Habakkuk 2:13

⁵⁸The LORD of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”

¹¹Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who adorn yourselves with torches around yourselves, walk in the flame of your fire, and among the torches that you have kindled. You will have this from my hand: you will lie down in sorrow.

³⁰There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD.

⁴Whereas Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places,” the LORD of Armies says, “They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ‘The Wicked Land,’ even the people against whom the LORD shows wrath forever.”

⁵The islands have seen, and fear. The ends of the earth tremble. They approach, and come. ⁶Everyone helps his neighbor. They say to their brothers, “Be strong!” ⁷So the carpenter encourages the goldsmith. He who smooths with the hammer encourages him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, “It is good;” and he fastens it with nails, that it might not totter. ⁸“But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend,

⁶The LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. ⁷Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸So the LORD scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city. ⁹Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. From there, the LORD scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.

²Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn’t satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in richness.

¹Unless the LORD builds the house, they who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman guards it in vain. ²It is vain for you to rise up early, to stay up late, eating the bread of toil, for he gives sleep to his loved ones.

¹³He takes the wise in their own craftiness; the counsel of the cunning is carried headlong. ¹⁴They meet with darkness in the day time, and grope at noonday as in the night.

⁶“Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather.