The burden concerning  ¹Nineveh. The book of the vision of  ²Nahum the Elkoshite.

Jehovah is a jealous God and One who avenges;
Jehovah avenges and is full of wrath;
Jehovah takes vengeance on His adversaries,
And reserves wrath for His enemies.

Jehovah is long-suffering and great in power
And will by no means clear the guilty.
Jehovah — His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry,
And He dries up all the rivers.
Bashan and Carmel languish,
And the sprout of Lebanon languishes.

The mountains quake because of Him,
And the hills melt,
And the earth is heaved up at His presence,
Indeed the world, and all that inhabit it.

Who can stand before His indignation,
And who can maintain himself in the fierceness of His anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are broken down by Him.

Jehovah is good,
A stronghold in a day of distress;
And He knows those who take refuge in Him.

But with an overflowing  ¹flood
He will make a full end of  ²her place,
And He will pursue His enemies into darkness.

What do you devise against Jehovah?
He will make a full end;
Distress will not arise a second time.

For though they are entangled like thorns
And like those drunken with their drink,
They will be consumed as fully as dry stubble.

One went forth from you
Who devises evil against Jehovah,
Who counsels wickedness.

Thus says Jehovah,
Though they are complete in number and even numerous,
Even so they will be cut down; and  ¹they will pass away.
And though I have afflicted you,
I will afflict you no more.

And now I will break  ¹his yoke from off you
And will snap your bonds asunder.

And Jehovah has commanded concerning you:
No more of your name will be sown;
Out of the house of your gods I will cut off
The graven idol and the molten idol;
I will make your grave, for you are worthless.

See, upon the mountains
The feet of him who bears the  ¹glad news,
Who announces peace!
Keep your feasts, O Judah;
Complete your vows;
For the wicked one will never again
Pass through you;
He will be completely cut off.

 ¹He who scatters has come up before you:
Keep the fortress,
Watch the way,
Strengthen the loins,
Fortify the power greatly.

For Jehovah restores
The excellency of Jacob
As the excellency of Israel;
For the emptiers have emptied them out
And destroyed their vine branches.

The shield of His mighty men is red;
The valiant men are clad in scarlet;
The chariots flash with the shining of steel
In the day of His preparation,
And the spears are brandished.

In the streets the chariots rush madly;
They dash to and fro in the open squares;
Their appearance is like that of torches;
They dart like lightning.

 ¹The Assyrian king remembers his glorious ones:
They stumble in their march;
They hasten to the wall  ²of the city,
But the besiegers' shelter is prepared.

The  ¹gates of the rivers are opened,
And the palace is dissolved.

And it is determined:  ¹She is uncovered; she is carried away;
And her maidens moan,
As with the sound of doves,
Beating their breasts.

Though Nineveh has been like a pool of water all her days,
Now they are fleeing.
Stand! Stand! But no one turns back.

Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold!
And there is no end to what has been prepared.
Oh, the glory of all the desirable vessels!

Emptiness and void and waste!
And the heart melts, and the knees knock,
And anguish is in all the loins,
And the faces of all of them become pale.

Where is the den of lions
And the feeding place of young lions,
Where the lion and the lioness walked,
And the lion's whelp; and no one frightened them?

The lion tore in pieces, enough for his whelps,
And strangled for his lioness
And filled his caves with torn prey
And his dens with torn animals.

Indeed I am against you,
Declares Jehovah of hosts;
And I will burn  ¹your chariots in smoke,
And the sword will devour your young lions;
And I will cut off your prey from the earth;
And the voice of your messengers will no longer be heard.

Woe to the bloody city!
She is all full of lies and pillage;
The prey does not depart.

The sound of the whip,
And the sound of the rattling wheel;
And the horse galloping,
And the chariot jolting by,

The horseman making the horse to rear up,
And the sword flashing,
And the spear glittering;
And a multitude of the slain,
And a mass of corpses,
And no end to the bodies —
They stumble among their bodies.

This because of the multitude of harlotries
Of the well-favored harlot,
The mistress of sorceries,
Who sells nations by her harlotries
And families by her sorceries.

Indeed I am against you, declares Jehovah of hosts;
And I will throw open your skirts upon your face,
And I will show the nations your nakedness,
And the kingdoms your shame.

And I will cast abominable filth upon you
And make you appear foolish and make you like a spectacle.

