1:2 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?
1:3 Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
1:4 So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgement comes forth perverted.
1:5 Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.
1:6 For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
1:7 Dread and fearsome are they; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
1:8 Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge. Their horsemen come from far away; they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
1:9 They all come for violence, with faces pressing forward; they gather captives like sand.
1:10 At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress, and heap up earth to take it.
1:11 Then they sweep by like the wind; they transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god!
1:12 Are you not from of old, O Lord my God, my Holy One? You shall not die. O Lord, you have marked them for judgement; and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
1:13 Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?
1:14 You have made people like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.
1:15 The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his seine; so he rejoices and exults.
1:16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his seine; for by them his portion is lavish, and his food is rich.
1:17 Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy?
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