Book of Habakkuk: A paRAPhrase 1 The prophecy as Habakkuk the prophet dropped it. Habakkuk Complains: 2 How long, Lord must I sing this song, and your ears not hear? [x2] Why do I cry “Violence!” and see salvation silence? 3 Why do you make me look at crooks? Why do you take such evil book-cooking? Destruction of life is before me, you ignore rife strife, astounding dysfunction abounding. 4 Therefore the Law is paralyzed, we saw justice sterilized by lies. The wicked stick it to the righteous, so the light gets evicted. How long, Lord must I sing this song, and your ears not hear? [x2]

Yahweh Explains: 5 Take observation of the nations and gaze, be utterly amazed. For I’m going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even after the word was received. [x2] 6 I am elevating the Babylonians, those hating, berating phony ones, who span the whole planet holding in their hands homes not owned. 7 They are a horrifying and terrifying people. They wrote that they and the Law were equal, and promote their rote gloating. 8 Their horse-herds course faster than leopards, jeopardy disaster, like hungry huskies at dusk, see. Their cavalry are galloping stars, Their horsemen salaried from afar. They glide like eagles, dive to dine on people, 9 all their men intend to creep, reap, (and) kill. Their horrible hordes pour forward like desert winds, they hoard hostages like sand. 10 They’re mocking kings, and rulers they call fools and losers. They sneer at fortresses, and engineer ramps to forcibly stamp out camps. 11 They sweep through like snowing gusts and keep going, disgusting peeps, whose own muscle is their god.

Habakkuk Complains (Again): 12 Lord are you not from infinity? my Divinity, my Holy One you will never die. You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment, You, O Rock unbudging, have anointed them to execute. [x2] 13 Your eyes are too pure to surmise disobeying, You cannot gaze at nor endure evil ways. Why then do You watch those who wallow in treachery? Why be quiet while wicked wretches swallow those more righteous than they? 14 Why do You make people like fish in the ocean, like sea creatures in conditions of commotion? 15 The wicked foe pulls ‘em in with hooks, the crook gets ‘em in his net, snagged by a man magnet of a dragnet. and then he sang yet and delighted. 16 Therefore he invents sacrifices to his net, and lights incense to the dragon’s dragnet; Because of this net his haul is huge, and he benefits from holistic foods. Will You let him empty his net constantly, onslaught countries without empathy? Ch. 2. 1 I will stand on guard and station myself on the ramparts; I will regard what He will speak and seek to sport a retort to this critique. [x2]

Yahweh Explains (Again): 2 Then the Lord replied: Record a description of the revelation make an inscription on tablets so a herald may grab it and run. 3 For the revelation awaits to be done, it has spun towards the goal and will be carried between the poles. Though it tarries, wait and stay, it will invariably not be late, it will not delay. 4 Behold, as for the enemy puffed up; his heart-stuffs are scuffed up; But for the righteous, living by faith is enough. [For the righteous, faith is enough.] 5 Indeed to the haughty, draughts betray, in his own home he cannot even stay. Naughty and greedy as the grave; so needy he becomes death’s slave. He abducts to himself the nations, and constructs prisons for every population. 6 Will they not bring insinuations, and their taunts not haunt him? Singing, “Woe to him who flaunts stolen property, who wholly becomes wealthy improperly!” How long must we sing this song? 7 Will your creditors not wise up, your debtors wake you up at sunrise and make your cries rise up? What wonder, then, you will be under them. 8 Because you plundered many nations, the populations not sundered will plunder you. Because you shed human blood like a flood of the dead; you doomed and ruined territories, consuming their communities. [x2] 9 Woe to they who build their mansion by unjust expansion, nestling their nest at an extremity, to possibly remedy calamity. 10 You sought and plotted rotten ruin on many, brewing indignity on your own vicinity, fornication against your own vitality. 11 The stones will moan out from the fortification, and the beams will scream out in mortification. 12 Woe to him who sees assembly of a municipality through mutiny, and maintains a city by duplicity. 13 Does not the Lord of Hosts boast determination that a congregation’s concerns just burn in conflagration, that the nations consternation is no consideration? 14 For the earth will be filled with comprehension of the Lord’s majesty, just as the extension of waters cover the sea. 15 Woe to him who fixes a neighbour’s drink, mixing poisonous flavours until they can’t think, rudely poised to exploit them nude on the brink. 16 You will be filled with shame instead of a famous name! Now you have bad breaks by the drinking game, your nakedness proclaimed. You must gobble up the Lord’s goblet, and disgrace will replace your noble face. 17 The violence you placed upon Lebanon will overwhelm you, and your malevolence in razing their realm of animals will trample all. Because you shed human blood like a flood of the dead; you doomed and ruined territories, consuming their communities. [x2] 18 How viable is an idol whittled by a worker? How valuable an icon that constructs cons? For the daft craftsman who drafts one seeks salvation from his own creation! He makes idols that are idle. 19 Woe to him who says to wood, “Become vital!” Or to comatose stones, “You’ve arose!” You’ve chose that as your deliverer? Sure, it's covered in cold gold and silver, but doesn’t hold a simple sliver of spirit within her. 20 Yahweh is in His Holy Temple, Let the ample earth birth silence in His presence. [x2]

