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.
Yeshayah (Isaiah) 34
34
1Come near, you nations, to hear. And listen, you people! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world and all its offspring.
2For the displeasure of יהוה is against all the nations,#See footnote at Jer. 30:11 and His wrath against all their divisions. He shall put them under the ban, He shall give them over to the slaughter,
3and their slain be thrown out, and their stench rise from their corpses. And mountains shall be melted with their blood.
4And all the host of the heavens shall rot away. And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, and all their host fade like a leaf fading on the vine, and like the fading one of a fig tree.
5“For My sword shall be drenched in the heavens. Look, it comes down on Eḏom, and on the people of My curse, for judgment.
6“The sword of יהוה shall be filled with blood, it shall be made overflowing with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For יהוה has a slaughtering in Botsrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Eḏom.
7“And wild oxen shall come down with them, and young bulls with bulls. And their land shall be drenched with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.”
8For it is the day of the vengeance of יהוה, the year of recompense for the cause of Tsiyon.
9And its streams shall be turned into tar, and its dust into sulphur, and its land shall become burning tar,
10that is not quenched night or day, its smoke going up forever. From generation to generation it lies waste, no one passes through it forever and ever,
11so that the pelican and the porcupine possess it, also the owl and the raven dwell in it. And He shall stretch out over it the line of formlessness and stones of emptiness.
12Its caves, with no one in them, is called a reign, but all its rulers have vanished.
13And thorns shall come up in its palaces, nettles and brambles in its strongholds. And it shall be a home for jackals, a courtyard for ostriches.
14And the wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the jackals, and the shaggy goat call to its companion. The night creature shall also settle there, and shall find for herself a place of rest.
15The arrow snake shall nest there, and lay eggs and hatch, and gather them under her shadow. There too the vultures shall gather, each with its mate.
16Search from the book of יהוה, and read: not one of these shall be missing, not one shall be without a mate, for He has commanded my mouth. And His Spirit shall gather them.
17And He shall cast the lot for them, and His hand shall divide it among them with a measuring line – they possess it forever, from generation to generation they dwell in it.
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