Isaiah 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.
You people of all nations, come near and listen and pay careful attention. I want the world and everything that is in it to hear what I say.
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.
Yahweh is angry with [the people of] all nations; he is (furious/very angry) with all their armies. He has decided that they must be destroyed, and he will slaughter them.
3 Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.
Their corpses will not be buried, and [as a result] their corpses will stink, and their blood will [fill the streams that] flow down the mountains.
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.
The sky will disappear like [SIM] a scroll that is rolled up [and thrown away]. Stars will fall [from the sky] like [SIM] [withered] leaves fall from grapevines, [or] like [SIM] shriveled figs fall from fig trees.
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.
When Yahweh has finished his work of destroying objects in the sky, he will punish [the people of] Edom, that people-group that he has said must be destroyed/exterminated.
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.
[It is as though] Yahweh has a sword that is covered with blood and fat— the blood of lambs and goats and the fat of the kidneys of rams to be sacrificed. [It is as though] Yahweh will offer a sacrifice in [the city of] Bozrah [and kill many people] in other cities in Edom.
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.
[Even] wild oxen will be killed, as well as young calves and big bulls. The ground will be soaked with blood, and the dirt will be covered with the fat of those animals.
8 For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
That will be the time when Yahweh gets revenge for what those people did to the people of Judah.
9 Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.
The streams in Edom will be full of burning pitch/tar, and the ground will be covered with burning sulfur.
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.
Yahweh will never finish punishing Edom with fire; the smoke will rise forever. No one will ever live in that land, and no one will [even] travel through it.
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.
Ravens and various kinds of owls and small animals will live there. Yahweh will measure that land carefully: He will measure it to [to decide where] to cause chaos and destruction.
12 No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing.
There will be no princes; the people who have authority will have no kingdom to rule.
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.
The deserted palaces and fortified buildings will be full of thorns and thistles. The ruins will be a place for jackals/wolves and owls to live.
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.
Animals that live in the desert and hyenas/wolves will be there, and wild goats will bleat/call to each other. There will also be creatures/animals that [roam around] at night.
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.
Owls will make their nests there and lay their eggs in the nests; and when the eggs hatch, the mother birds will cover them [with their wings]. There will also be falcons/hawks there, each with its mate.
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.
If you read what is written in the book that contains messages from Yahweh, you will find out what he will do [in Edom]. All of those animals and birds will be there, and each one will have a mate, because that is what Yahweh has promised, and his Spirit will cause them [all] to gather [there].
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.
He has decided what parts of the land [of Edom] each will live in, and those are the places where each bird or animal will live. Their descendants will possess those areas forever, throughout all generations.
