Isaiah 34
1Come near, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you people! 1 The earth and all that fills it must listen, the world, and all things that come from it. 1
2For Yahweh is angry with all the nations, and furious against all their armies; 1 he has completely destroyed them, he has handed them over to the slaughter. 1
3The bodies of their dead will be thrown out. The stench of the dead bodies will be everywhere; 1 and the mountains will soak up their blood. 1
4All the stars of the sky will fade away, 1 and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll; and all their stars will fade away, 1 as the leaf fades from off the vine, and as the overripe figs from the fig tree. 1
5For when my sword will have drunk its fill in heaven; 1 look, it will now come down on Edom, on the people I am setting apart for destruction. 1
6The sword of Yahweh is dripping with blood and covered with fat, 1 dripping with the blood of lambs and goats, covered with the fat of the kidneys of rams. 1 For Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 1
7Wild oxen will fall with them, and young bulls with the older ones. 1 Their land will be drunk with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. 1
8For it will be a day of vengeance for Yahweh and a year when he will pay them back for the cause of Zion. 1
9The streams of Edom will be turned into pitch, her dust into sulfur, 1 and her land will become burning pitch. 1
10It will burn night and day; its smoke will rise forever; 1 from generation to generation it will be a wasteland; no one will pass through it forever and ever. 1
11But wild birds and animals will live there; the owl and the raven will make their nest in it. 1 He will stretch over it the measuring line of ruin and the plumbline of destruction. 1
12Her nobles 1 will have nothing left to call a kingdom, and all her princes will be nothing. 1
13Thorns will overgrow her palaces, nettles and thistles her fortresses. 1 It will be a habitation of jackals, a place for ostriches. 1
14The wild animals and the hyenas will meet there, and the wild goats will cry to one another. 1 Nocturnal animals will settle there and find for themselves a place of rest. 1
15Owls will make nests, lay and hatch their eggs, hatch and protect their young. 1 Yes, there hawks will gather, each one with its mate. 1
16Search through the scroll of Yahweh; not one of these will be missing. 1 None will lack for a mate; for his mouth has commanded it, and his spirit has gathered them. 1
17He has cast lots for their places, and his hand has measured it out for them by a cord. 1 They will possess it forever; from generation to generation they will live there.