Isaiah 34:1-10 ▼

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.

2 The LORD {YHWH} is angry with all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will devote them to destruction {cherem}; He will give them over to slaughter.

3 Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.

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.

5 When My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, then it will come down upon Edom (red), upon the people I have devoted to destruction.

6 The sword of the LORD {YHWH} 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 (sheepfold / fortress), a great slaughter in the land of Edom (red).

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.

8 For the LORD {YHWH} has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion (of recompense for Edom’s hostility against Zion.).

9 Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.

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.