Maybe I will see what the Lord wants to tell me
1I will go and stand high on top of the wall
so that I can see very far.
Maybe I will see
what the Lord wants to tell me.
Maybe the Lord will answer
the questions that I have asked Him.
2The Lord answered Habakkuk and He said:
‘I will show you something,
and you must write it down
on big flat stones,
so that the one who reads it
can read it easily.
3I will show you something,
and it will come at the right time.
It will happen, this is sure.
If it does not happen soon,
then you must wait because it will happen.
4People who are proud
will not get what they want to have,
but people who live in the right way
will keep on living
because they follow God faithfully.’
The Babylonians will suffer
5When people drink too much wine,
they are never satisfied.
They think they can do what they want to do.
The Babylonians are the same.
They are like graves who want to have
more and more dead people.
They don't say they have enough,
and they are never satisfied.
They keep on taking other nations
and bringing them together for themselves,
like graves keep on
taking dead people for themselves.
6But very soon
the people will laugh at the Babylonians.
The people will say to each other:
‘Those people will suffer,
because they make themselves rich
by taking everything
that belongs to other people.’
It will not be very long
7before the enemies of the Babylonians
come suddenly.
The people of whom you are afraid
will come and take everything you have.
8You have taken the things
of many people and nations,
and now the people who are still_alive
will come and take everything you have.
You have killed a lot of people.
You went to war_against all the people
who lived in towns and cities.
9These people will suffer,
because they take the things
of other people and make themselves rich,
and they build houses for themselves
on high mountains to live safely.
10You have made plans
to kill a lot of other people.
Now you will also die.
11Because the stones and wood in your homes
saw what you did,
they will shout and tell what they have seen.
12These people will suffer,
because they want to build cities for themselves,
but to do that, they kill other people
and do very bad things to them.
13The Lord rules over all.
He makes people work very hard.
They work and they get a lot of things,
but then the Lord burns it all down.
He makes people work until they are tired,
but after that, they have nothing.
14The sea is full of water,
and that is how the earth will also be full
of people who know the Lord.
They will know that He is God
and that He rules over all.
15These people who give wine
to other people to drink, will suffer.
They make the wine so strong
that people get drunk and lie down naked.
16Now all the people will also laugh at you.
No one will respect you,
because you will also get drunk
and lie down naked.
The Lord will give his cup_of_suffering to you,
and you will have to drink out of it.
No one will respect you.
17You have cut down bushes on Mount Lebanon,
and you have killed the animals.
Now other people will kill you,
because you have gone to war
and you have killed people
in every town and city.
An idol is worthless
18An idol is worthless.
Someone has made the idol
and the image teaches people to lie.
The person who made the idol
thinks that it will help him,
but the idol can not talk or do anything.
19It will be bad for someone
who talks to a tree or to a rock and tells it:
‘You must wake up. You must get up.’
That image can not help him
or teach him anything.
He has covered the image
with gold or silver,
but the image is not alive.
20The Lord is in his holy temple.
Everyone on earth
must be quiet in front of Him.
