Nahum 1

1 Oracle about Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.
2 A jealous and avenging God is the LORD, an avenger is the LORD, and angry; The LORD brings vengeance on his adversaries, and lays up wrath for his enemies;
3 The LORD is slow to anger, yet great in power, and the LORD never leaves the guilty unpunished. In hurricane and tempest is his path, and clouds are the dust at his feet;
4 He rebukes the sea and leaves it dry, and all the rivers he dries up. Withered are Bashan and Carmel, and the bloom of Lebanon fades;
5 The mountains quake before him, and the hills dissolve; The earth is laid waste before him, the world and all who dwell in it.
6 Before his wrath, who can stand firm, and who can face his blazing anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are rent asunder before him.
7 The LORD is good, a refuge on the day of distress; He takes care of those who have recourse to him,
8 when the flood rages; He makes an end of his opponents, and his enemies he pursues with darkness.
9 What are you imputing to the LORD? It is he who will make an end! The enemy shall not rise a second time;
10 As when a tangle of thornbushes is set aflame, like dry stubble, they shall be utterly consumed.
11 From you he came who devised evil against the LORD, the scoundrel planner.
12 For, says the LORD, be they ever so many and so vigorous, still they shall be mown down and disappear. Though I have humbled you, I will humble you no more.
13 Now will I break his yoke from off you, and burst asunder your bonds.
14 The LORD has commanded regarding you: no descendant shall come to bear your name; From your temple I will abolish the carved and the molten image; I will make your grave a mockery.
15 See, upon the mountains there advances the bearer of good news, announcing peace! Celebrate your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows! For nevermore shall you be invaded by the scoundrel; he is completely destroyed.

Nahum 2

1 The hammer comes up against you; guard the rampart, Keep watch on the road, gird your loins, marshall all your strength!
2 The LORD will restore the vine of Jacob, the pride of Israel, Though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined the tendrils.
3 The shields of his warriors are crimsoned, the soldiers colored in scarlet; Fiery steel are the chariots on the day of his mustering. The horses are frenzied;
4 the chariots dash madly through the streets And wheel in the squares, looking like firebrands, flashing like lightning bolts.
5 His picked troops are called, ranks break at their charge; To the wall they rush, the mantelet is set up.
6 The river gates are opened, the palace shudders,
7 Its mistress is led forth captive, and her handmaids, under guard, Moaning like doves, beating their breasts.
8 Nineveh is like a pool whose waters escape; Stop! Stop! but none turns back.
9 Plunder the silver, plunder the gold! There is no end to the treasure, to their wealth in precious things of every kind!
10 Emptiness, desolation, waste; melting hearts and trembling knees, Writhing in every frame, every face blanched!
11 Where is the lions' cave, the young lions' den, Where the lion went in and out, and the cub, with no one to disturb them?
12 The lion snatched enough for his cubs, and strangled for his lionesses; He filled his dens with prey, and his caves with plunder.
13 I come against you, says the LORD of hosts; I will consume in smoke your chariots, and the sword shall devour your young lions; Your preying on the land I will bring to an end, the cry of your lionesses shall be heard no more.

Nahum 3

1 Woe to the bloody city, all lies, full of plunder, whose looting never stops!
2 The crack of the whip, the rumbling sounds of wheels; horses a-gallop, chariots bounding,
3 Cavalry charging, The flame of the sword, the flash of the spear, the many slain, the heaping corpses, the endless bodies to stumble upon!
4 For the many debaucheries of the harlot, fair and charming, a mistress of witchcraft, Who enslaved nations with her harlotries, and peoples by her witchcraft:
5 I am come against you, and I will strip your skirt from you; I will show your nakedness to the nations, to the kingdoms your shame!
6 I will cast filth upon you, disgrace you and put you to shame;
7 Till everyone who sees you runs from you, saying, Nineveh is destroyed; who can pity her? Where can one find any to console her?
8 Are you better than No-amon that was set among the streams, Surrounded by waters, with the flood for her rampart and water her wall?
9 Ethiopia was her strength, and Egypt, and others without end; Put and the Libyans were her auxiliaries.
10 Yet even she went captive into exile, even her little ones were dashed to pieces at the corner of every street; For her nobles they cast lots, and all her great men were put into chains.
11 You too, shall drink of this till you faint away; you, too, shall seek a refuge from the foe.
12 All your fortresses are but fig trees, bearing early figs That fall, when shaken, into the hungry mouth.
13 See, the troops are women in your midst; to your foes the gates of your land are open wide, fire has consumed their bars.
14 Draw water for the siege, strengthen your fortresses; Go down into the mud and tread the clay, take hold of the brick mold!
15 There the fire shall consume you, the sword shall cut you down. Multiply like the grasshoppers, multiply like the locusts!
16 Make your couriers more numerous than the stars,
17 your garrisons as many as grasshoppers, And your scribes as locust swarms gathered on the rubble fences on a cold day! Yet when the sun warms them, the grasshoppers will spread their wings and fly, and vanish, no one knows where.
18 Alas! how your shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria, your nobles have gone to rest; Your people are scattered upon the mountains, with none to gather them.
19 There is no healing for your hurt, your wound is mortal. All who hear this news of you clap their hands over you; For who has not been overwhelmed, steadily, by your malice?

