Isaiah 34

¹ Come near, you nations, to hear; and listen, you peoples! Let the earth hear, and its fullness; the world, and all things that come from it.

² For 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.

³ Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will be melted with their blood.

⁴ All 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 the leaf fades from off a vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig tree.

⁵ For 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.

⁶ Yahweh has a sword. It 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.

⁷ The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty. Their land will be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

⁸ For Yahweh has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.

⁹ Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch.

¹⁰ It won’t be quenched night nor day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever.

¹¹ But 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.

¹² They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing.

¹³ Thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches.

¹⁴ The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the goat-demon will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature will settle there, and will find herself a place of rest.

¹⁵ There the darting serpent will make her nest, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, there the kites will be gathered, everyone with her mate.

¹⁶ Seek out of Yahweh’s book, 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.

¹⁷ He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them by line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.