

¹⁷Are they going to use their swords forever and keep on destroying nations without mercy?

The Lord's Answer to Habakkuk

¹I will climb my watchtower and wait to see what the Lord will tell me to say and what answer he will give to my complaint.

²The Lord gave me this answer: “Write down clearly on tablets what I reveal to you, so that it can be read at a glance.

³Put it in writing, because it is not yet time for it to come true. But the time is coming quickly, and what I show you will come true. It may seem slow in coming, but wait for it; it will certainly take place, and it will not be delayed.

⁴And this is the message: ‘Those who are evil will not survive, but those who are righteous will live because they are faithful to God.’”

Doom on the Unrighteous

⁵Wealth is deceitful. Greedy people are proud and restless—like death itself they are never satisfied. That is why they conquer nation after nation for themselves.

⁶The conquered people will taunt their conquerors and show their scorn for them. They will say, “You take what isn't yours, but you are doomed! How long will you go on getting rich by forcing your debtors to pay up?”

⁷But before you know it, you that have conquered others will be in debt yourselves and be forced to pay interest. Enemies will come and make you tremble. They will plunder you!

⁸You have plundered the people of many nations, but now those who have survived will plunder you because of the murders you have committed and because of your violence against the people of the world and its cities.

⁹You are doomed! You have made your family rich with what you took by violence, and have tried to make your own home safe from harm and danger!

¹⁰But your schemes have brought shame on your family; by destroying many nations you have only brought ruin on yourself.

¹¹Even the stones of the walls cry out against you, and the rafters echo the cry.

¹²You are doomed! You founded a city on crime and built it up by murder.

¹³The nations you conquered wore themselves out in useless labor, and all they have built goes up in flames. The Lord Almighty has done this.

¹⁴But the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord's glory as the seas are full of water.

¹⁵You are doomed! In your fury you humiliated and disgraced your neighbors; you made them stagger as though they were drunk.

¹⁶You in turn will be covered with shame instead of honor. You yourself will drink and stagger. The Lord will make you drink your own cup of punishment, and your honor will be turned to disgrace.

¹⁷You have cut down the forests of Lebanon; now you will be cut down. You killed its animals; now animals will terrify you. This will happen because of the murders you have committed and because of your violence against the people of the world and its cities.

¹⁸What's the use of an idol? It is only something that a human being has made, and it tells you nothing but lies. What good does it do for its maker to trust it—a god that can't even talk!

¹⁹You are doomed! You say to a piece of wood, “Wake up!” or to a block of stone, “Get up!” Can an idol reveal anything to you? It may be covered with silver and gold, but there is no life in it.

²⁰The Lord is in his holy Temple; let everyone on earth be silent in his presence.

¹The Lord hates people who use dishonest scales. He is happy with honest weights.

²People who are proud will soon be disgraced. It is wiser to be modest.

³If you are good, you are guided by honesty. People who can't be trusted are destroyed by their own dishonesty.

⁴Riches will do you no good on the day you face death, but honesty can save your life.