Isaiah 34

¹Draw near, O nations, to hear;

O peoples, give heed!

Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;

the world, and all that comes from it.

²For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,

and furious against all their hordes;

he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.

³Their slain shall be cast out,

and the stench of their corpses shall rise;

the mountains shall flow with their blood.

⁴All the host of heaven shall rot away,

and the skies roll up like a scroll.

All their host shall wither

like a leaf withering on a vine,

or fruit withering on a fig tree.

⁵When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,

lo, it will descend upon Edom,

upon the people I have doomed to judgment.

⁶The Lord has a sword; it is sated with blood,

it is gorged 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.

⁷Wild oxen shall fall with them,

and young steers with the mighty bulls.

Their land shall be soaked with blood,

and their soil made rich with fat.

⁸For the Lord has a day of vengeance,

a year of vindication by Zion’s cause.

⁹And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch,

and her soil into sulfur;

her land shall become burning pitch.

¹⁰Night and day it shall not be quenched;

its smoke shall go up forever.

From generation to generation it shall lie waste;

no one shall pass through it forever and ever.

¹¹But the hawk and the hedgehog shall possess it;

the owl and the raven shall live in it.

He shall stretch the line of confusion over it,

and the plummet of chaos over its nobles.

¹²They shall name it No Kingdom There,

and all its princes shall be nothing.

¹³Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,

nettles and thistles in its fortresses.

It shall be the haunt of jackals,

an abode for ostriches.

¹⁴Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,

goat-demons shall call to each other;

there too Lilith shall repose,

and find a place to rest.

¹⁵There shall the owl nest

and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow;

there too the buzzards shall gather,

each one with its mate.

¹⁶Seek and read from the book of the Lord:

Not one of these shall be missing;

none shall be without its mate.

For the mouth of the Lord has commanded,

and his spirit has gathered them.

¹⁷He has cast the lot for them,

his hand has portioned it out to them with the line;

they shall possess it forever,

from generation to generation they shall live in it.