Isaiah
Chapter 34
1
Come near, O nations, and hear; be attentive, O peoples! Let the earth and what fills it listen, the world and all it produces.
2
The LORD is angry with all the nations and is wrathful against all their host; he has doomed them and given them over to slaughter.
3
Their slain shall be cast out, their corpses shall send up a stench; The mountains shall run with their blood,
4
and all the hills shall rot; The heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, and all their host shall wither away, As the leaf wilts on the vine, or as the fig withers on the tree.
5
When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, lo, it shall come down in judgment upon Edom, a people I have doomed.
6
The LORD has a sword filled with blood, greasy with fat, With the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of rams' kidneys; For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7
Wild oxen shall be struck down with fatlings, and bullocks with bulls; Their land shall be soaked with blood, and their earth greasy with fat.
8
For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of requital by Zion's defender.
9
Edom's streams shall be changed into pitch and her earth into sulphur, and her land shall become burning pitch;
10
Night and day it shall not be quenched, its smoke shall rise forever. From generation to generation she shall lie waste, never again shall anyone pass through her.
11
1 But the desert owl and hoot owl shall possess her, the screech owl and raven shall dwell in her. The LORD will measure her with line and plummet to be an empty waste for satyrs to dwell in.
12
Her nobles shall be no more, nor shall kings be proclaimed there; all her princes are gone.
13
Her castles shall be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She shall become an abode for jackals and a haunt for ostriches.
14
2 Wildcats shall meet with desert beasts, satyrs shall call to one another; There shall the lilith repose, and find for herself a place to rest.
15
There the hoot owl shall nest and lay eggs, hatch them out and gather them in her shadow; There shall the kites assemble, none shall be missing its mate.
16
3 Look in the book of the LORD and read: No one of these shall be lacking, For the mouth of the LORD has ordered it, and his spirit shall gather them there.
17
It is he who casts the lot for them, and with his hands he marks off their shares of her; They shall possess her forever, and dwell there from generation to generation.
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Footnotes

1 [11] Satyrs: see note on Isaiah 13:21; cf Isaiah 34:14.

2 [14] Lilith: a female demon thought to roam about the desert.

3 [16] Book of the LORD: God's list of all his creatures; cf Psalm 69:29 "the book of the living"; Psalm 139:16, "your book."


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December 09, 2002 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops