Isaiah 34

¹Isaiah 34:1. Come near, O nations, to listen; pay attention, O peoples. Let the earth hear, and all that fills it, the world and all that springs from it.²Isaiah 34:2. The LORD is angry with all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will devote them to destruction; He will give them over to slaughter.³Isaiah 34:3. Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.⁴Isaiah 34:4. All the stars of heaven will be dissolved. The skies will be rolled up like a scroll, and all their stars will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like foliage from the fig tree.

⁵Isaiah 34:5. When My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, then it will come down upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction.⁶Isaiah 34:6. The sword of the LORD is bathed in blood. It drips with fat—with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.⁷Isaiah 34:7. And the wild oxen will fall with them, the young bulls with the strong ones. Their land will be drenched with blood, and their soil will be soaked with fat.⁸Isaiah 34:8. For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.⁹Isaiah 34:9. Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.¹⁰Isaiah 34:10. It will not be quenched—day or night. Its smoke will ascend forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever again pass through it.¹¹Isaiah 34:11. The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.¹²Isaiah 34:12. No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing.¹³Isaiah 34:13. Her towers will be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She will become a haunt for jackals, an abode for ostriches.¹⁴Isaiah 34:14. The desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. There the night creature will settle and find her place of repose.¹⁵Isaiah 34:15. There the owl will make her nest; she will lay and hatch her eggs and gather her brood under her shadow. Even there the birds of prey will gather, each with its mate.¹⁶Isaiah 34:16. Search and read the scroll of the LORD: Not one of these will go missing, not one will lack her mate, because He has ordered it by His mouth, and He will gather them by His Spirit.¹⁷Isaiah 34:17. He has allotted their portion; His hand has distributed it by measure. They will possess it forever; they will dwell in it from generation to generation.