Habakkuk 2 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

I will take my place on the watchtower. I will stand on the rampart and keep looking, to see what he says to me and what I am going to answer when he answers my complaint.

Then Yahweh answered me: Write the vision down. Cut it plain into the tablets, so that a runner can read it going past.

The vision is still waiting for the time set for it. It strains toward the end, and it will not lie. If it seems slow to you, wait for it. It is coming, and it will not be late.

Look at him, swollen with himself, with nothing straight inside. But the just man will live by his faithfulness.

Wine betrays him. The arrogant man will not stay home. He opens his throat as wide as the grave. Like death he never has enough. He rakes in every nation for himself and collects all the peoples.

Won't all of them take up a song against him, a taunt, a riddle at his expense? They will say: How terrible for the man who piles up what is not his. How long will he keep loading himself with goods taken in pawn?

Won't the men you owe stand up all at once? Won't the ones who make you shake wake up? Then you will be the plunder.

You stripped many nations, so what is left of those peoples will strip you, for the human blood you spilled and the violence you did to the land, to the town and everyone living in it.

How terrible for the man who cuts a crooked profit for his own house, who builds his nest up high to get out of reach of harm.

You planned shame for your own house. By cutting off so many peoples you have thrown your own life away.

The stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam will answer it out of the woodwork.

How terrible for the man who builds a city on blood and sets a town on its foundation with crooked dealing.

Look what comes from Yahweh who commands armies: peoples working themselves to death for fire, nations wearing themselves out for nothing.

The earth will be filled with knowing how great Yahweh is, the way water covers the sea.

How terrible for the man who pours drink for his neighbor, pouring out his own rage until the man is drunk, just so he can stare at his naked body.

You have had your fill of disgrace instead of honor. Now drink yourself, and stagger, and let them see you. The cup in Yahweh's right hand is coming around to you, and shame will cover the honor you had.

The violence you did to Lebanon will bury you, and the slaughter of its animals will break you, for the human blood you spilled and the violence you did to the land, to the town and everyone living in it.

What good is a carved figure when the man who shaped it carved it himself? What good is a poured metal statue that teaches lies, when the man who made it trusts what his own hands turned out, gods that cannot say a word?

How terrible for the man who says to a block of wood, Wake up, and to a stone that cannot speak, Get on your feet. Can that thing teach anybody anything? Look at it, plated over with gold and silver, and not one breath moving inside it.

But Yahweh is in his temple, the place kept for him. Let all the earth fall silent in front of him.