Isaiah 34:1-17
34 Come up close, YOU nations, to hear;+ and YOU national groups,+ pay attention. Let the earth and that which fills it listen,+ the productive land*+ and all its produce.+
2 For Jehovah has indignation against all the nations,+ and rage against all their army.+ He must devote them to destruction; he must give them to the slaughter.+
3 And their slain ones will be thrown out; and as for their carcasses, their stink will ascend;+ and the mountains must melt because of their blood.+
4 And all those of the army of the heavens must rot away.+ And the heavens must be rolled up,+ just like a book scroll; and their army will all shrivel away, just as the leafage shrivels off the vine and like a shriveled [fig] off the fig tree.+
5 “For in the heavens my sword+ will certainly be drenched. Look! Upon Eʹdom it will descend,+ and upon the people devoted by me to destruction+ in justice.
6 Jehovah has a sword; it must be filled with blood;+ it must be made greasy with the fat, with the blood of young rams and he-goats, with the fat+ of the kidneys of rams. For Jehovah has a sacrifice in Bozʹrah, and a great slaughtering in the land of Eʹdom.+
7 And the wild bulls+ must come down with them, and young bulls with the powerful ones;+ and their land must be drenched with blood, and their very dust will be made greasy with the fat.”+
8 For Jehovah has a day of vengeance,+ a year of retributions for the legal case over Zion.+
9 And her* torrents must be changed into pitch, and her dust into sulphur; and her land must become as burning pitch.+
10 By night or by day it will not be extinguished; to time indefinite its smoke will keep ascending.+ From generation to generation she will be parched;+ forever and ever no one will be passing across her.+
11 And the pelican and the porcupine must take possession of her, and long-eared owls and ravens themselves will reside in her;+ and he must stretch out over her the measuring line+ of emptiness and the stones of wasteness.
12 Her nobles—there are none there whom they will call to the kingship itself, and her very princes will all become nothing.+
13 On her dwelling towers thorns must come up, nettles and thorny weeds in her fortified places;+ and she must become an abiding place of jackals,+ the courtyard for the ostriches.*+
14 And haunters of waterless regions must meet up with howling animals, and even the goat-shaped demon+ will call to its companion. Yes, there the nightjar* will certainly take its ease and find for itself a resting-place.+
15 There the arrow snake has made its nest and lays [eggs], and it must hatch [them] and gather [them] together under its shadow. Yes, there the gledes+ must collect themselves together, each one with her mate.
16 Search for yourselves in the book+ of Jehovah and read out loud: not one has been missing of them;+ they actually do not fail to have each one her mate, for it is the mouth of Jehovah* that has given the command,+ and it is his spirit that has collected them together.+
17 And it is He that has cast for them the lot, and his own hand has apportioned the place* to them by the measuring line.+ To time indefinite they will take possession of it; for generation after generation they will reside in it.
Footnotes
^ “Her,” referring to Bozrah, the capital of Edom.
^ Heb., li·lithʹ; likely a nocturnal bird.
^ “The mouth of Jehovah,” five Heb. mss; 1QIsaSy, “his mouth”; LXX and Arabic, “Jehovah”; MVg, “my mouth.” See BHK and BHS ftns; see also App 1A.
^ Lit., “her.” Or, “it.” That is, a place, such as Bozrah.
