² Lord, how long will I call for help and you not listen?
        I cry out to you, “Violence!”
            but you don’t deliver us.
³ Why do you show me injustice and look at anguish
        so that devastation and violence are before me?
There is strife, and conflict abounds.
⁴         The Instruction is ineffective.
            Justice does not endure
            because the wicked surround the righteous.
        Justice becomes warped.

⁵ Look among the nations and watch!
        Be astonished and stare
            because something is happening in your days
                that you wouldn’t believe even if told.
⁶ I am about to rouse the Chaldeans,
        that bitter and impetuous nation,
            which travels throughout the earth to possess dwelling places it does not own.
⁷ The Chaldean is dreadful and fearful.
        He makes his own justice and dignity.
⁸ His horses are faster than leopards;
        they are quicker than wolves of the evening.
    His horsemen charge forward;
        his horsemen come from far away.
            They fly in to devour, swiftly, like an eagle.
⁹ They come for violence,
        the horde with all their faces set toward the desert.
He takes captives like sand.
¹⁰     He makes fun of kings;
rulers are ridiculous to him.
        He laughs at every fortress,
            then he piles up dirt and takes it.
¹¹ He passes through like the wind and invades;
        but he will be held guilty,
            the one whose strength is his god.

¹² Lord, aren’t you ancient, my God, my holy one?
Don’t let us die.
Lord, you put the Chaldean here for judgment.
        Rock, you established him as a rebuke.
¹³ Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
        you are unable to look at disaster.
Why would you look at the treacherous
        or keep silent when the wicked swallows one who is more righteous?
¹⁴ You made humans like the fish of the sea,
        like creeping things with no one to rule over them.
¹⁵ The Chaldean brings all of them up with a fishhook.
        He drags them away with a net;
        he collects them in his fishing net,
            then he rejoices and celebrates.
¹⁶ Therefore, he sacrifices to his net;
        he burns incense to his fishing nets,
            because due to them his portion grows fat
                and his food becomes luxurious.
¹⁷ Should he continue to empty his net
        and continue to slay nations without sparing them?