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Vengeance against Edom

34 Draw near, you nations, to hear;
    and listen, you peoples.
Hear, earth and all who fill it,
    world and all its offspring.
The Lord rages against all the nations,
    and is angry with all their armies.
God is about to wipe them out
    and has prepared them for slaughter.
Their dead will be cast out,
    the stench of their corpses will rise,
    and the mountains will melt from their blood.
All the stars of heaven will dissolve,
    the skies will roll up like a scroll,
    and all the stars will fall,
    like a leaf withering from a vine,
    like fruit from a fig tree.

When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
    it will descend upon Edom for judgment,
    upon a people I have doomed for destruction.
The Lord has a sword covered with blood;
    it is soaked with fat
    from the blood of lambs and goats,
    from the kidney fat of rams,
    for the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah,
        a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
Wild oxen will fall with them,
    steers with mighty bulls,
    and their land will be drenched with blood;
    its soil soaked with fat.
The Lord has a day of vengeance,
    a year of payback for Zion’s cause.

Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
    its dust into sulfur,
    and its land will become burning pitch.
10 Night and day won’t be extinguished;
    its smoke will go up forever.
From generation to generation it will lie waste;
    no one will ever pass through it again.
11 Screech owls and crows will possess it;
    owls and ravens will live there.[a]
God will stretch over it the measuring line of chaos
    and the plummet stone of emptiness over its officials.
12 No Kingdom There, they will call it,
    and all its princes will disappear.
13 Thorns will grow up in its palaces,
    weeds and brambles in its fortresses.
It will be a dwelling for jackals,
    a home for ostriches.
14 Wildcats will meet hyenas,
    the goat demon will call to his friends,
    and there Lilith[b] will lurk
    and find her resting place.
15 There the snake will nest and lay eggs
    and brood and hatch in its shadow.
There too vultures will gather,
    each with its mate.[c]
16 Consult the Lord’s scroll and read:
    Not one of these will be missing;
    none will lack its mate.
    God’s own mouth has commanded;
    God’s own spirit has gathered them.
17 God has cast the lot for them;
    God’s hand allotted it to them with the measuring line.
They will possess it forever;
    they will live in it from generation to generation.

Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 34:11 Species uncertain
  2. Isaiah 34:14 Name of a demon
  3. Isaiah 34:15 Species uncertain

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