Day 266 of 364

^1:1A revelation about Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. ^1:2The LORD is a jealous God and avenges. The LORD avenges and is full of wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath against his enemies. ^1:3The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. The LORD has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. ^1:4He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel languish. The flower of Lebanon languishes. ^1:5The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, yes, the world, and all who dwell in it. ^1:6Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken apart by him. ^1:7The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knows those who take refuge in him. ^1:8But with an overflowing flood, he will make a full end of her place, and will pursue his enemies into darkness. ^1:9What do you plot against the LORD? He will make a full end. Affliction won’t rise up the second time. ^1:10For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly like dry stubble. ^1:11One has gone out of you who devises evil against the LORD, who counsels wickedness. ^1:12The LORD says: “Though they are in full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. ^1:13Now I will break his yoke from off you, and will burst your bonds apart.” ^1:14The LORD has commanded concerning you: “No more descendants will bear your name. Out of the house of your gods, I will cut off the engraved image and the molten image. I will make your grave, for you are vile.” ^1:15Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace! Keep your feasts, Judah! Perform your vows, for the wicked one will no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off. ^2:1He who dashes in pieces has come up against you. Keep the fortress! Watch the way! Strengthen your waist! Fortify your power mightily! ^2:2For the LORD restores the excellency of Jacob as the excellency of Israel, for the destroyers have destroyed them and ruined their vine branches. ^2:3The shield of his mighty men is made red. The valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots flash with steel in the day of his preparation, and the pine spears are brandished. ^2:4The chariots rage in the streets. They rush back and forth in the wide ways. Their appearance is like torches. They run like the lightnings. ^2:5He summons his picked troops. They stumble on their way. They dash to its wall, and the protective shield is put in place. ^2:6The gates of the rivers are opened, and the palace is dissolved. ^2:7It is decreed: she is uncovered, she is carried away; and her servants moan as with the voice of doves, beating on their breasts. ^2:8But Nineveh has been from of old like a pool of water, yet they flee away. “Stop! Stop!” they cry, but no one looks back. ^2:9Take the plunder of silver. Take the plunder of gold, for there is no end of treasure, an abundance of every precious thing. ^2:10She is empty, void, and waste. The heart melts, the knees knock together, their bodies and faces have grown pale. ^2:11Where is the den of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked with the lion’s cubs, and no one made them afraid? ^2:12The lion tore in pieces enough for his cubs, and strangled prey for his lionesses, and filled his caves with the kill and his dens with prey. ^2:13“Behold, I am against you,” says the LORD of Armies, “and I will burn her chariots in the 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.” ^3:1Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery—no end to the prey. ^3:2The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of wheels, prancing horses, and bounding chariots, ^3:3the horseman charging, and the flashing sword, the glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. They stumble on their bodies ^3:4because of the multitude of the prostitution of the alluring prostitute, the mistress of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution, and families through her witchcraft. ^3:5“Behold, I am against you,” says the LORD of Armies, “and I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame. ^3:6I will throw abominable filth on you and make you vile, and will make you a spectacle. ^3:7It will happen that all those who look at you will flee from you, and say, ‘Nineveh is laid waste! Who will mourn for her?’ Where will I seek comforters for you?” ^3:8Are you better than No-Amon, who was situated among the rivers, who had the waters around her, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea? ^3:9Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength. Put and Libya were her helpers. ^3:10Yet was she carried away. She went into captivity. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at the head of all the streets, and they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains. ^3:11You also will be drunken. You will be hidden. You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy. ^3:12All your fortresses will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs. If they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. ^3:13Behold, your troops among you are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. The fire has devoured your bars. ^3:14Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Go into the clay, and tread the mortar. Make the brick kiln strong. ^3:15There the fire will devour you. The sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the grasshopper. Multiply like grasshoppers. Multiply like the locust. ^3:16You have increased your merchants more than the stars of the skies. The grasshopper strips and flees away. ^3:17Your guards are like the locusts, and your officials like the swarms of locusts, which settle on the walls on a cold day, but when the sun appears, they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. ^3:18Your shepherds slumber, king of Assyria. Your nobles lie down. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and there is no one to gather them. ^3:19There is no healing your wound, for your injury is fatal. All who hear the report of you clap their hands over you, for who hasn’t felt your endless cruelty?

^1:1The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw. ^1:2LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save? ^1:3Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up. ^1:4Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted. ^1:5“Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not believe though it is told you. ^1:6For, behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. ^1:7They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. ^1:8Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour. ^1:9All of them come for violence. Their hordes face forward. They gather prisoners like sand. ^1:10Yes, they scoff at kings, and princes are a derision to them. They laugh at every stronghold, for they build up an earthen ramp and take it. ^1:11Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. They are indeed guilty, whose strength is their god.” ^1:12Aren’t you from everlasting, LORD my God, my Holy One? We will not die. LORD, you have appointed them for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish. ^1:13You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he, ^1:14and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them? ^1:15He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad. ^1:16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good. ^1:17Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy? ^2:1I will stand at my watch and set myself on the ramparts, and will look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. ^2:2The LORD answered me, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it. ^2:3For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It won’t delay. ^2:4Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith. ^2:5Yes, moreover, wine is treacherous: an arrogant man who doesn’t stay at home, who enlarges his desire as Sheol; he is like death and can’t be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations and heaps to himself all peoples. ^2:6Won’t all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases that which is not his, and who enriches himself by extortion! How long?’ ^2:7Won’t your debtors rise up suddenly, and wake up those who make you tremble, and you will be their victim? ^2:8Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples will plunder you because of men’s blood, and for the violence done to the land, to the city and to all who dwell in it. ^2:9Woe to him who gets an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil! ^2:10You have devised shame to your house by cutting off many peoples, and have sinned against your soul. ^2:11For the stone will cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the woodwork will answer it. ^2:12Woe to him who builds a town with blood, and establishes a city by iniquity! ^2:13Behold, isn’t it from the LORD of Armies that the peoples labor for the fire, and the nations weary themselves for vanity? ^2:14For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD’s glory, as the waters cover the sea. ^2:15“Woe to him who gives his neighbor drink, pouring your inflaming wine until they are drunk, so that you may gaze at their naked bodies! ^2:16You are filled with shame, and not glory. You will also drink and be exposed! The cup of the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory. ^2:17For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the destruction of the animals will terrify you, because of men’s blood and for the violence done to the land, to every city and to those who dwell in them. ^2:18“What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols? ^2:19Woe to him who says to the wood, ‘Awake!’ or to the mute stone, ‘Arise!’ Shall this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all within it. ^2:20But the LORD is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him!”