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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Isaiah 34: MSG
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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.
Isaiah 34
34
The Judgment of the Nations
1You nations, come here and listen;
you peoples, pay attention!#Ps 49:1; Is 1:2; 41:1; 43:9; 45:20
Let the earth and all that fills it hear,
the world and all that comes from it.#Ps 24:1; Is 6:3; 42:5
2The Lord is angry with all the nations,
furious with all their armies.#Is 13:5; Jr 10:10; 50:13
He will set them apart for destruction,#Jos 6:21; 1Sm 15:3; Is 11:5; 24:1,6; 43:28
giving them over to slaughter.
3Their slain will be thrown out,
and the stench of their corpses will rise;#Is 14:21; 18:6; Ezk 39:17; Jl 2:10; Am 4:10; Rv 19:17–19
the mountains will flow#34:3 Or melt, or dissolve with their blood.#Ps 46:2–3
4All#34:4 DSS read And the valleys will be split, and all the stars in the sky#2Kg 17:16; 21:3,5; 23:4–5 will dissolve.
The sky will roll up like a scroll,#Rv 6:12–14
and its stars will all wither
as leaves wither on the vine,
and foliage on the fig tree.#Ps 102:25–27; Is 13:10; 51:6; Ezk 32:7–8; Jl 3:15; Mt 24:29; Mk 13:24–25; 2Pt 3:10,12
The Judgment of Edom
5When my sword has drunk its fill#34:5 DSS read sword will appear#Dt 32:41–43; Jr 46:10; Ezk 21:3–5 in the heavens,
it will then come down on Edom#Nm 20:14–21; Is 63:1; Jr 49:7–8,20; Ezk 25:12–14; 35:1–15; Jl 3:19; Am 1:11–12; Ob 1–14; Mal 1:4
and on the people I have set apart for destruction.
6The Lord’s sword is covered with blood.
It drips with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
with the fat of the kidneys of rams.#Is 25:6; 30:32; Jr 46:10; 51:40; Ezk 39:17; Zph 1:7–9
For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah,#Gn 36:33; Is 63:1; Jr 49:13,22
a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7The wild oxen will be struck#34:7 Or will go down with them,
and young bulls with the mighty bulls.
Their land will be soaked with#34:7 Or will drink its fill of blood,
and their soil will be saturated with fat.
8For the Lord has a day of vengeance,#Is 13:6; 35:4; 47:3; 61:2; 63:4
a time of paying back Edom
for its hostility against Zion.
9Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
her soil into sulfur;#Gn 19:24; Dt 29:23; Ps 11:6; Is 30:33; Ezk 38:22
her land will become burning pitch.
10It will never go out — day or night.
Its smoke will go up forever.#Is 1:31; 66:24; Rv 14:11; 19:3
It will be desolate, from generation to generation;
no one will pass through it forever and ever.#Is 13:20–22; Ezk 29:11; Mal 1:3–4
11Eagle owls#34:11 Or Pelicans and herons#34:11 Or hedgehogs will possess it,
and long-eared owls and ravens will dwell there.#Is 13:21–22; 14:23; Zph 2:14
The Lord will stretch out a measuring line
and a plumb line#Am 7:7–9 over her
for her destruction and chaos.#2Kg 21:13; Is 24:10; Lm 2:8
12No nobles will be left to proclaim a king,
and all her princes will come to nothing.
13Her palaces will be overgrown with thorns;
her fortified cities, with thistles and briers.#Is 32:13
She will become a dwelling for jackals,
an abode#34:13 DSS, LXX, Syr, Tg; MT reads jackals, grass for ostriches.#Ps 44:19; Is 13:22; Jr 9:11; 10:22; Mal 1:3
14The desert creatures will meet hyenas,
and one wild goat will call to another.
Indeed, the night birds will stay there
and will find a resting place.
15Sand partridges#34:15 Or Arrow snakes, or Owls will make their nests there;
they will lay and hatch their eggs
and will gather their broods under their shadows.
Indeed, the birds of prey will gather there,
each with its mate.#Dt 14:13
16Search and read the scroll of the Lord:#Ps 40:7; 139:16; Is 8:16; 30:8; Dn 7:10; Mal 3:16; Rv 20:12
Not one of them will be missing,
none will be lacking its mate,
because he has ordered it by my#34:16 Some Hb mss; other Hb mss, DSS, Syr, Tg read his mouth,
and he will gather them by his Spirit.
17He has cast the lot for them;
his hand allotted their portion with a measuring line.
They will possess it forever;#Nm 24:18
they will dwell in it from generation to generation.
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