Isaiah 34
34
XXXIV
1Come near, ye nations, to hear;
And hearken, ye people:
Let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and all things that spring from it.
2For the indignation of Jehovah is upon all nations,
And his fury upon all their armies:
He hath devoted them, he hath given them up to the slaughter.
3And their slain shall he cast out,
And from their carcases their stench shall ascend;
And the mountains shall melt with their blood.
4And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved.
And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll;
And all their host shall fall down
As the leaf falleth off from the vine:
And as the falling of a fig from a fig-tree.
5For my sword hath already been made drunk in the heavens:
Behold, on Edom it shall descend;
And on the people justly devoted by me to destruction.
6The sword of Jehovah is glutted with blood,
It is made fat with fatness:
With the blood of lambs and of goats,
With the fat of the kidneys of rams:
For Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah,
And a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7And with them shall be slaughtered the buffaloes,
And the bullocks with the bulls;
So that their land shall be drunk with blood,
And their dust made fat with fatness.
8For to Jehovah there is a day of vengeance,
A year of recompence for the vindication of Zion.
9And her streams shall be turned into pitch,
And her dust into brimstone;
And her land shall become burning pitch.
10By night or by day it shall not be extinguished,
For ever shall her smoke ascend:
From generation to generation she shall lie waste,
To everlasting ages no one shall pass through her.
11But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it;
The owl also and the raven shall dwell in it:
And He shall stretch over her the line of devastation,
And the plummet of destruction.
12As for her nobles, there is not one there whom they might call to the government of the kingdom;
And all her princes are nothingness.
13And in her palaces shall spring up thorns;
The nettle and the bramble, in her fortresses:
And she shall be an habitation for jackals,
A dwelling-place for the daughters of the ostrich.
14And the wild cats shall meet the jackals,
And the satyr shall call to his fellow:
There also the screech owl shall resort,
And find for herself a place of rest.
15There shall the darting serpent make her nest, and lay her eggs:
And she shall hatch them, and gather her young under her shadow.
There also shall the vultures be gathered together,
Each one with her mate.
16Seek ye out of the book of Jehovah, and read:
No one of these hath been missing,
No female hath lacked her mate;
For my mouth it hath commanded,
And his Spirit it hath gathered them.
17And he hath cast the lot for them,
And his hand hath divided it for them with the line:
They shall possess it for ever;
From generation to generation shall they dwell therein.
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Isaiah 34: TEG
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Translated by Rev John Jones (Ioan Tegid).Published at Oxford in 1830, second edition 1842.
Isaiah 34
34
The Fires Burning Day and Night
1Draw in close now, nations. Listen carefully,
you people. Pay attention!
Earth, you, too, and everything in you.
World, and all that comes from you.
2-4And here’s why: God is angry,
good and angry with all the nations,
So blazingly angry at their arms and armies
that he’s going to rid earth of them, wipe them out.
The corpses, thrown in a heap,
will stink like the town dump in midsummer,
Their blood flowing off the mountains
like creeks in spring runoff.
Stars will fall out of the sky
like overripe, rotting fruit in the orchard,
And the sky itself will be folded up like a blanket
and put away in a closet.
All that army of stars, shriveled to nothing,
like leaves and fruit in autumn, dropping and rotting!
5-7“Once I’ve finished with earth and sky,
I’ll start in on Edom.
I’ll come down hard on Edom,
a people I’ve slated for total termination.”
God has a sword, thirsty for blood and more blood,
a sword hungry for well-fed flesh,
Lamb and goat blood,
the suet-rich kidneys of rams.
Yes, God has scheduled a sacrifice in Bozrah, the capital,
the whole country of Edom a slaughterhouse.
A wholesale slaughter, wild animals
and farm animals alike slaughtered.
The whole country soaked with blood,
all the ground greasy with fat.
8-15It’s God’s scheduled time for vengeance,
the year all Zion’s accounts are settled.
Edom’s streams will flow sluggish, thick with pollution,
the soil sterile, poisoned with waste,
The whole country
a smoking, stinking garbage dump—
The fires burning day and night,
the skies black with endless smoke.
Generation after generation of wasteland—
no more travelers through this country!
Vultures and skunks will police the streets;
owls and crows will feel at home there.
God will reverse creation. Chaos!
He will cancel fertility. Emptiness!
Leaders will have no one to lead.
They’ll name it No Kingdom There,
A country where all kings
and princes are unemployed.
Thistles will take over, covering the castles,
fortresses conquered by weeds and thornbushes.
Wild dogs will prowl the ruins,
ostriches have the run of the place.
Wildcats and hyenas will hunt together,
demons and devils dance through the night.
The night-demon Lilith, evil and rapacious,
will establish permanent quarters.
Scavenging carrion birds will breed and brood,
infestations of ominous evil.
16-17Get and read God’s book:
None of this is going away,
this breeding, brooding evil.
God has personally commanded it all.
His Spirit set it in motion.
God has assigned them their place,
decreed their fate in detail.
This is permanent—
generation after generation, the same old thing.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.