Isaiah 34

¹ Draw near, O nations, to hear;
and give heed, O peoples!
Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;
the world, and all that comes from it.

² For the LORD is enraged against all the nations,
and furious against all their armies;
he has devoted them to destruction, given them over to slaughter.

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

⁴ All the host of heaven will rot away,
and the skies will be rolled up like a scroll.
All their host will fall,
as leaves fall from the vine,
like what falls from a fig tree.

⁵ For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens;
behold, it will descend upon Edom,
upon the people I have devoted to judgment.

⁶ The 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.

⁷ Wild oxen will fall with them,
and young steers with the mighty bulls.
Their land will drink its fill of blood,
and their soil will be gorged with fat.

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

⁹ And the streams of Edom will be turned into pitch,
and her soil into sulfur;
her land will become burning pitch.

¹⁰ Night and day it will not be quenched;
its smoke will go up forever.
From generation to generation it will lie waste;
none will pass through it forever and ever.

¹¹ But the hawk and the hedgehog will possess it,
the owl and the raven will dwell in it.
He will stretch over it the line of formlessness
and the plumb line of emptiness.

¹² No nobles will be there to proclaim a king,
and all her princes will be nothing.

¹³ Thorns will grow over her palaces,
nettles and thistles in her fortresses.
She will become a haunt of jackals,
an abode for ostriches.

¹⁴ And wild animals will meet with hyenas;
the wild goat will cry to his fellow;
indeed, there the night bird settles
and finds for herself a resting place.

¹⁵ The owl nests and lays
and gathers her young under her shadow;
and there the hawks are gathered,
each one with its mate.

¹⁶ Seek and read from the book of the LORD:
not one of these will be missing;
none will be without her mate.
For the mouth of the LORD has commanded,
and his Spirit has gathered them.

¹⁷ He has cast the lot for them,
his hand has portioned it out to them with the line;
they will possess it forever,
from generation to generation they will dwell in it.