Habakkuk 1

1 The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet received in vision.
2 How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, Violence! but you do not intervene.
3 Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.
4 This is why the law is benumbed, and judgment is never rendered: Because the wicked circumvent the just; this is why judgment comes forth perverted.
5 Look over the nations and see, and be utterly amazed! For a work is being done in your days that you would not have believed, were it told.
6 For see, I am raising up Chaldea, that bitter and unruly people, That marches the breadth of the land to take dwellings not his own.
7 Terrible and dreadful is he, from himself derive his law and his majesty.
8 Swifter than leopards are his horses, and keener than wolves at evening. His horses prance, his horsemen come from afar: They fly like the eagle hastening to devour;
9 each comes for the rapine, Their combined onset is that of a stormwind that heaps up captives like sand.
10 He scoffs at kings, and princes are his laughingstock; He laughs at any fortress, heaps up a ramp, and conquers it.
11 Then he veers like the wind and is gone--this culprit who makes his own strength his god!
12 Are you not from eternity, O LORD, my holy God, immortal? O LORD you have marked him for judgment, O Rock, you have readied him for punishment!
13 Too pure are your eyes to look upon evil, and the sight of misery you cannot endure. Why, then, do you gaze on the faithless in silence while the wicked man devours one more just than himself?
14 You have made man like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler.
15 He brings them all up with his hook, he hauls them away with his net, He gathers them in his seine; and so he rejoices and exults.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net, and burns incense to his seine; For thanks to them his portion is generous, and his repast sumptuous.
17 Shall he, then, keep on brandishing his sword to slay peoples without mercy?

Habakkuk 2

1 I will stand at my guard post, and station myself upon the rampart, And keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what answer he will give to my complaint.
2 Then the LORD answered me and said: Write down the vision Clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily.
3 For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.
4 The rash man has no integrity; but the just man, because of his faith, shall live. Wealth, too, is treacherous: the proud, unstable man--
5 He who opens wide his throat like the nether world, and is insatiable as death, Who gathers to himself all the nations, and rallies to himself all the peoples--
6 Shall not all these take up a taunt against him, satire and epigrams about him, to say: Woe to him who stores up what is not his: how long can it last! he loads himself down with debts.
7 Shall not your creditors rise suddenly? Shall not they who make you tremble awake? You shall become their spoil!
8 Because you despoiled many peoples all the rest of the nations shall despoil you; Because of men's blood shed, and violence done to the land, to the city and to all who dwell in it.
9 Woe to him who pursues evil gain for his household, setting his nest on high to escape the reach of misfortune!
10 You have devised shame for your household, cutting off many peoples, forfeiting your own life:
11 For the stone in the wall shall cry out, and the beam in the woodwork shall answer it!
12 Woe to him who builds a city by bloodshed, and establishes a town by wickedness!
13 Is not this from the LORD of hosts: peoples toil for the flames, and nations grow weary for nought!
14 But the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the LORD'S glory as water covers the sea.
15 Woe to you who give your neighbors a flood of your wrath to drink, and make them drunk, till their nakedness is seen!
16 You are filled with shame instead of glory; drink, you too, and stagger! On you shall revert the cup from the LORD'S right hand, and utter shame on your glory.
17 For the violence done to Lebanon shall cover you, and the destruction of the beasts shall terrify you; Because of men's blood shed, and violence done to the land, to the city and to all who dwell in it.
18 Of what avail is the carved image, that its maker should carve it? Or the molten image and lying oracle, that its very maker should trust in it, and make dumb idols?
19 Woe to him who says to wood, Awake! to dumb stone, Arise! Can such a thing give oracles? See, it is overlaid with gold and silver, but there is no life breath in it.
20 But the LORD is in his holy temple; silence before him, all the earth!

Habakkuk 3

1 Prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet. To a plaintive tune.
2 O LORD, I have heard your renown, and feared, O LORD, your work. In the course of the years revive it, in the course of the years make it known; in your wrath remember compassion!
3 God comes from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Covered are the heavens with his glory, and with his praise the earth is filled.
4 His splendor spreads like the light; rays shine forth from beside him, where his power is concealed.
5 Before him goes pestilence, and the plague follows in his steps.
6 He pauses to survey the earth; his look makes the nations tremble. The eternal mountains are shattered, the age-old hills bow low along his ancient ways.
7 I see the tents of Cushan collapse; trembling are the pavilions of the land of Midian.
8 Is your anger against the streams, O LORD? Is your wrath against the streams, your rage against the sea, That you drive the steeds of your victorious chariot?
9 Bared and ready is your bow, filled with arrows is your quiver. Into streams you split the earth;
10 at sight of you the mountains tremble. A torrent of rain descends; the ocean gives forth its roar. The sun forgets to rise,
11 the moon remains in its shelter, At the light of your flying arrows, at the gleam of your flashing spear.
12 In wrath you bestride the earth, in fury you trample the nations.
13 You come forth to save your people, to save your anointed one. You crush the heads of the wicked, you lay bare their bases at the neck.
14 You pierce with your shafts the heads of their princes whose boast would be of devouring the wretched in their lair.
15 You tread the sea with your steeds amid the churning of the deep waters.
16 I hear, and my body trembles; at the sound, my lips quiver. Decay invades my bones, my legs tremble beneath me. I await the day of distress that will come upon the people who attack us.
17 For though the fig tree blossom not nor fruit be on the vines, Though the yield of the olive fail and the terraces produce no nourishment, Though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 Yet will I rejoice in the LORD and exult in my saving God.
19 GOD, my Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet swift as those of hinds and enables me to go upon the heights. For the leader; with stringed instruments.