Habakkuk’s Refrain Ch. 3. 1 A Prayer of Habakkuk the Prophet. On the Funky Beat. 2 Lord, I revere the report about you; indeed I fear your deeds, Lord. Revive them in our time, in our days make them thrive, in wrath let grace arrive. 3 God came down from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory adorns the heavens and his praise inlays the earth. 4 His radiance was like sunlight, rays sprayed from his hand, where his expansive energy stands a mystery. 5 Plague raged before him, pestilence lagged afterward. He stood and cracked the earth, he understood its semblance and the neighbourhoods went trembling. 6 The ancient mountain ranges disintegrated, the perpetual hills’ sedimentation saw segmentation, they separated incinerated. But his mediations see continuation! 7 Certainly, I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the tent curtains of Midian hurting in duress. 8 Were you shivering in anger against the rivers Lord? Did the aftermath of your wrath beam against the streams? Did you seethe against the seas when you rode your valiant battalion of stallions with your chariot and carried it to victory? 9 Your bow was made bare and you declared you wanted your scary arrows there. Selah. You cleave firmament with rivers, 10 mountains once permanent grieved and quivered, Torrents of fountain currents poured out, with a roar and shout the depths leapt about, and waves raised to an abhorrent apex stout. 11 Sun and moon soon froze in the skies, at the sight of the glow as your light arrow flies, as the beams of your gleaming spear appears. 12 In indignation you made a demonstration throughout the world’s foundations, and in fury you did bury the nations. 13 You hurried to allocate salvation to your relations, to dedicate liberation to Messiah Revelation! You made bleed him would lead the people of evil, you proceeded to see him disrobed head to toe. Selah. 14 You pierced him with his own fierce spears, when his peers appeared to scatter us in fear, with laughter they leered as though they would slaughter us after. 15 You trampled the sea with your steeds, seething the ample steeped deeps. 16 I heard and my heart hammered, my lips stammered at His quips. Decay laces my bones, I stay in one place and groan. Still I will wait patient for the day of displacement, for the nation of invasion. 17 Though the fig tree doesn’t bloom, and I find no big grapes on the vine to groom, though the olive crop stops, gives only gloom, and the food yields of the fields are doomed, though there are no sheep to keep in the pen, and no cattle to rattle and settle in, 18 Even then - I will raise my voice to the Lord. I will praise and rejoice in God my Saviour. 19 The Sovereign Lord is my Vigour, he makes my feet steady and aright; like a creature with mighty antlers, he readies me to tread on the heights. [x2] For the director of the choir. On the stringed things I acquired.