Isaiah 34

Judgment on the Nations

1 Come near, ye Gentiles, to hear; and hearken, ye peoples; let the earth hear, and all that is therein, the world and all things that come forth of it. 2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all the Gentiles, and his fury upon the entire army of them; he shall destroy them and deliver them to the slaughter. 3 Their slain shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. 4 And all the host of heavens shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls off from the vine and as the leaf falls from the fig tree.

5 For in the heavens my sword shall become drunk; behold, it shall come down in judgment upon Idumea or Edom and upon the people of my anathema. 6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood; it is made fat with fatness and with the blood of lambs and goats with the fat of the kidneys of rams, for the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. 7 And the unicorns shall fall with them, and the bulls with the calves; and their land shall become drunk with blood, and their dust shall be greased with fatness.

8 For it shall be the day of the LORD’s vengeance and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. 9 And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into sulphur, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. 10 It shall not be quenched night nor day; its smoke shall go up for ever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it for ever and ever. 11 But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the level of desolation. 12 They shall call the princes thereof, princes without a kingdom; and all her great ones shall be nothing.

13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation of dragons and a court for young owls. 14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl shall have his seat there and find for himself a place of rest.

15 There shall the great owl make his nest and conserve his eggs and hatch his young and gather them under his wings; there shall the vultures also be gathered, each one with his mate. 16 Seek ye out that which is written in the book of the LORD and read; if one of these is lacking, none is missing with his mate, for his mouth has commanded it, and his same Spirit has gathered them. 17 And he has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it unto them by line; therefore they shall have it as an inheritance for ever; from generation to generation they shall dwell therein.

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