Isaiah 34 Common English Bible

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.
²The 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.
³Their dead will be cast out,
    the stench of their corpses will rise,
    and the mountains will melt from their blood.
⁴All 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.

⁵When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
    it will descend upon Edom for judgment,
    upon a people I have doomed for destruction.
⁶The 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.
⁷Wild oxen will fall with them,
    steers with mighty bulls,
    and their land will be drenched with blood;
    its soil soaked with fat.
⁸The Lord has a day of vengeance,
    a year of payback for Zion’s cause.

⁹Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
    its dust into sulfur,
    and its land will become burning pitch.
¹⁰Night 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.
¹¹Screech 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.
¹²No Kingdom There, they will call it,
    and all its princes will disappear.
¹³Thorns will grow up in its palaces,
    weeds and brambles in its fortresses.
It will be a dwelling for jackals,
    a home for ostriches.
¹⁴Wildcats will meet hyenas,
    the goat demon will call to his friends,
    and there Lilith^[b] will lurk
    and find her resting place.
¹⁵There the snake will nest and lay eggs
    and brood and hatch in its shadow.
There too vultures will gather,
    each with its mate.^[c]
¹⁶Consult 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.
¹⁷God 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.