And everyone who sees you
Will flee from you and say,
Nineveh is laid waste.
Who will lament for her?
Where will I seek
Some to comfort you?

Are you better than  ¹No-amon,
Who sat beside the canals
With waters all around her,
Whose bulwark was the  ²sea
And water was her wall?

 ¹Cush was her strength,
As well as Egypt, and it was without end;
 ²Put and the Libyans
Were among  ³her helpers.

She too was carried away;
She went into captivity;
Her little ones too were dashed to pieces
At the head of every street,
And for her nobles
They cast lots,
And all her great men
Were bound in chains.

You too will be drunken;
You will be hidden.
You too will seek
A stronghold from the enemy.

All your fortresses will be like fig trees
With first ripe figs:
If they are shaken, they will fall
Into the mouth of the eater.

Indeed your people are like women
In the midst of you;
Unto your enemies the gates of your land
Are wide open;
Fire devours your bars.

Draw for yourself water for the siege!
Strengthen your fortresses!
Go into the clay,
And tread in the mortar!
Make the brick kiln  ¹ready!

There will the fire devour you;
The sword will cut you off;
It will devour you like the locust.
Enlarge yourself like the locust;
Enlarge yourself like the locust swarm.

You have multiplied your merchants
Like the stars of heaven;
The locust strips everything and flies away.

Your princes are like the locust swarm,
And your officials are like hordes of  ¹locusts,
Which camp in the hedges
On a cold day,
But when the sun arises, they flee away,
And the place where they are is unknown.

Your shepherds slumber,
O king of Assyria;
Your nobles sleep.
Your people are scattered upon the mountains,
And there is no one to gather them.

There is no alleviating of your injury;
Your wound is grievous.
All who hear the report of you
Clap their hands over you;
For upon whom has your wickedness
Not passed continually?

The burden which  ¹Habakkuk the prophet saw.

How long, O Jehovah, shall I cry
And You do not hear?
I cry out to You, Violence!
And You do not save.

Why do You cause me to see iniquity
And look upon wrong?
Indeed destruction and violence are before me;
And there is strife, and contention arises.

Therefore the law is ineffective,
And justice never goes forth;
For the wicked encompasses the righteous,
Therefore justice goes forth perverted.

Look among the nations, and see,
And be amazed, utterly amazed.
For I am doing a work in your days
Which you would not believe if it were told you.

For I am about to raise up the Chaldeans,
That bitter and hasty nation
That marches through the breadth of the earth
To possess habitations that are not  ¹theirs.

They are terrible and dreadful;
Their judgment and their authority issue from themselves.

And their horses are swifter than leopards
And more agile than the wolves of evening.
And their horsemen prance about;
Indeed their horsemen come from afar;
They fly like an eagle that hastens to devour.

All of them come to do violence;
The set of their faces is forward,
And they gather captives like sand.

Indeed they scoff at kings,
And potentates are a derision to them;
They deride every fortress,
For they heap up dirt and take it.

Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass over
And thus become guilty; this — their strength — is their god.

Are You not from everlasting, O Jehovah,
My God, my Holy One? We will not die.
O Jehovah, You have appointed  ¹them for judgment;
And You, O Rock, have established  ¹them for correction.

You who are of purer eyes than to behold evil
And who cannot look upon wrong,
Why do You look upon them who deal treacherously
And keep silent when the wicked man swallows up him who is  ¹more righteous than he?

And You make man like the fish of the sea,
Like the creeping things, who have no one to rule for them.

They take all of them up with a hook;
They drag them off in their net
And gather them into their seine;
So they rejoice and exult.

Therefore they offer sacrifices to their net
And burn incense to their seine,
For by them their portion is fat
And their food is plenteous.

Will they then empty their net
And continually slay the nations without sparing?

I will stand at my watch
And station myself on the fortress,
And I will watch to see what He will speak to me
And what I will reply concerning my complaint.

Then Jehovah answered and said,
Write the  ¹vision, and render it plainly upon tablets,
 ²That even he who runs by may read it.

For the vision is yet for the appointed time,
And it hastens toward the end and will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will surely come; it will not delay.

See, he who is puffed up, his soul is not upright within him,
 ¹But the righteous one will  ²live by his faith.

