Isaiah 34 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Late 700s BC in origin, though the poem is framed as a judgment on the nations at large
Location
Edom, the rocky highland southeast of the Dead Sea, standing in for every hostile nation
Audience
The people of Judah, summoned along with all nations to hear the verdict
Situation
All nations are called to court, the sky is rolled up like a scroll, and the judgment settles on Edom, whose streams turn to pitch and whose land smokes forever. Its palaces are left to thorns, jackals, and desert birds that nest where a royal house once stood.
Key Background
Edom was Judah's southern neighbor and, by tradition, a kin nation descended from Esau, which made its hostility feel like betrayal and turned it into a symbol of opposition generally. The region has natural bitumen and sulfur deposits around the Dead Sea, so burning pitch and brimstone were things people had actually seen there. Naming the animals that take over a ruin was a standard curse formula in ancient Near Eastern treaties, where a broken oath was punished by the site becoming pasture for wild creatures, and the closing reference to a scroll to be searched invites hearers to check the record later.
Come close, you and listen. Pay attention, you peoples. Let the earth hear — and everything in it, the world and all that springs from it.
Because Yahweh is with all the nations, burning with anger against all their armies. He has them for destruction, handed them over to slaughter.
Their slain will be thrown out, the will rise from their corpses, and the mountains will be drenched with their blood.
All the stars in the sky will dissolve, the heavens will be up a scroll, and all their will wither and fall — like a leaf dropping from a vine, like a shriveled fig from a tree.
When my sword has its in the heavens, watch — it comes down on Edom, on the people I have to
Yahweh's sword is soaked with blood, coated with fat — the blood of lambs and goats, the fat from the kidneys of rams. Because Yahweh has a in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
will go down with them, young bulls with the mighty ones. Their land will be drunk with blood, their dust made rich with fat.
Because Yahweh has a day of payback, a year of accounts for the cause of
Edom's streams will turn to tar, her dust to sulfur, her land will become burning pitch.
Night and day it will never go out; its smoke will rise forever. Generation after generation it will lie in ruins; no one will ever pass through it again.
The desert owl and the screech owl will claim it, the great owl and the raven will nest there. Yahweh will stretch out over it the of chaos and the plumb of
Her — there is nothing left there to call a kingdom, and all her princes will come to nothing.
Thorns will overrun her fortresses, nettles and thistles will fill her strongholds. She will become a haunt for jackals, a home for
will meet with hyenas, and will call out to each other. There too the will settle and find for herself a resting place.
There the will nest and lay eggs, hatch them and gather her young under her shadow. There too the will gather, each one with its mate.
Search through Yahweh's and read it: not one of these will be missing, none will lack its mate. Because his mouth has given the command, and his has gathered them together.
He himself has the for them, his hand has divided it out to them with the line. They will possess it forever; generation after generation they will live there.