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
1Come near, you nations, to hear!
Listen, you peoples.
Let the earth and all it contains hear,
the world, and everything that comes from it.
2For Yahweh is enraged against all the nations,
and angry with all their armies.
He has utterly destroyed them.
He has given them over for slaughter.
3Their slain will also be cast out,
and the stench of their dead bodies will come up.
The mountains will melt in their blood.
4All of the army of the sky will be dissolved.
The sky will be rolled up like a scroll,
and all its armies will fade away,
as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree.
5For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky.
Behold, it will come down on Edom,
and on the people of my curse, for judgment.
6Yahweh’s sword is filled with blood.
It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats,
with the fat of the kidneys of rams;
for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah,
and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7The wild oxen will come down with them,
and the young bulls with the mighty bulls;
and their land will be drunken with blood,
and their dust made greasy with fat.
8For Yahweh has a day of vengeance,
a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
9Its streams will be turned into pitch,
its dust into sulfur,
and its land will become burning pitch.
10It won’t be quenched night or day.
Its smoke will go up forever.
From generation to generation, it will lie waste.
No one will pass through it forever and ever.
11But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it.
The owl and the raven will dwell in it.
He will stretch the line of confusion over it,
and the plumb line of emptiness.
12They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there;
and all its princes shall be nothing.
13Thorns will come up in its palaces,
nettles and thistles in its fortresses;
and it will be a habitation of jackals,
a court for ostriches.
14The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves,
and the wild goat will cry to his fellow.
Yes, the night creature#34:14 literally, lilith, which could also be a night demon or night monster shall settle there,
and shall find herself a place of rest.
15The arrow snake will make her nest there,
and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade.
Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate.
16Search in the book of Yahweh, and read:
not one of these will be missing.
None will lack her mate.
For my mouth has commanded,
and his Spirit has gathered them.
17He has cast the lot for them,
and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line.
They shall possess it forever.
From generation to generation they will dwell in it.
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