Furthermore his wine is treacherous:
A boasting man, he does not abide at home,
He who enlarges his appetite like  ¹Sheol,
And is like death and cannot be satisfied,
But gathers to himself all the nations
And collects for himself all the peoples.

Will not all of these take up a parable against him,
Indeed a mocking song and a riddle against him, and say,
Woe to him who increases what is not his (For how long?)
And who loads himself with the burden of pledges?

Will not those who bite you rise up suddenly,
And those who shake you awake,
And you will become booty to them?

Because you have plundered many nations;
All the remnant of the peoples will  ¹plunder you,
Because of the bloodshed of men and the violence done to the land,
To the city, and to all the inhabitants in it.

Woe to him who by violence takes evil gain for his house,
So as to place his nest on high
That he may be delivered from the hand of evil!

You have devised shame against your own house
By cutting off many peoples,
And have sinned against your own soul.

For the stone will cry out from the wall,
And the rafter will answer from the timber.

Woe to him who builds a city by bloodshed
And establishes a town by iniquity!

Indeed is it not of Jehovah of hosts
That the peoples toil for the fire
And the nations weary themselves for vanity?

For the earth will be  ¹filled
With the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah
As water covers the sea.

Woe to him who makes his neighbor drink,
Adding in  ¹his poison,
And also making him drunk
In order to look at their nakedness!

You are sated with shame, not glory.
You also, drink and be shown to be uncircumcised!
The cup of Jehovah's right hand will come around to you,
And disgrace will be upon your glory.

For the violence done to Lebanon will cover you,
As well as the destruction of the beasts which frightened them,
Because of the bloodshed of men and the violence done to the land,
To the city, and to all the inhabitants in it.

What profit is the graven idol that its maker should engrave it,
Or the molten idol, even the teacher of lies,
That he who forms its form depends on it
To make dumb idols?

Woe to him who says to wood, Awake!
And, Arise! to silent stone.
Will it teach him?
Behold, it is set in gold and silver,
And there is no breath at all within it.

But Jehovah is in His holy temple:
Be silent before Him, all the earth!

A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet in  ¹shigionoth.

O Jehovah, I have heard the report concerning You and am afraid.
O Jehovah,  ¹revive Your work
In the midst of the years;
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember compassion.

God comes from Teman,
Even the Holy One from Mount Paran.  ¹Selah
His splendor covers the heavens,
And the earth is filled with His praise.

And His brightness is like the light:
Rays come forth from His hand,
And the hiding of His power is there.

Before Him goes pestilence,
And the fire bolt comes forth at His feet.

He stands and  ¹measures the earth;
He looks and startles the nations;
And the ancient mountains are shattered into dust,
And the everlasting hills sink down;
His goings are eternal.

I see the tents of  ¹Cushan
Under affliction;
The tent curtains of the land of Midian tremble.

Is it against the rivers, O Jehovah,
Against the rivers that Your anger is kindled?
Is Your overflowing wrath against the sea
That You ride upon Your horses,
Upon Your chariots of salvation?

Your bow is bared utterly;
The rods of discipline are sworn according to Your word. Selah
You cleave the earth with rivers.

The mountains see you; they writhe;
The tempest of water passes by;
The deep utters its voice,
It lifts its hands high.

The sun and the moon stand still in their high abode
At the light of Your arrows going forth,
At the brightness of Your glittering spear.

In wrath You march through the earth,
In anger You thresh the nations.

You go forth for the salvation of Your people,
For the salvation of Your anointed one,
You strike the head from the house of the wicked one,
Laying bare the foundation, even to the neck. Selah

You pierce, with his own staves,
The heads of his warriors.
They come out like a whirlwind to scatter me;
Their exultation is as if to devour the poor in secret.

You tread the sea with Your horses,
The heap of mighty waters.

I heard and my body trembled;
My lips quivered at the sound.
Rottenness entered my bones,
And I tremble in my place,
Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress,
When  ¹he who attacks comes up against the people.

For the fig tree will not sprout,
And there will be no yield on the vines;
The labor on the olive tree will fail,
And the fields will make no food;
The flock will be cut off from the fold,
And there will be no herd in the stalls.

Yet I will exult in Jehovah;
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Jehovah the Lord is my strength;
And He makes my feet like hinds' feet
And will cause me to walk on my high places.
For the choir director, with  ¹my stringed instruments.