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.^(D)
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.^(E)
7 Dread and fearsome are they;
    their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.^(F)
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.^(G)
9 They all come for violence,
    with faces pressing^[a] forward;
    they gather captives like sand.^(H)
10 At kings they scoff,
    and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress
    and heap up earth to take it.^(I)
11 Then they sweep by like the wind;
    they transgress and become guilty;
    their own might is their god!^(J)

¹² Are you not from of old,
    O Lord my God, my Holy One?
    You^[b] shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgment,
    and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.^(K)
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?^(L)
14 You have made people like the fish of the sea,
    like crawling things that have no ruler.^(M)

¹⁵ He 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.^(N)
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.
¹⁷ Is he then to keep on emptying his net
    and destroying nations without mercy?^(O)